ReapprovalApplication

Key details

Introduction

Czech community is probably one of the oldest local communities of Ubuntu (= Ubuntu LoCo Team) and although this community is not one of the most active, it still be growing and expanding, since 2005 when was founded. "Our" greatest strength is great users community support, the weakness is the promotion of Ubuntu in the Czech Republic, which works somewhat disorganized and uncoordinated.

  • Regarding the fact that Czechs and Slovaks have very long shared history and our languages are very similar (we understand each other quite easily) we often collaborate tightly with Slovak community. There is virtually no differentiation between Czech and Slovak Ubuntu users at our discussion forum or on our wiki (or any other projects).

Civic Association

At the end of 2007, we founded non-profit organization -- civic association -- for supporting Czech Ubuntu community. It used primarily for easier handling the finances, which we need for our business and easier communication with state authorities and other non-profit organizations in the field of free software.

The association currently has 26 members.

Thanks the membership fees, donations and secondary activities, average we are able to get for our needs around 10,000 CZK per year (= 550 USD/400 Euro).

The association has a three-member committee, that leads the association and taht is elected every year at the annual regular session. 

Civic Association is the oldest and most widespread legal form of NGOs in the Czech Republic. Activities of civic associations is regulated by the Law on association of citizens No. 83/1990 Coll. The purpose of the association may be either shared a common interest or charitable activities. Civic Association is registering the statutes of the Ministry of Interior of the Czech Republic. Its members may be individual or legal entity. Civic associations can make business with the objectives of the association, any profit must be used to achieve the objectives of the association.

Support

Our main channels of the support for Czech Ubuntu users are the classical web forum and Wiki. Moreover, we provide the support through mailing-list, IRC and Jabber conference.

Forum

Our community web forum originated in autumn 2005 and since that time it has grown into the one of the largest czech forums focused on linux. Nowadays, the forum has about 22 000 registered users who posted more than 375 000 questions and answers so far. At the present time the number of posts steadily grows up by (approx.) 5000 per month. The forum is supervised by 4 administrators and 17 moderators.The forum does not only acts as a support center, but also serves as a meeting place of the community and helps to organize various gatherings and projects.

Wiki

Our Wiki is probably the most reliable source of Ubuntu documentation in Czech. It contains more than 500 howtos, guidelines and instructions. It covers the problematics ranging from Ubuntu installation, basic controls and settings, to the installation and setup of single applications.

Out wiki is also available in an off-line version. Specifically, in html form, which is automatically updated on the daily basis, and in manually created pdf (last update from autumn 2008).

  • wiki-prirucka.jpg

Advocacy

Media

Our community periodically cooperates with the Czech Linux media (unfortunately here are only online media), but occasionally we are able to establish cooperation with other media - professional and mass.

  • magazine Linux+ was published in the Czech Republic for several years, and in 2007 and 2008 we gave there a monthly summary of news from the world of Ubuntu and collaborated on some articles that are related to Ubuntu. Unfortunately our cooperation was finished, because Linux ceased publication in spring 2008 in the Czech language.

  • Beat Radio is a private radio station specializing mainly in rock music. The FM band covers approx. 2/3 of Czech Republic, and of course is spread on the Internet. The owner of Radio Beat is an enthusiastic user of free software (and Ubuntu) and added to the broadcast short "commercials" for free software. Together with other organizations, we recorded several clips about Ubuntu, the OSS community, OpenOffice.org and other OSS projects.

  • Technet is a professional online magazine of printed newspaper Mlada fronta Dnes. In cooperation with the editor Pavel Kasik, we have managed to bring two (now, we are preparing the third about netbooks Interface Unit) articles about Ubuntu.

    Even though we try to establish relationships with also other than a purely technical media we didn't enjoy much success in this matter, mostly just by personal contacts to individual journalists. Nevertheless we create and send out press releases regularly.

Schools

Due to the fact that there are many basic and high school students in our community we are doing well in promoting at schools. Due to activity of our members, we have made seven presentations in different high schools in the Czech republic in the last years. At some schools, we convinced teachers and principals to start using Ubuntu on computers for teaching or public access for students. In this case, those are only isolated successes because our government subsidized purchasing new computers for schools with Windows included.

Successful presentations of Ubuntu at schools are usually results of personal iniciatives of our active members. We are currently preparing better support for other students who decide to show Ubuntu to their schoolmates and teachers. In preparation, there are ready-to-use presentation templates (including slides), guidelines for students, and we are considering promoting materials focussed particularly on schools.

Events & Meetings

Conferences

Czech Ubuntu community regularly attends most of larger conferences about Linux/OSS software that take place in Czech Republic.

LinuxExpo

LinuxExpo is the largest Linux conference in Czech Republic. It's organized by the ExpoNet company, and it's held in Prague every year at the turn of April and May. Our community regularly attends it since 2006, and represents ubuntu by a kiosk (Ubuntu demonstration, CDs, info about Ubuntu...) and recently also by lectures about Ubuntu.

LinuxAt

LinuxAlt is another large Linux conference. It's been held since 2006, always on the first weekend in November, at the Faculty of Information Technology in Brno. In 2009, Vojtěch Trefný presented Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala there (slides (PDF 1,3 MB)). We're planning to attend this year's LinuxAlt, which will take place at 6 and 7 of November 2010.

  • alt2009.jpg

OpenWorkshop Olomouc

In 2008, we had a lecture at the only year of the OpenWorkshop conference so far. It took place in Olomouc.

LoCo Events

Live Meetings

Prague

There're periodic monthly meetings in Prague since spring 2010. There're from five to fifteen Ubuntu-fans from Pragued come together periodically there.

Pardubice

There're given quarterly meetings i Pardubice too. From ten to twenty entrants have take part in usually.

Other

There were sporadic live meetings in Brno, Bruntal, Ostrava and Plzen this year so far.

  • We weren't able to set up regular online IRC meetings because there was not enough interest in it -- we supplement live meetings with discussion forums and mailing lists activities, which seem to be better suited for us.

Global Jam

We took part in Ubuntu Global Jam in fall 2009 and spring 2010.

10/2009

We didn't make to get any place for the first Jam and didn't have enough participants, so Jam took place only on our IRC. Two sessions took places successfully. The first one was focussed on making Czech unofficial documentation and the second one was focussed on translating Ubuntu. We made several new tutorials and got new people into translations.

3/2010

After the online "test", we had a meeting in person in Prague this year. There were about 15 participants who took part in workshops focussed on making documentation (led by Vojtěch Trefný) and translations (led by Jiří Eischmann, a GNOME translation team member).

More information (in English) is available in our "final report" http://wiki.ubuntu.cz/UbuntuGlobalJam/3_2010/English

Other

Ubuntu books

In 2008 the Czech community joined in the effort to make a first Ubuntu manual. The "Ubuntu 8.04 Praktická příručka uživatele Linuxu" (Ubuntu 8.04 Linux User's Practical Guide) was published in August 2008 under the leadership of the Czech Linux "guru" Ivan Bíbr with contributions from about 10 community members. The guide was then published with every Ubuntu release, with the exception of the 9.10 release. The latest edition is the 10.04 LTS edition. Now we are working on the latest Ubuntu 10.10 version of the book. Currently it has 360 pages (compare this to 270 in the first edition) and costs CZK 497 (€20/$28). All were published in 1000-2000 copies by the Computer Press publishing house.

  • ubuntu-books.jpg

Ubuntu Guide

"Ubuntu Brief Guide" is a simple short guide for Ubuntu. Its purpose is to outline the basic information about Ubuntu to the reader and help him or her with an installation and the first run of the system. The printing layout of the guide is the same as the physical dimensions of a CD cover and therefore the guide can be easily distributed with such media. Due to the limited page size and small number of pages (just sixteen) the guide can't help the user with all the obstacles that can emerge during installation, but it serves as a good source of the most important information and it contains references to other online and printed materials.

  • uug.jpg

We had 1000 printouts of this guide created in the second half of the year 2008. Currently we are about to finish a new version of this guide, which should be sent to press by the end of the year with an estimate impression of 800-1500 printouts.

Weekly Newsletter

Ubuntu Weekly Magazine is a Czech "copy" of Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter. Our magazine is inspired by the UWN and also it takes over some parts of it -- not every available information, but just the most important news. We also add some news about Czech and Slovak Ubuntu communities and events.

Ubuntu Weekly Magazine is issued regularly every week (not a single release skipped!) starting from December 2007. Except from the regular weekly edition we also publish special edition concerning important events in the Ubuntu world (mainly new Ubuntu releases). Every year by the end of December we also prepare a summary of what happened in the past year in Ubuntu community.

FullCircle Magazine

We have already twice tried to make a team for translating Full Circle Magazine. We translated and composed two issues, but can't still hold translation continuity and keep up with Full Circle Magazine.

Week Of Translating XYZ

The week of translating an application is one of current project of our community. It's cofussed on translating Ubuntu and cooperation with the upstream. Every day, one application is announced (usually one with development hosted on Launchpad) and then colectively translated by comunnity members. The translations are reviewed and confirmed by experienced translators.

Local CD distributors

So-called "local distributors" offer help to people that can't download Ubuntu CD and don't want to use ShipIt service, but still they would like to obtain CD or DVD with Ubuntu (or any of its derivatives). The local distributors are members of the community from the Czech (or Slovak) Republic, who will burn Ubuntu on request to anyone, free of charge (in exchange for a free CD medium or for a symbolic fee). Some of them might also offer help with installation and setting up Ubuntu. The list of these local distributors now contains more than 100 volunteers.

Bug reporting in Czech

We offer a service to anyone who can't speak English sufficiently but who wants to report some bug in Ubuntu. These people can report the bug in Czech to us and our experienced community members will translate it, report it and also mediate some following communication if needed.

Future Plans

Websites

  • finalize the ubuntu.cz website redesign -- first the main page (completed), then wiki.ubuntu.cz (in progress) and forum.ubuntu.cz (not started yet)

  • create a new website for lubuntu - see the work in progress at lubuntu.mzf.cz

  • relaunch the Slovak version of ubuntu pages - ubuntu.sk - in cooperation with the Slovak LoCo

Marketing

  • put together a marketing team (already started in summer), which would eventually take on all activities formerly done by individual members
  • prepare a new version of the Ubuntu manual for publishing
  • prepare materials for schools

Events

  • prepare more live sessions/meetings in other towns - not only as a means of seeing each other, but also helping newcomers, organizing projects etc.
  • Release Party 11.04 - organize a bigger event with lectures and workshops

  • take part in Linux conferences of LinuxExpo, LinuxAlt and Install`;Fest in 2011

  • Ubuntu Global Jam - in the following jams we would like to engage more participants around the Czech Republic and include more topics (packaging, bugs,...)

Translations

  • find more translators for FulCircle Magazine and make sure it is continually translated

  • complete the translation of Ubuntu Manual into Czech

CzechTeam/ReapprovalApplication (last edited 2010-11-01 17:11:07 by 195)