LoCoTeamProcess

Status

Introduction

LoCo teams are the visible face of Ubuntu around the world. LoCo teams have the opportunity to grow and solidify the Ubuntu community at the grassroots level. The concept of LoCos is strong, but we need to change some details in order to strengthen the concept of a LoCo Team

We do this by defining and redefining the teams' structure, activity and relationship to the Ubuntu community.

Team creation

A new teem needs to have at least three active and interested people. They should document both their team and its individual contributors on a 'SomeName'Team page on the Ubuntu Wiki and add an entry with contact informaton to the list of prospective teams.

A team also needs to have some community infrastructure and activity so that new members can (a) find the team in the first place, and (b) don't feel like being left in a void once they've joined. The team list has fields for a mailing list address, web page, forum, and Wiki URLs. We don't require all of them to be present, but some should be. Those that are should be actively used and maintained by the team.

In order to ensure that communication between the Ubuntu community and the team doesn't get lost, the team needs a Team Contact. This person is added to a common Ubuntu LoCoTeam mailing list.

A team which has shown activity and nominated a secretary will be added to the main LoCo team list.

We expect the team contact as well as other team members to become Ubuntu Members at some point, but we don't require that from the outset. Similarly, the team contact should have a signed GPG key that is in the global Web of Trust.

Conflict Resolution

We recognize that there are some conflicts which the LoCo teams want help resolving. The steps which we will take include:

  • Encouraging the people involved to all come to one table and resolve their problem, mediated by somebody on the CC.
  • Suggesting alternate solutions that do not show us taking sides.
  • If all else fails, bring the conflict to the Community Council.

We do need to be somewhat more pro-active with respect to problems reported to us. Before the conflict within the Italian LoCo team came to a head, there were some indications which probably should have been followed up.

Clarifying Canonical's Expectations From LoCos

Canonical can, in the ideal situation, expect LoCo Teams to do any or all of the following things and should encourage LoCos to do the following things:

  • CD distribution
  • Maintain lists and foster local contacts for Ubuntu. This will involve:
    • Hooking up with Linux user groups
    • Linking into regional conferences, installfests, events; Software Freedom Day, etc.
    • find community or commercial consulting
  • Provide a group for fixing bugs specific to a particular locale that Ubuntu maintainers can go to.
  • Where possible, help with translation and documentation for for local environments and, where possible help find others to help in translation.
    • Test releases of Ubuntu for correct translations, working dialogs and other internationalization issues.
    • Review and tag bugs as language-specific within Malone or Bugzilla
  • Act as a local nexus of Ubuntu community outreach and evangelism. This may involve:
    • Networking with other marketplace members and commercial service providers
    • Lobbying local governments, regional, and national governments
    • Other forms of evangelism which may include self growth and new team planting
  • Communication/community infrastructure (mailing list, web page, IRC)

Meanwhile, we should remind groups and the public that LoCos do not speak for Canonical, or the full Ubuntu community.

Additionally, we don't want Ubuntu-Is-Special exclusivity. For example, there should not be an Ubuntu event which competes with a local Linux event. Instead, we should encourage people to connect with other Free Software-related people or events, and promote Ubuntu with, within, and at them.

We need to remind LoCo teams that they should never require any special skill level to join, and should always adhere to and reflect the Ubuntu Code of Conduct.

Resources to supply LoCo teams with

Canonical should supply LoCo teams with:

  • Support for events (CDs, posters, ...)
    • CDs are obviously no problem.
    • Conferences:
      • Expertise (do/don't list, FAQ)
      • Conference Kits (T-shirts, posters, ...)
      • press kits
  • Ubuntu community membership

    • ubuntu.com email address Wink ;-)

    • have your blog visible on planet.ubuntu.com
  • Mailing list, hosting, etc. It was decided that five people asking for a mailing list for their location would get one.

We should tell people that active LoCo teams can expect a visit from (Mark, Mako, ...).

LoCo teams can get webspace or wiki pages from us (currently smurfix's server); they haven't been asking for admin/root access, just the installation of an occasional package, so we don't need to worry about it.

We will ask Mike Reb (Brendan Hale's friend, works at linode.com) to set up a system with Xen-hosted virtual servers for us. That server will run private images for those teams which have more special requirements (we've had one Apache2-related package conflict already). A general server will be used for the "standard" case. (Mako is following up on this.)

Rationale

History

LoCo teams were originally called "country teams". However, that designation was dropped because:

  1. The use of the terms "country" referring to certain localities can be divisive and controversial.

  2. There are many very large countries that will ideally have many LoCo teams (e.g. China, USA) and many smaller countries that may wish to share a common LoCo team. Additionally, there may be overlapping LoCo teams (e.g., both Italian and a Roman teams).

Currently, there are have ~10 confirmed Ubuntu teams, with ~20 more in the process of formation. There an unknown number of groups acting as LoCo team but not involved with MattiasUlrichs in the LoCo team process.

In the past, the first person who contacted us (either BenjaminMakoHill or MatthiasUrlichs) about becoming a team leader generally did were given "the job" as leader. That process has worked well in most cases, but in the case of a few teams (most notably the Italian team), it became problematic..

At the moment, MatthiasUrlichs and the CommunityCouncil require a specified level of activity:

Because of this threshhold, we didn't meet our goal of ~50 teams by the time Hoary was released -- some teams lack focus or energy and don't follow through.

LoCo Team Leaders

Over the last few months, the "Leader" aspect of a team has been de-emphasized due a number of problems, most notably regarding multiple meanings of the term "leader", which led some team leaders to assume roles which have not been intended in this process.

Thus, we decided to rename the team leader to "Contact". Teams are expected to provide such a contact, but otherwise their internal structure is up to them.

The Italian team proposed having a secretary (who attends meetings, etc.) and two interface people to the rest of the community. We might want to promote something along these lines as an example to other LoCo teams.

Other Issues

There's some overlap between LoCo teams and the documentation and translation efforts which are not clearly stated; thus people may be unsure whom to talk to. We need to either resolve that overlap, or document it.

Scope and Use Cases

Fred has problems installing Ubuntu on his home computer and is looking for help. Via the Ubuntu LoCoTeams web pages, he finds somebody in his area who is using Ubuntu and can help him (either for free, or a consultant).

Jane hears about a local conference in SomewhereElseTown, at which somebody could demonstrate Ubuntu, and/or distribute Ubuntu CDs. The LoCoTeam contact for that region knows somebody who can organize this.

Implementation Plan

The "new" rules for LoCoTeam formation are, for the most part, already in effect. MatthiasUrlichs will update the Wiki pages to reflect this specification.

A series of visible mentions in press and other places may go a long way to help restart the LoCo team process.

Data Preservation and Migration

At the moment, the LoCoTeam list is kept in the Ubuntu Wiki. Recently somebody has accidentally deleted the page. A way to set ACLs on it would be nice; if we migrate the Wiki back to Moin, that would be No Problem. We can also move the site into the Ubuntu website.

Migrating the current LoCoTeam site (~7 virtual hosts) should be straightforward. The current server runs Debian Sarge.

UDU BOF Agenda

  • What is the current and potential future relationship between Ubuntu and Canonical and the individual local community teams.

  • What should we do about LoCoTeam leader in the future and to prevent a repeat of the Italian situation.

  • Do we want GPG authorization / Membership from the leads, and if so when?
  • New name for team leaders (contact? coordinator? representative? secretary?)
  • What process should we use to handle mailing lists for local community teams?

  • How can we help LoCoTeams resolve conflicts?

CategoryUdu CategorySpec

UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/LoCoTeamProcess (last edited 2008-08-06 16:35:10 by localhost)