Ubuntu Open week is a series of presentations and Q&A sessions on a variety of topics, it uses the IRC freenode network to host them, IRC is a fantastic communication medium, kind of more focussed than Twitter, but more open than instant messaging and more chatty than a web forum. You can read more about open week and the full schedule here

Edubuntu is Ubuntu's education focussed edition, it includes sets of free applications with an educational focus for different age groups. It also has a focus on manageability in a school environment and can be run as a terminal server to thin clients and regular computers. This talk is about the new features of Edubuntu and will no doubt cover the future directions. If you miss the event the logs will be posted here afterwards.

To get on to IRC you will need an IRC client of some kind. If you are running Linux it is easy, just install xchat in your normal way (Ubuntu Software Store/Synaptic/ apt-get install xchat/yum install xchat), if you have Windows then download and install from the xchat website. Should you have a Mac then Colloquy would seem to look suitably stylish.

Once you have an IRC client of some form up and running you will need to join the Freenode network, the server to connect to is irc.freenode.net Once that is done you should see a page of welcome text, you then need to join some channels. For open week join #ubuntu-classroom and #ubuntu-classroom-chat or to just say hi to the UK croud join #ubuntu-uk.

Even if you have no interest in Edubuntu, or if you miss the session, I would encourage you to have a go with IRC just to examine it as a web 2.0 style social media platform that dates back to 1988!