Ubuntu Nicaragua

Welcome to the Ubuntu Nicaragua LoCo Team Approval Application!

Key details

• Team Leader: José Ernesto Dávila

• Team Contact: Marcelo Gutierrez

• Website: Official site | Overview of all sites

• Launchpad: Ubuntu Nicaragua team | Official members

Stats

• Mailing list subscriptions: 418 (+388; up 1393% since approval)

• Launchpad members: 238 (+208; up 793% since approval)

• Official Ubuntu-ni members: 32 (13.45% of total)

• Official Ubuntu members: 3 (1.26% of total)

Structure and Governance

The Ubuntu Nicaragua Community Council is composed by five members elected for a period of one year by the official members of the Nicaraguan LoCo. The team leader/contact is elected from these five members.

Team Leaders/Contacts

• Leandro Gómez (2007-2008)

• Norman García Aguilar (2008-2009)

• Adolfo Fitoria (2009-2010)

• José Ernesto Dávila (Team leader, 2010-2011)

• Marcelo Gutierrez (Team contact, 2010-2011)

Members with a significant and sustained contribution to the community are awarded official membership.

Activities

Events

For detailed information about our events, visit the Events page.

Projects

For detailed information about our projects, visit the Projects page.

Team Reports

Ubuntu Nicaragua and...

...Education

Elementary education

With the Guardabarranco Educational Project, the Ubuntu Nicaragua LoCo Team joins forces with the broader FOSS community in order to help to improve the IT infrastructure in the Nicaraguan public school system.

We've also participated in several activities and initiatives with the Ministry of Education, helping them to find ways to introduce FOSS in the schools.

In addition, some members of the community participated in a Python workshop for developing educational software for the Sugar desktop. Hopefully, some of these application will find their way into Ubuntu as well.

Higher education

The major Nicaraguan universities have slowly turned into a GNU/Linux/FOSS stronghold. At least six new LUGs has been formed in the last years at Nicaraguan campus. And of course, many of them have a strong Ubuntu user base. We, as a LoCo Team, collaborate with these groups on a regular basis.

The relationship between the Ubuntu Nicaragua team and the authorities of these universities can only be described as excellent. The doors are always open, and we have easy access to campus facilities and equipment for our events.

...Government

Ubuntu is a reality today in the public sector. The local Government acknowledges and seeks the expertise of our community members. Several members from the Ubuntu Nicaragua LoCo Team are currently working deploying and giving support to a large number of Ubuntu workstations and servers, and training Ubuntu desktop users in major Nicaraguan public institutions.

...Enterprises

There's an increasing number of local business using and/or offering solutions based on Ubuntu and other FOSS platforms and products.

Many of them have contributed back to the community, sponsoring events and organizing workshops.

As of 2010, a group of members of the LoCo started working on Observatorio, a project for the development of a web-based directory of FOSS business and resources in Central America.

...Non-profits

The local NGOs have proven to be an invaluable support for spreading FOSS in Nicaragua. Big community events, workshops and release parties have been sponsored by these NGOs.

Many Nicaraguan non-profits use free software and employs community members in order to maintain these systems.

...Free Culture

Over the last three years, the Ubuntu Nicaragua LoCo Team has been very working hard to promote free culture ideals in our country. We've been doing some talks at events about free culture and licensing and providing guidance to Nicaraguan artist that wishes to release their works under free licenses.

We've also organised the 'Free your Mouse' concerts two years in a row. The last of these concerts was recorded and a double CD released under a CC license.

Our community podcast also promotes free culture including interviews with artists and playing songs from musicians with free cultural works.

...Communication and Media

We have been pretty successful in promoting Ubuntu and FOSS in local media. A lot of articles has been written in local newspaper, including a whole special edition for the SFD 2009, published in a Nicaraguan newspaper. We have also participated in all the major local TV channels (both terrestrial and cable system) and popular radio stations.

One of the highlights was the co-production of 11 weekly TV-shows with Channel 2 Nicaragua in 2008.

For more information about our participation in local media, visit the Press page.

...the Local FOSS Community

From the beginning, the Ubuntu Nicaragua LoCo was build up by people that used different distros and free operative systems. Ubuntu-ni was the only active Linux User Group in Nicaragua in the beginning of 2007.

This has changed today. Nicaragua have many FOSS groups, but the Ubuntu LoCo Team is still a diverse community with people using different distros (Debian, Fedora) and working on diverse FOSS project (Drupal).

We value and appreciate our relationship with the broader GNU/Linux/FOSS community, specially with the Debian community, were we contribute actively.

The Future

Roadmap

The new Ubuntu Nicaragua CC has set some short and long term goals for the team:

• Membership - Find new and interesting ways for new members to contribute with the community, and trying to make it easy and rewarding to contribute.
• Documentation - Continue working and improving the community screencast and producing Ubuntu marketing material in Spanish.
• Advocacy - Continue working and improving the community podcast. Continue with the Ubuntu related conferences and workshops in the different universities and cities across the country.
• Localization - Work harder on the localization. Contact local universities and user groups in order start working on the ubuntu-l10n-miq project.
• Local group - Work more closely with local user groups in the universities and the different Departments of Nicaragua.

Cheers from the community

The Nicaraguan Team is a great role model for all the LoCo Teams out there, helping and promoting Ubuntu everywhere with cool and really creative ideas. In our particular case we got lots of help from this team when we start our approval process. For this reason Uruguay LoCo team wants to endorse Nicaragua ReApproval Application. Pablo Rubianes In behalf of the Uruguay LoCo Team Community Council

The Nicaraguan Team is one of the LoCo Teams that most contributes to the growing of Ubuntu in the region and latin America, participating in and promoting events such as the Ubuntu User Day, The Ubuntu Developer Week and others. its people are very valuable members to the wider community. For this reason, i and the Ubuntu-co council, support the process of reapproval of Ubuntu Nicaragua LoCo Team. Sergio Meneses Ubuntu-Co council member