Ubuntu Venezuela

Welcome to the Ubuntu Venezuela LoCo Team Approval Application!

Key details

• Team Contact: César Sevilla

• Website: Official site

• Launchpad: Ubuntu Venezuela Team

• IRC Channel: Ubuntu-ve

• Mailing List: Team Mailing List

• Team Forum New: Team Forum

• Team Website New Team Website

• Planet Ubuntu-ve: Planet Ubuntu-ve

• Facebook Page: Facebook Page

• Facebook Group: Facebook Group

• Twitter Profile: Twitter Ubuntu_ve

• identi.ca Profile: Identi.ca Ubuntu_ve

• identi.ca Group: Identi.ca Group

Stats

• Mailing list subscriptions: 501

• Launchpad members: 128

• Official Ubuntu-ve members: 125

• Ex Official Ubuntu-ve members: 41

• Official Ubuntu members: 6 (05% of 125 total)

Structure and Governance

Team Leaders/Contacts

• Rolando Blanco (2006-2007)

• Efraín Valles (2007-2008)

• Santiago Zárate (2008-2009)

• Nelson Delgado | Jaime Escobar | Nelo R. Tovar (2009-2010)

• César Sevilla (2010-2011)

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

Activities

Events

Anniversaries

Anniversaries, as the word implies, are events in which we celebrate the years of existence of the Venezuelan LoCo Team. It usually consists of a full day of conferences and workshops on Ubuntu and an Install-Fest, and is organized by regional enthusiasts and team members from all the states, but most of all, it's an oportunity to have a gathering of ubunteros and have a good time... and of course, everybody can join the celebration!

Local, National and International

Events Year 2011

Events Year 2010

Events Year 2009

Events Year 2008

Events Year 2007

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

Projects

• Proyect Wayuunaiki

Team Reports

• The Reports generated pages should be created by month and year of report. Ej: Apr

• The Meetings Minutes must record the activities of each meeting/month. Ej: Apr

Ubuntu Venezuela and...

...Development

Our Team has had humble experiences with Open Source development, and Ubuntu Development. We have tried to get Global Jams and other Ubuntu events in our country but more awareness on why to participate still needs to be spread out. Language is definetelly a barrier. We are considering the Onieric Cycle as a key one to turn this around.

We can highlight the inclusion of Turpial, a twitter client developed in Venezuela, to the debian Repositories. this particular event has seen the colaboration of members of the Ubuntu-ve Team with Debian New Maintainers and Developers in Venezuela to reach a common goal. The package was originally uploaded to a ppa and it drew atention from some debian developers. It is now part of the debian repositories.

• Note on Ubunlog.com on Turpial and Ubuntu-ve

• Post on Turpial.com on Turpial in Debian

...Education

Elementary education

This is an area that unfortunately has not been taken care of diligently. There has been some scattered attempts to introduce Edubuntu in elementary schools that have encountered some resistanse from teachers. We are now trying the strategy of gaining the teachers first. David Rondón has had some success with this method.

There have been some success stories in taking Ubuntu to schools and most have happened in a few years ago and we have not found a way to make those efforts sustainable, mostly because we depend on volunteers that can dedicate more time NGO/CaseStudy/EBVTechnologyRipples

Higher education

Most of our conferences, Install-Fests and workshops are done in Higher Education Institutions, such as Superior Technical Schools, Colleges and Universities. It is our belief that these are the seeding grounds for the future crop of FOSS users that will lead the way to meet Mark's goal of 200 million Ubuntu users in the near future.

• Some Institutions even have Ubuntu-dedicated computer labs, as is the case with the "Instituto Universitario de Tecnología de Administración Industrial" (IUTA) in Maracay:

...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 Venezuela LoCo Team are currently deploying and giving support to a large number of Ubuntu workstations and servers, and training Ubuntu desktop users in major Venezuelan public institutions.

In Venezuela we have several Presidential Decrees 3390 (Priority use of Free Software in the National Public Administration), 39,109 (set to use Open Document Formats - OpenDocument Format (ODF) in the National Public Administration).

Cesar Sevilla has made several migrations at the government level to implement Ubuntu on workstations (office), Servers and classrooms, which allowed a greater diffusion.

...Enterprises

There's an increasing number of local busineses 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.

...Non-profits

The local NGOs have proven to be an invaluable support for spreading FOSS in Venezuela. Big community events, workshops and release parties have been sponsored by these NGOs. Many Venezuela non-profits use free software and employs community members in order to maintain these systems.

...Free Culture

Over the last three years, the Ubuntu Venezuela LoCo Team has been working very hard to promote free culture ideals in our country. We've been giving some conferences at events about free culture and licensing, and providing guidance to Venezuelan artists that wish to release their work under free licenses. Our community podcast also promotes free culture, including interviews with ubuntu-ve members that have affinity with this movement.

...Communication and Media

We have been pretty successful in promoting Ubuntu and FOSS in local media. A lot of articles have been written and published in local and national newspapers and magazines. We have also participated in some the local/national TV channels and popular radio stations.

• Some Examples:

  • TV video

  • Podcast

  • Podcast

  • Magazine *Go to page 58

...the Local FOSS Community

From the beginning, the Ubuntu Venezuela LoCo was built by people that used different distros and free operative systems, but due to it's rapid growth (as to become the largest community of Linux in the country!), many users of other distributions saw the benefits of a big and helpful community... and Ubuntu became their primary operating system! We value and appreciate our relationship with the broader GNU/Linux/FOSS community, specially with the Debian and Canaima community, where we contribute actively.

The Future

...Roadmap

The new Ubuntu Venezuela Community Council 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 try to make it easy and rewarding to contribute.
• Helping the community in Venezuela, providing support in various ways by forums, IRC channels, etc. This allows us to grow as a team and understand the needs of new users, allowing us to implement strategies to meet the responsabilities we have for this growing group of people.

* Ubuntu Members -The Ubuntu Members are recognized for the great work they have done and are doing for the Ubuntu project. These Ubunteros are subject to a very thourough inspection by the Council of Regional Membership - Americas.https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Membership/RegionalBoards/Americas

• Ubuntu members

  • 

• Rolando Blanco Oct 15-2005

  Efraín Valles Mar 30-2007

  Santiago Zarate Mar 29-2008

  César Sevilla Agu 19-2010

  David Rondón Sep 16-2010

  Wuilmer Bolívar Apr 21-2011

• Documentation - Continue working and improving the community screencast and producing Ubuntu marketing material in Spanish. POP Material

• Advocacy - Continue working and improving the community podcast. Continue with the Ubuntu related conferences and workshops in the different high schools, universities and cities across the country.

• Localization - Work harder on the localization. Contact local universities and user groups in order to continue to work on the wayuunaiki project.

• Local groups - Work more closely with local user groups in the universities and regional LUG's.

Our Pride

Without doubt our greatest pride is to be part of the satisfaction of the people that with a big smile in their face walk out of one of our Install-Fests happy with their shinny and new Ubuntu OS! ... and we do our best to make them feel that as Ubuntu users, they are not alone in this road to freedom ... they belong now to a bigger family... the Ubuntu-ve family!

But this is only possible with the participation and collaboration of a community, team work, and the will to fight against adversity and differences that often exist in any group of people and organizations. Only in this way we can conquer goals and achieve what has been achieved by Ubuntu-ve.

Throughout this time, all ubuntu-ve members that have passed through our growing family have left their footprints captured in this community. All those that have provided many good ideas and hard work, those who have given a little less but with with the best of faith, goodwill and hope, and absolutely all members who have worked for our LoCo Team, are valuable, and we trully thank them.

There is no greater pride than being valued and recognized positively for our work and effort.

Ubuntu-ve: "We now are many... we will be many more"

• Efrain Valles and Mark Shuttleworth in Ubuntu Developer Summit: Karmic Koala 9.10 Pics

• Video Mark Shuttleworth congratulates ubuntu-ve in the FLISoL 2011

The best of wishes from Ubuntu-ve to the global Ubuntu community