Catching up with folks at breakfast time and before UDS sessions kicks off and there is an amazing buzz going around, many people waving hands and roaring as they’ve not seen one another reminds me how close a knit family we really are.

The sessions kick off with Jono Bacon discussing what UDS is about what we’ve looked at in the previous cycle and reminding people to eat healthy, drink lots of water and sleep, and it’s true or you will be exhausted and sick and not able to take part. Mark Shuttleworth gave an interesting keynote in so far as there were no massive shocks being announced more of a plan for the next 2 years which is good to see. He did mention that in the coming months that there is a future with Ubuntu on TVs, smart phones and tablets.   Mark discussed the fact that we now have Lens with larger integration so for example  the Music Lens, where ARM is going and the fact that in 2 years time we will see it in the data centers and servers.  What I find interesting and I am really happy to learn is that LTS will now be a 5 year maintenance which comes down to the fact there is now a larger audience and we need to cater for this.  Finally a highlight for me he mentioned was juju a language for talking about services.

I thought I’d talk about some of the sessions I attended today and how I feel they went and what kind of progress is being planned.  Up first was one of the most organised and productive community round table discussion sessions.  Here we came away on day one with action items. What we thought of the survey results, what did we think about the fact there were no shockers in Marks keynote and general feelings of the Ubuntu community.

Next up for me was Better Recognising Community Contribution  I for one have an interesting one which I’m going to be working with locoteams with.  Each month I am going to blog about a person in a locoteam who has contributed to Ubuntu in some way shape or form.  The idea behind this is put the face to the name to someone in the community, but also some Kudos or say  thank you or cheers for the help, some people referred to this as giving thanks but I  think that sounds too biblical in terms and doesn’t really sum up the way I blog, so I’ll be writing a Kudos to locoteam members once a month. Bring on the action items!

Before lunch and now I’m starving and in need of a chocolate fix was Designing and creating Ubuntu experience, how best the community can help here, but also the fact that sometimes on mailing lists numerous ideas will come out but nothing will ever be completed I thought Alison Randall really has some great ideas and really open minded on how to get more team intergration with the community which I think will help in getting items accomplished. Todays session was one of 3 Alison has planned to run on this topic so stay tuned and follow the etherpad. 1) ”Designing and creating Ubuntu Experiences” 2)  ”Meet with the Ubuntu Desktop Designers” 3) ”Community Participation in User Experience”.

Lunch wasn’t just lunch I got to hang out with the awesome team that is launchpad and do some usability issue testing, very odd being watched how you do something and talking about your logic for way of doing it, and interesting to get feedback.

The Afternoon sessions kicked off with Ubuntu Women session.  It’s interesting to see how this team has changed in two years and one area I wanted to ask what was planned was longer than 6 months, the future for the team  and where do we see ourselves in 2 years time and we needed to have longer long  term plans rather than 6 monthly. So for me I don’t use the Ubuntu women irc channels any more nor do I take part in the meetings. 2 years ago I was elected to the LC last year the EMEA and most recently the CC I think women can see we have women in many divverse areas in the community and for me I think we’ve succeed in that area.

Finally the LoCo Council session.  We reviewed what we the LoCo Council had done in the last cycle, discussed the idea of twinning teams which are approved with teams that are unapproved .  Should teams be broken up in to smaller sub teams was vetoed but there is a plan to break up larger countries into provinces/states possibly. Standardisation of the DISPLAY team name on the LoCo team portal was also discussed and finally language locale v loco team on the portal.

So what was agreed from this session was the LoCo council would pick a selection of teams this cycle to twin with unapproved teams and help them get on their feet more a budding up type system.  A way of helping smaller younger teams learn how teams do things for their community, give them tips and ideas so we can get more teams approved.  We will be contacting teams in the coming weeks to set this up .  The idea of splitting teams up into a city sub loco was vetoed by many as it didn’t seem appropriate, what will happen instead is on the LoCo Team Portal (formally the LoCo Directory) will have an area on the team page to add city contacts, we would also encourage teams to have this information on their website.   Regarding Standerdisation of team names it was agreed that the DISPLAY name on the LTP would be done but no other change to the teams name would be.  We are also hoping to schedule another loco council session for later in the week.

For the rest of the sessions the LoCo Council sat and worked with a loco team with some Q&A and helped them better understand the options that are available to them.

A great day was had and much catching up with people was done. Day 1 is over and it’s only just begun….. clearly I need sleep that was cheesy!

Preparing for Approval and Re-Approval. Do’s and Don’ts

Aloha and welcome to my 2nd session this week, todays topic is on Preparing for Approval and Re-Approval. Do’s and Don’ts

So for those of you that don’t know me I’m Laura Czajkowski and I’m currently one of 6 people who sit on the Ubuntu LoCo Council, something which I’m rather passionate about.

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil I’ve been on the council for almost 20 months now and I’ve learned a lot about teams and how best to approch the approval and re approval process and today I’m going to explain some key things that not only will help you and your team, but also help the council help you and advise you on how best you can perform and where you can improve.

So lets get cracking!

Firstly for those of you who don’t know who we are:

There are 6 of us on the council Laura Czajkowski / czajkowski Alan Pope / popey

Christophe Sauthier / huats Chris Crisafulli / itnet7 Paul Tagliamonte / paultag

Leandro Gomez / leogg and we are elected by the CC for a 2 year term. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/

We are elected to help you loco team members help your team be as active and prodcutive as possible.

You can find most of us on irc either on our home team channels or hanging out in #ubuntu-locoteams

If you join that channel and need help or want our attention or find out how to contact us you can use the command

!lococouncil

< ubot4> lococouncil is The Loco Council is itnet7, czajkowski, paultag, huats, leogg, popey – they are there to help, just ask! You can send them an email at loco-council@lists.ubuntu.com

Please be patient , we may not be online and only some of us run screen sessions, you can always email us

Emails are moderated so don’t be alarmed we will get back to you, and you don’t need to suscrbibe to the list.

We’re going to start looking at Team going for APPROVAL for their first time, we’d recommend going for this after being active for approximately 6 months, basically a cycle.

For us to access this we look at what you’ve done, so Creating a

1) Team on Launchpad

2) Mailing List

3) IRC Channel – you may want to commuicate only via Mailing list and this is fine, each team is different.

4) Create a wiki page – for the examples today I’m going to use my Team page Ireland – https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IrishTeam

Store all your information here how to email the team team contact information irc channel basically if someone wanted to contact your or see what you are doing what they should see

All of the teams that are created get added to the Loco Directory (LD) http://loco.ubuntu.com/teams/ubuntu-ie

When that is all done, now you need to grow your community your loco team and get people involved and show us this

A) Started to communicate with one another, either via the mailing list or IRC

B) Had a team meeting each month – publish the minutes of the meting to a wiki page

C) Held an event – Can be anything a face to face meeting, Geeknic, a talk something that shows us you are an Ubuntu group and added it to the loco directory – http://loco.ubuntu.com/teams/ubuntu-ie/events/history

D) Have some fun as a team!

Now when it comes to your Approval, you can add your team to the Ubuntu LoCo Council Agenda page – https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/Agenda

1) Please do this BEFORE the day of the meeting , it gives us a chance to view them but also makes sure you are prepared.

2) TURN up to the meeting if you’ve added your team to the agenda

3) BRING along Team members!!!! WE want to talk to the team contact, but also love to hear from people in the team how they interact and how they enjoy being in the team

4) If the time doesn’t suit due to timezones, we do fully understand that, just email us and we will email back and we usally as a few questions like we would do in the meeting, just know that this option is there for you and it’s fine.

*ON YOUR APPLICATION *

We love clear detailed wiki pages. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IrishTeam/IrishTeamApprovalApplication

Don’t think you have to use colour all over the place, it’s not easy on the eye to read and in some cases really off putting to try and read, note you won’t be the only team we are looking at.

You would be amazed at the times we see wiki pages with lack of contact details, like your launchpad page, or team details, use the meeting to tell us how your team is doing while we read the wiki page, don’t have us googling all over the place to find the content for you.

*useful Tip* Every time you run any event, write up a report on it, and even take a photo, this will help you when it comes to your application as this shows us and tells us how active you are it also helps just to keep track of things.

Create links to past events stored on the loco directory or photos of events. Pictures make us happy!

Create links to podcasts team members have done or have taken part in or interviews they’ve been involved in – this is the time to show case your team

In the meeting we’re likely to ask you,

1) How you share things out in your team

2) How do you motivate your members

3) What being a locoteam means to you

4) What have you do to warrant being an approved team

Be prepared to talk in the meeting, so again if English is not your first language email us that you want the application done via email we do understand this, it is not a problem, we’re here to help you

Now Lets have a look at **Re Approval Application**

So, we’ve been tasked we the reassessment of locoteams that have been approved over 2 years.

It’s a bit of a task and some cycles are quieter than others, this cycle we have 27 teams to get through so we’re a bit busy so lets look at how to make things easier on all of us shall we!

So similar to creating a wiki page above for your approval you need to create a NEW Wiki page

Call it Reapproval and year as again this is going to happen every 2 years https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IrishTeam/IrishTeamReApprovalApplication2011

We will again want to see all the basic details of your team.We are trying to establish here how active you’ve been in the two years since we would last have met

So you need to show us this. You will need to list events you’ve organised or taken part in

It will be more detailed than your first application as it should have 2 years worth of information.

Again come prepared and have it submitted to us before hand. Link to all past events and how you do things

Questions you are likely to be asked in the meeting are

1) how have you done things since you were first approved

2) If you’ve had difficulty how have you over come these issues and what have you learned from them

3) how do you share out tasks

4) How have you grown in 2 years

5) plan for the next 2 years

Obviously it’s re approval so your team should be more established and we will want more detail so bring people along so they can help answer the questions, have your wiki page up to date and have the information on us.

Each team should have a TEAM CONTACT some call this a TEAM LEADER and some teams have a TEAM CONTACT *AND* a TEAM LEADER

We encourage teams to contact us, it’s what we are elected here to help and do so don’t be shy and please don’t be annoyed with members who do contact us.

Some team mail us or poke us on IRC asking us to have a look over their application, that’s fine I’d prefer a team to do that then turn up and be told your wiki page has no information and only shows 1 years worth of activity and come back, where I can tell that to them in a quick pm on IRC

So to Summerise

1) CLEAR and CLEAN wiki pages – Less colouring and more writing does help

2) Links to events – check your links work folks, don’t have it go to a 404

3) Detailed wiki pages with current information, if your reapplication is 2011 don’t have the wrong dates in the application

4) Try and have as much information on the events on the wiki page a short discreption or a link to a blog post on it

5) keep a back up of photos – we hear a lot that who ever had the photos their ac was deleted

6) Come to us if you want some advice BEFORE the meeting

7) If the time doesn’t suit email us and we can do it via Email

Bring along team members, don’t come alone as you’re a team so show that by having a presence there on the day.

9) Be prepared to answer questions, have some information written out about your team, again if this is an issue due to language email us.

10) Show up to the meeting!!!

you’d be susprised………

and finally

11) Show us how you are a LoCo Team, show us how you promote and enjoy the Ubuntu Community

We’re not out to trick people or not help teams we don’t want to unapprove teams so you have to prove to us you are a LoCo you have the content we need to read don’t have us searching for it

Logs of the session are HERE and collector card 

And for those who laughed at the picture yesterday, it’s sunny in London today

Going by the list on the LD of teams I click on a team.  Looking at Team Contact many if not most are BLANK! If they are not blank and I click on them  I get their launchpad page, which in turn again in most cases does not display a public email address.  Not making things very easy to in contact.  So if you’re a new user to Ubuntu and want to get in contact you now have to create a launchpad account just to be able to log in and send the contact an email address. Frankly if I was a new person to the community I’d have left by now!!!

Yes you can argue why not ask on IRC, again new people may not know what IRC is all about, you’re forcing them into unfamiliar territory we’re meant to be making this easy to get people on board.  Why not get them to sign up to a mailing list, again more hoops, they just may have a simple question, could be shy and don’t want to seem foolish, surely the Team Contact is the person to whom people should be able to ask these questions.

So when team contact is blank I look next to TEAM ADMINS and try and get an email address from them, many teams list many people (it’s been a long day and I’ve a lot of sent items)  Again I click on trying to email them once again not public address ok fair enough they are the team admin, so then I face the problem of contacting them via Launchpad, back to having to create an account and sign in.  In my case I used up my contact 5 in one day within 2 teams!

Then there are also teams who have a council as a team contact, I’ve no idea who that goes to or who replies, or how they manage who replies when and to whom. Lets make this simple folks please! For everyones sake!

LoCo Team Contacts please for the love and honour of my sanity and all future Ubuntu community people who would like to get involved please update your Team contact information on http://loco.ubuntu.com/teams if you’re hiding your address I really would love to know A) Why you’re doing it B) Why you’re Team contact as you’re making it really difficult to contact you surely you want more people to join your team and be able to ask for help.

Thanks