From Skunkworks to Core Apps

Over the past two years Canonical has been changing the way it works together with members of the community to deliver products around business needs, deadlines and partnerships. Starting with the Skunkworks project announced by Mark Shuttleworth in 2012, we have been evolving how we bring people in from the community, how their work is treated, what they can expect from us and what we expect from them. The most recent iteration of this is the Core Apps project, where the community has developed a number of essential applications for our first phone launch.

This presentation will detail the history of these projects, including how they were organized, and what results they produced. It will focus on the specific changes that were made from one iteration to the next and how those changes affected the successfulness and outcome of the project. These can then be used to build a general structure and advice for how to integrate community contributions into mission critical projects.