Michigan LoCo Team Approval Application

The Michigan LoCo team was started in June of 2007. At that time there had already been a Detroit Team, but that team had stagnated and there was also the desire to have a state-wide team. The team has since grown by leaps and bounds to 71 members (as of November 25th, 2007) all across the state.

Our team has a focus on more technical issues (application packaging, bug fixing) but we also love working in more humanistic areas related to Ubuntu marketing. New Ubuntu users in the area tend to come to us for help on their first issue, but then appreciate the community we have so much that they stick around and join the team.

Key Details

Roadmap

• Penguicon Participation:

  • Penguicon is a yearly convention for both Open Source Software and Science Fiction enthusiasts, at the same time. We plan on hosting a Room Party focusing on Ubuntu with previews of Hardy, demos, and a movie. We are also planning on hosting a panel on general Ubuntu Questions and Answers.

    Our planning page is here.

• Packaging Jams:

  • We had a successful first Packaging Jam on November 3rd and want to have more. Future Jams will allow more participants and also multiple "paths" (beginners and advanced users). Details on first Jam here. We are also working on a general Packaging Jam guide based on our experiences so that more LoCo teams can host their own. Plans are moving forward for a repeat of the event in late January after the holiday season.

    See this page for examples of getting our work into the greater Ubuntu packaging community.

    See our planning for running a packaging jam at Penguicon this year on our mailing list archive.

• Release Party/Install Fest:

  • Building off the momentum from Penguicon we plan to host a release party with install fest. Due to Penguicon only being 4 days prior to the release of Hardy the install fest may be a couple weeks after the release date.

• Continued Cooperation with Other Groups:

  • We will continue our friendly cooperation with other user groups in the area. A part of this is a calendar (in the formation process) which will showcase all OSS-related activities in Michigan.

    Discussed during Nov. 4th meeting, summary here.

• Continue Regular Meetings

  • The Michigan Team has IRC meetings every 2 weeks on Sunday at 7pm. These meetings help us to get our projects done in a timely manner. They also let new members see and hear about what projects are being worked on and what they can help with.

• Computer Donation/Recycling:

  • There is interest in setting up a computer recycling program. We would take no longer wanted computers and either take them to the appropriate location for recycling or repair them to a state of usability to donate to organizations/schools.

    Project planning page located here.

Experience

• Communication Channels

  • We have created and maintained our online presence and lines of communication, including a mailing list, a Michigan Team subforum, an IRC channel, and a wiki.

• Team Website

  • The current web presence of the team is the wiki where we keep track of planning projects and provide resources for new users.

  • Wiki Homepage

• Face to Face Meeting

  • August 23rd, 2007 we meet for our first team meeting

    • Meeting Summary

    • Pictures: flickr set

• IRC Meetings

  • Transitioned from monthly to bi-weekly meetings on Sunday night.

    • Past Meetings

• Gutsy Release Party

  • The Gutsy Gibbon Release Party was on October 18th 2007

  • Wiki page with details: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MichiganTeam/Projects/GutsyRelease

  • Pictures: Blog post

• Packaging Jam

  • A member of the LoCo team hosted a Packaging Jam on November 3rd this year to help people interested in how to package applications for Ubuntu get over the step learning curve. This was an all day event and was very successful, thus we will be doing more in the future.

    • Flyer: PDF

    • Team's Wiki Page

    • Highlighted in the Community Spotlight section of Ubuntu Weekly Newsletter issue #65.

    • Host's summary: Blog Post

• Contributions to Forum

  • Many members of the Michigan LoCo Team post on ubuntuforums.org ranging from help for beginners to working with security on servers.

  • Members' Profile Pages:

    • Greg Grossmeier (Profile Page)

    • Rick Harding (Profile Page)

    • Jay Wren (Profile Page)

    • Matt Wrenn (Profile Page)

    • Wolfger (Profile Page)

    • Trevor Jagoda (Profile Page)

• Ubuntu Members

  • Jorge Castro LaunchPad

  • Jim McQuillan Launchpad