Ted Gould - Canonical
Ubuntu Desktop Developer
Speaking Topic: The Ubuntu Desktop: Bling for Usability

Ted Gould is an open source developer working on desktop and usability on Ubuntu for Canonical. We're striving to make Ubuntu the best desktop experience anywhere. He's also an active developer on the Inkscape project and enjoys taking gigabyte after gigabyte of photos. He lives in LA with his wife and son.

Abstract

As the power of modern computers increases we now have the ability to adjust the human interactions to be more similar to the world around us. By increasingly synchronizing the models of the real world inside the computer with those outside it we remove more obstacles for adoption and provide more opportunities for intuition to predict how things will behave. While this provides the possibility to vastly increase the usability of the computer desktop it also gives us the power to significantly confuse users also. Some of these advances have been realized in the Ubuntu Desktop, while others are still on the drawing board. Ted will discuss the current state of the Ubuntu Desktop and future directions to extend it.