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John the Coder

• Loves coding
• Hates wasting time doing 'admin'
• Likes to get changes landed
• Mostly uses the terminal
• knows about DVCs, but not much about bzr
• Hates interruptions
• Often automates tedious tasks
• Constantly finding bugs in things, especially his own code
• Anal about their code
• Has used open source for many years
• Has to be part of communities (and is!)
• Seeks praise from his peers

Aitana the Translator

• Wants to help out in Ubuntu, but has very little technical skills
• Not a native English speaker
• Uses Ubuntu in Catalan
• Cares about translations quality, as it's what she has to use
• Passionate about her language
• Is in high school, so has a lot of time on her hands
• Eager to learn
• Uses GUI tools, the terminal is still kind of scary to him
• Done a little bit of programming at school
• A little insecure, masks this by talking too much

Jeremy the Manager

• Runs a small team
• Has a suspicious boss
• Has 12 developers to coordinate
• Knows how to program but hasn't seen actual code in a year
• Really gets along with his team, but one of them seems to be not doing enough, and that worries him.
• Pretty much always has one (or three!) important deadlines to meet
• Often being hassled by stakeholders from other departments

Kara the Ubuntu packager

• Small contributions across a huge range of _stuff_
• Gets way too much email
• Likes to stay involved
• Motivated by community as much as credit
• Needs to keep up-to-date with everything happening in the distro
• Has cyclic stressful months (before every release)
• Lives in the terminal, only uses GUI when forced
• Has used Launchpad for years, knows it better than some of the devs
• Has long since changed the way she works to work around broken tools -- it's the Debian way
• Reached the top of the community game ages ago. Not motivated by increased standing
• Packages other peoples software

Matthew the LAMP developer

• Works in web development with PHP and MySQL
• Uses SVN and a custom-made ticketing system
• Uses as much open source software as he can, but is stuck with a few proprietary apps
• Is interested in getting things done, doesn't care about communities
• Has a dual-boot Ubuntu install at home, but has to use Windows at work, and his company use Fedora on servers.
• Hasn't ever committed to an Open Source project. He'd like to, but he's a bit scared, since a lot of these people are uber-geeks.

When Matthew asks a technical question on an Internet forum (mailing list, IRC, whatever), it's always very, very carefully phrased. He's savvy enough to know that badly-asked questions draw fire, and that's the last thing he wants. He takes a long time to ask them, and is always a little disappointed when they don't get answered.

Bill the OEM engineer

• Works for a large OEM company
• Works with a custom version of Ubuntu built for their PCs
• Uses IE7. Company policy.
• Is very technical con specific issues, but doesn't care about communities
• Not a native English speaker
• Works with multiple tools in parallel (bug trackers, etc)
• Has crazy serious deadlines
• Needs good documentation
• Lives in a small rural city in China
• Has a very bad internet connection