UbuntuWorldTour

UbuntuWorldTour

Status

Introduction

A "rock star" tour of countries around the world by famous Ubuntu personalities. (aka. Mark, Jeff, and Mako)

Rationale

Act as a catalyst to motivate LoCo teams, and "bring the Ubuntu philosophy" to LUGs, and other OSS organizations.

Scope and Use Cases

1. Juan is a member of a LoCo team in Spain. After a year of hard work organizing his local group, holding installfests, translation "hackfests", community advocacy, social events, local press coverage, and giving out hundreds of Ubuntu CDs in the region, Juan and his team are rewarded for their hardwork with a celebrity visit, garnering attention in the local press which exposes the LoCo team to people in the area that might not have been aware of their activities. The team is energized by seeing the fruits of their labor being recognized by the overall community and redoubles their efforts.

2. Javier, on the other hand, is a member of a LoCo team that's having problems. Membership and interest in local events is low, and the LoCo members sign up for the beer drinking sessions rather than getting good work done. There is one person in the group, Javier, who is motivated, an Ubuntu Member, maintains packages, and is fighting an uphill battle to bring the group to where it should be. Unfortunatly for Javier, the surrounding LoCo environment is demotivating and he's having second thoughts about why he volunteered in the first place, he's close to quitting.

Two possibilities:

a) After a visit from the Ubuntu World Tour, Javier is energized that his work is being recognized and the tour's publicity brings along a few more people in the OSS community that Javier has never met. This brings new life to the LoCo team, and the positive energy between them, turns the team around.

b) At the next Ubuntu conference or via the lists (or whatever), Javier runs into Juan, and they discuss the different things that go on in a LoCo. As it turns out, the World Tour just came by Juan's group and it is rocking. Juan then "spreads the love" to Javier's group by doing some inter-LoCo mentoring.

3. There are members of a local community that does not have a LoCo team, but there are many technical people. Perhaps programming groups, professional IT organizations, and university students and faculty. The people are there, but no one has sparked the formation of a LoCo team.

4. Julio and Jose are the top two Ubuntu fans in their region. There is no LoCo team or any kind of collaboration or groups, or anything like that. At the Ubuntu World Tour, they run into each other and realize that together they can make a LoCo happen.

Implementation Plan

Where to Go?

We can split this up in multiple ways:

  • By Region - Prioritize by efficiency of visiting the most amount of places in the given time period.
  • By "Importance" or specific criteria - For example, Top Ten Cities by population: Tokyo, Mexico City, Sao Paolo, Mumbai, New York, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Lagos, Calcutta, and Buenos Aires.

  • By LoCo Involvement -Visit strong LoCo communities or perhaps places with low LoCo turnout.

Factors to Consider

  • Schedule to coincide with major Conferences and Trade Shows.
  • Government influence - Reinforce local governments that are strongly considering open source or are "strongholds" to the community.

  • Schedule should be solid and predictable enough so that LoCo teams can begin marketing the event as early as possible for their specific region.

  • When to go - avoid colliding with local holidays or other events that would affect turnout.

Outstanding Issues

  1. We need localice those cases and people to be in charge of the visit:

    • The LoCo teams

    • The people envolved in Ubuntu (devels, translator, users, etc) who are not living in any place with LoCo team

    • The lugs of places where is no any LoCo team

    • The rest of the places? Wink ;-)

  2. We need to know which kind of case is each and get information about them:

    • With LoCo team: what they are doing.

    • Isolated people envolved in Ubuntu: who live in the same country or big area and put in touch. Also see what they are doing about Ubuntu comunity
    • no-Ubuntu Lugs: what are they more interesting in? who can manage there the event and so on.
    • The rest: find somebody interested in Ubuntu/Linux/GNU/OS....

Could be interesting keep the people (mostly the LoCo teams) informed about what hapen during all the tour. What other groups or temas are doing.

Crazy Ideas

  • Real time map of the route of the tour. "OMG they're almost here, look at the map!"
  • Pictures of the tour in each country they visit.
  • Tour tshirts and other swag to give away.
  • A Tour's Blog to show the people what is happening in the tour.
  • Ubuntu Tour Bus. "Get on the Bus!"

UDU BOF Agenda

UDU Pre-Work

UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/UbuntuWorldTour (last edited 2008-08-06 16:24:21 by localhost)