Just a friendly reminder that the first live MOTU School series will be taking place the 10th of December at 1770 UTC on #ubuntu-motu-school on irc.freenode.net. Andrew Mitchell (ajmitch) will be chairing the session “Packaging without debhelper and/or CDBS”. Andrew is a Debian Developer and MOTU, and will be focusing on the raw guts of the Debian packaging toolchain. The intent is to give participants a deeper understanding of packaging techniques to further educate the pool of budding Ubuntu developers.

We've got the event up on the calendar, so check it out if you are interested in brushing up those debian/rules skills. For a better understanding of what MOTU School is about, make sure you read up Stephan Hermann's goals for the project.

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Dennis Kaarsemaker once again brings us the latest summary of the Community Council meetings, this one is for the 6th of December. Community volunteers who sign the Code of Conduct are now officially referred to as “Ubunteros” instead of “Ubuntites”. The Council also approved new members Mauricio Hernandez, Jordan Mantha, Chris Peterman, Kevin Cole, and Steve Kowalik.

The Accessibility Team has conducted its second meeting, Daniel Holbach has posted minutes of that meeting.

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In October we reported on the 5,000 desktop deployment of Ubuntu in Macedonia. The latest issue of the GNOME Journal has an interview with Darko Arso, Technology Integration Manager at the Education Development Center, on why they chose GNOME running on Ubuntu.

While you’re there you might want to check out the Journal’s extensive review of GnomeMeeting, as well as the developer-oriented Writing a Widget Using Cairo and GTK+2.8.

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Chris Del Checcolo and Ricky Hussmann from the West Virginia University Student Chapter of the ACM have put together an awesome set of instructional videos that feature Ubuntu.

• Ubuntu Linux / Windows Dual Boot Instructional Video
• Installing Software on Ubuntu Linux

Warning: Soundtrack contains gratuitous use of Survivor and Styx.

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The inimitable Daniel Holbach has posted the latest status report from the MOTU team. Highlights include merge updates from Dapper, a new logo contest, and a look at the MOTU Science team. The ranks continue to swell with the announcement of four newly minted MOTUs: Benjamin Montgomery, Zak B. Elep (zakame), Loic Pefferkorn (pef), and Benjamin Mako Hill (mako).

In related news, Stephann Hermann has announced the Ubuntu MOTU School, a virtual “how to get started” educational program where prospective packagers can learn the intricacies of maintaining the ever growing library of software in Universe. Visit #ubuntu-motu-school on irc.freenode.net for more information.