What we were asked to do

<sabdfl> rafael_carreras: it would be amazing if you guys could write up a 1-page summary of how you inspire your team, which we could share with the rest of the comunityvia Ubuntu Weekly News

<beuno> rafael_carreras: get in touch with me for that, we have a "special edition" on LoCos

Report

On May 15th, Catalan LoCo Team obtained officiality. We worked hard to achieve this, and we are very proud to have been the first Lingual- and Cultural-based Ubuntu LoCo. Moreover, this has also had some impact in Catalan technical media[1].

But the beginings were not that good. In May 2005, I put the team on the LoCo Team List[2], my first mistake was not to spread this decision, hoping for everyone entering Ubuntu website to find it easily. So, few people knew about it and the Team was not able to get along. One and a half years later, Ubuntu was really at the top of GNU/Linux distros and passing by the wiki page, I put an "abandoned project" note. Curiously, at that moment six people interested in the project contacted me and, on the other hand, people from my LUG made commentaries on the same direction, so thanks to our contacts we put a mailing list online, on a university server, and this time I spread the word in a few free software lists. In a week, we were more than 100 people on the list.

The needs for a Catalan LoCo Team were obvious: we are in a technologically advanced region of Europe and, although not well positioned in free software matters at administration and political level, we have had for many years ago people very involved with the free software movement, who have done great work spreading, raising awareness, translating and even developing.

Catalan-speaking people are proud of their language and want to use it in every occasion, so getting up a LoCo was the most logical action to do, especially to provide a mailing list, forum and irc channel where everyone can discuss Ubuntu in our own language. It is only natural that people prefers its language to communicate to others in their community, but sometimes we think we are a small community and, since we Catalans are bi or trilingual, we often attach to other language communities in other aspects of our lives.

Ubuntu Catalan User community gathers Catalan-speaking users of Ubuntu in all its varieties. The scope of the Catalan LoCo Team is mainly the Catalan Countries[3], that is, the territories where Catalan is traditionally spoken, where members and volunteers are spread practically all over their geography.

The Ubuntu Catalan LoCo Team[4] is a very active, fast growing group of people that supports and spreads Ubuntu amongst the Catalan speaking community. It is the most important resource of information about Ubuntu in this language. We are a very heterogeneus and varied group of people focused on spreading the free software philosophy, specially Ubuntu, and have several projects in mind that will be done by our different workgroups in the near future.

Rafael Carreras, Catalan LoCo Team Contact.

[1] http://www.vilaweb.cat/www/noticia?p_idcmp=2399868 (in catalan)
[2] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeamList
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catalan_countries
[4] https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CatalanTeam/En

MartinAlbisetti: Added to UWN #42, thanks for the great writeup.