If you’ve already read Matthew Helmke’s blog, you’ll have heard that I’m passing the community interview project on to him.

Like a lot of volunteer projects, what determines involvement is the amount of time you can afford to it. In my case, I picked up some new job responsibilities last month, and I find they’re consuming more of my “free time” than in the past.

Unfortunately, the time it takes to arrange, coordinate and post an interview is relatively large (it’s not big, but when it’s compared to my other “free time” tasks, it’s among the largest), so it makes sense for me to pass that along. I mentioned it to Matthew, and he agreed to start fresh with it in the near future.

I think it’ll be a good change for that fixture; I know Matthew will do a fantastic job with it. He’s a published author and knows how to conduct a real interview, so I’m sure managing this will be easy for him.

And Matthew’s blog is piped directly into the Ubuntu Planet, which means the interviews will pop up directly in the feed readers and e-mail accounts of established members, some of whom may never have even heard of the interviews before.

But more than that, I think Matthew’s roles as a forum administrator, an FC member and as an Ubuntu member will shift the project closer to the center of the Ubuntu community.

Matthew has a recognizable name and a reputation directly within the community, which will give the project more credibility. That in turn will increase the visibility of the forums, and generate a greater level of respect for Ubuntu users who rely on that medium as their voice in the project. In all, I think this is a good step for the interviews, and a good thing for the forum community.

So with that, I’ll close off my era in the interview series. The interviews I managed will continue to be open to comment. A thousand thank-yous to the people who agreed to participate while I was running the show; your candor and honesty lent a real measure of personality to the series, and helped give it a great start.

Cheers, all!

K.Mandla