LoCo Project Review

The LoCo Project has grown immensely over the past few months, and it has come time to do a review to see what is working, and what is not. The best way to do this is to document some opinions.

What is working

If you believe that a process is working really well, and would like to let us know, please add it here (Heading 3 is recommended === Text ===) with an explanation below.

What is not working

If you believe that a process is not working, please let us know. Until we're aware, we cannot do anything to rectify the situation. Please add it here (Heading 3 is recommended === Text ===) with an explanation below.

Please do not stage personal attacks on any person or team. This is for constructive criticism only.

Interaction between "local" and "language"

Recent discussions have brought up the issue of the definition of a LoCo. The current concept of "local team" is based on geography. This is helpful because it allows the Ubuntu project as a whole to be represented in different geographical areas, and to provide a definitive list of regional contacts. For example, the [http://www.ubuntu.com/support/local local support page] uses the list of local teams to show who might be able to provide face to face support. Equally, lists of Ubuntu friendly vendors or advocacy initiatives can rely on a list of local teams.

However, a number of problems arise:

1. How do different teams who share the same language collaborate on translation/support resources?
2. Is it appropriate for "local" teams to be created which are based simply on language and not geography?

3. Is it appropriate for the list of local teams to include teams that are not related either to language or geography (for example UbuntuWomen or any of the teams listed at ["Teams"]?

Collaboration between projects

By now, I don't see much collaboration between the LoCo-Project and other projects. I especially would like to see more collaboration between the Marketing Team and the Loco-Teams, e.g. a place where Loco-Teams can find templates (Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu etc.) for drupal/joomla etc., artwork, flyers (different languages), slides for presentations, guidlines for events - including talking points, guidelines for the exposed systems, FAQ etc. By now, every loco-team has to search information all over the ubuntu-wiki and websites and create their own material. A good collaboration between the Marketing Team (and maybe other teams?) and the loco-project could improve the situation.

• The Art team should be in on this too, since artwork is their specialty (MelissaDraper)

LoCo Resources

There are a number of LoCo Resources issues that need some clarity. Currently this process is unclear and confusing for new teams. I (MelissaDraper) hope that discussion of this can be had at UDS Seville, and a spec written to clarify issues and resource availability.

Naming policy

On LoCoTeamHowto there's [https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeamHowto#head-3627146f82f910354ff5a68c62efea66a31cf50b a reference to the GeorgiaTeam] which shows the lack of a consistent naming policy for teams, since Georgia is both a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_%28country%29 country] and a [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_%28U.S._state%29 U.S. state] that name shouldn't be used unless a clear naming policy is defined. -- AlexMuntada DateTime(2007-03-03T20:14:00Z)

Supporting LoCo Teams

On https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeamHowto one can see that LoCo Teams should do a lot of things, especially if they want to get approved officially, but there's rather few they receive. In the end, LoCo Teams spend a lot of time on infrastructure (get a good domain, installing CMS, creating themes, setting up forums, mailing lists etc.), and every new LoCo Team waists his time in reinventing the wheel. Those things could be provided easily by Ubuntu, or at least get worked out in collaboration with existing LoCos, in order that LoCo Teams can start working immediately on fairs, documents, artwork, packages, localised CDs etc. New LoCo Teams could also need help with guidance (epxerienced LoCo Teams could provide models how their guidance works).

Mailing list creation

The current procedure for mailing list creation is sub-optimal because it depends on admin response which is currently extremely slow. The admins are also not well placed to take a decision about whether it is appropriate for a new list to be created as they are not familiar with the community processes. The CommunityManager should take over mailing list administration.

Hosting slowness/unreliability

The LoCoTeam hosting server is severely lacking resources, being often unbearably slow for eg. any forum dicussions. The current solution is to restart apache every 30 minutes ( ! ) to reduce swapping, which causes additional problems. The server is currently (March 2007) using Ubuntu 5.10 so security support is ending in a month, though it seems some of the server components are newer. There are no backups made, and 100% complete backups cannot be made by the LoCoTeams without help from Canonical each time.

Update: one big service found a new place at another server, so the load is better now. The security support problems, the inevitable lack of server power that will become a problem again soon, and the lack of (even possibility of doing) backups are still there.

Thanks go to Matthew Nuzum for optimizing every last bit of performance out of the current server, and answering community worries on a daily basis.