Czajkowski » locoteams

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

Laura Czajkowski — Fri, 22 Jul 2011 16:50:39 +0000

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

An Overview of LoCo Guidance

Laura Czajkowski — Thu, 21 Jul 2011 17:55:55 +0000

An Overview of LoCo Guidance

Aloha!!

Welcome to todays topic in the Ubuntu Community Week schedule. An Overview of LoCo Guidance

My name is Laura Czajkowski and am a member of the Ubuntu LoCo Council. I’m Irish, living in London at present and currently looking out at the London Eye while it is raining in July! so much for summer eh! Lets get cracking!

So we’re going to start with a little back ground and history on the council and then teams as it has come to light that not everyone is sure of what the Loco Council (LC) do and how they can help you and your team.

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.

Each month we meet, mostly to work on approvals and re approvals, but we also encourage team members to add items to agenda so we can disucsss them.

If you have an issue in your team, or want to discuss something that could be benefical to other teams you can add this to the agenda up to the day before the meeting.

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

If a team has an issue they can contact their team leader/contact and get them to contact us so we can step in and help

There is no shame or issue or anything to be worried about if people contact us to help.

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.

So how we can help:

1) Guidance

Sometimes people are in charge of a team where they don’t know what to do either it’s a new team or a team that needs a bit of revamp and that is not a bad thing.

It can be a case of never having led a team before or working with a diverse team spread over some distance.

We can help!!

We do Encourage teams to have some formal ways to operate but do realise this may not be suitable for all teams, however we see it as best practice.

To make this easier on teams and people if you break it down into a cycle based way to get a team into shape it helps.

Nothing can be done in one week, one month or even one cycle, just remember that

Some teams are extremly formal, and it works for them, but it’s a case of trial and error, if you are a small team, do you need a council? or are you better off with a team contact and people to help you informally?

If a team has a monthly meeting, that lets people know how they are doing, create an Agenda page, let ANYONE add items to it, either nominate a set chair for each meeting or have one per cycle or in some cases this is the team contact who chairs the meeting.

Simple thing many people forget to do is let the people who cannot attend know what is going on this also works by A) letting them know what’s going on in the team B) encourages them to possbly get involved if possible.

I cannot stress how important it is to keep a wiki page with the mins and logs of the meetings, this will help you and your team when it comes to approval or re approval. The council will be able to see how active you are.

Keeping a monthly team report is a really good idea also, as this helps show you your team how you are doing, if you’re going from having 5 events a cycle to 1, then there is something up, but also it helps again when it comes for approval and re approval.

A suggestion to make it easy is nominate one person to create the wiki page and add the basic content such as IRC team meeting or meet up, the post to the mailing list

anyone else then did any Ubuntu work or work the team may be interested in can add it to the wiki.

We have seen people get cranky over wiki edits, it’s a wiki, anyone can edit it, add content to it. Let’s all try and get along and work together with one another

The next thing you can do is set down the goals you want to do each cycle.

It doesn’t have to be something massive like a conference, if it’s an outing that’s not even geeky related, have a talk something that the team can get behind and work towards.

*SHARE tasks*, but also remember this is a voluntary work you are doing the same as your team members so if things are slow in happening, offer a hand or suggest they team up with someone else so they can help.

We have made up a page to help teams and encourage teams to use it and TRANSLATE IT https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/LoCoTeamsBestPracticesandGuidelines/

If you create an event use the http://loco.ubuntu.com/ Loco Directory, we want to make this place the home of loco teams where all the contact information is one place.

PLEASE ENSURE Team CONTACT is listed for your team as this is how we contact you.

Ok, any questions so far?

2) Be the bridge if you log RT tickets

From time to time teams have to log RT tickets, if you do, and need a hand with them, and there has been no movement in them, just ask us to have a look and we will try and see if we can help but also note Canonical IS are busy people who do a great job so we all need to be patient.

Ok, any questions so far?

3) Mediation

From time to time we are called upon to be the middle person, the unbiased person who can help if there are issues in a team.

Firstly, there is no shame in this, and it often helps to call us in sooner rather than later as we can help resolve the issues.

This can be from us idling in the team IRC channel, adding ourselves to your Team wiki page meetings agenda, talking to members and it is ok to email us if you have concerns.

We have bee known to be called in to settle issues and mandate teams to elect team leaders where teams were in need of an outside team to step in, then get a monthly report

from the contact so we know things are improving.

At all times remember, we have the Code of Conduct, and everyone should sign it and if you are on Mailing lists you are already bound by it, the same goes for Ubuntu channels.

We also have a private channel so if you are on IRC and need to talk to us, we invite people in there to talk to us and this helps resolve issues. Just ask us in #ubuntu-locoteams that you want to talk to us and we’ll invite you in

4) Bit of advice

When you organise events, vary it, don’t always have them soo geeky, try and have non geeky events, people will come along more often than not if they feel they don’t have to be a technnology expert, and it also means people can bring along families so vary your venue

WE can only guide you so far, it’s up to each team how they operate, some things do work and somtimes teams need to realise when things are not working and need to step back and look at how they can change.

A LoCo team should have one goal, promote Ubuntu where possible without being over bearing and over powering to people.

We are an international community with so many teams and we are fortunate to have some fantastic people in them.

Remember that LoCo Teams are in many ways the opening into the Ubuntu Community, be welcoming and friendly and we’ll get more people on board.!

If you’re not sure if you have a team have a look at http://loco.ubuntu.com/

That’s all for me now

A log of the talk is HERE which has some questions and answers from the presentation and here is my Collectors Card

Making contact with Team contacts should be easy

Laura Czajkowski — Fri, 24 Jun 2011 20:15:16 +0000

You would think making contact with a loco team contact would be straight forward, turns out it’s not. In fact today I spent almost 4.5 hours trying to get a hold of people. That is crazy amount of time that should have been straight forward and simple.

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.

Teams up for re approval Re-approvals for O-Cycle

Laura Czajkowski — Sat, 21 May 2011 13:20:33 +0000

To explain this a little more as there seems to be some confusion. Paul sent a mail to locoteams as well as sending a BUG to each of the team owners which are up for renewal this cycle.

If your team owner received a bug what that means is your team needs to submit a re approval Application to the LoCo Council either one of two ways 1) add it to the bug or 2) add your application to our council meetings which we have monthly.

The reason we’re doing it this way as it’s taken some time to get into the swing of these re approvals, it started off via a wiki page and emails, and now to creating a bug. Now I do understand there is some issues surrounding the bug being created so I’d like to explain that.

The bug is created namely for the loco council, it is a way for us to track which teams need doing so, paultag block sent 27 bugs to us the last day! thanks Paul!! Those bugs go to the teams, and we know during this cycle we should receive some form of communication from them, if the team owner/contact/leader which have been added to the bug leaves a comment on the bug, we all get it, if they chose to mail us we copy the mail into the bug, this means all the information is in on place.

The bug also acts as a way to keep the loco council up to date for ourselves, as you can imagine 27 teams is a lot to get through! Processing these via the meetings may not be possible as we only have 1 hour and we do sometimes go over, we also appreciate not every team can make the meeting, and if it’s done over mail it gets drawn out, trust me, we’ve tried it that way also.

The bug also acts as a way for us to poke one another and go OI GO VOTE AND READ THE APPLICATION. The bug is made open at the end of the voting system, or if the vote has happened via the IRC meeting the bug is updated with the information, comments and logs from it to the bug.

There have been comments as to why the bug isn’t open from the start and I’d like to address that, it’s really rather simple we don’t want the bug taken over with people going have you voted yet, are you ready yet, we love our team, we know you love your team, our team is awesome, yes we know this also. The bug is just a way we’ve found useful to help us help teams.

In order to to get ready for a re approval, I suggest creating a new wiki page called re approval application this will help you keep track of your team, and also give past and future team members an insight into how your team has progressed. If you want at any stage poke one of the council members to have a look over it and give you some pointers, we don’t want to un approve you, we are here to help you. Tell us how you do things in your team, share the work load, how you get the word out there about Ubuntu, show us you are a community! PHOTOS MAKE US VERY HAPPY

As for a time frame, when you are ready, either add it to the bug, or add to the meetings we have each month, please pretty please do not leave all of this till October!!!! Or we shall cry!

The following teams are selected for this cycles re approval and should have been contacted:

Thai Loco Team:

Ubuntu Venezuela Team:

Ubuntu DK:

Ubuntu UK:

Ubuntu Team Philippines:

Pennsylvania – US LoCo Team:

Ubuntu-Michigan:

Ubuntu Maryland LoCo Team:

Ubuntu Malaysia LoCo Team:

Ubuntu Japanese Team:

Ubuntu Ireland:

Ubuntu El Salvador Team:

Ubuntu Swiss Team:

Ubuntu Portugal:

Ubuntu Polish LoCo Team:

Ubuntu Perú:

Ubuntu Norge:

Ubuntu Croatian Advocates:

Thai Loco Team:

Ubuntu Tamil Team:

Ubuntu Israel:

Arizona LoCo Team:

Ubuntu New York State:

Ubuntu California:

Georgia LoCo:

Ubuntu Brazilian Users:

Argentina LoCo:

Ubuntu China LoCo Team:

Re-approvals for O-Cycle rules and overview

Laura Czajkowski — Wed, 18 May 2011 17:59:45 +0000

A copy of the mail that just went out to loco teams contacts mailing list for re approval for this cycle:

Good time of day, LoCo Teams!

It’s the time of year again! Re-approval time, so it’s time dust off the team photos and fire out some wiki edits!

We have a *ton* of teams to review this year, so we have some ground rules that need to be adhered to very closely. We really hate (and we do) to be such a pedantic nit-picker, but it’s to the point where we can’t (as the LoCo Council) slip on reviewing teams. Not good for you, not good for us.

All you team administrators have been subscribed to the LP bug, if you are the contact (and not the admin), please contact your local friendly admin (or one of us on the LoCo Council) to get subscribed.

Here are the rules:

* If the application is submitted before the release of Ubuntu Oneiric, we will consider it. If it fails to come in on time, we *will* have to throw it away. We’re serious about this one.

* We’re looking for a few key things in particular this cycle. We really want to see up-to-date Team Reports. It’s really something that needs to be enforced. We’re also looking (as usual) for outstanding and sustained levels of activity.

* The sooner, the better! We really need to make sure we get to everyone in a sane way, and that means that we’re processing about 2 applications a week. That’s manageable, but not if everyone gets them in the month before release. ( we have 27 teams to re approve between now and the end of October, please do not leave it till October to submit your application or you’ll make us cry!)

* By the way, we love you guys. We know you guys have done awesome work so far, and we can’t wait to see it!

Let’s get those apps in!

Keep rocking!

Paul Tagliamonte

On Behalf of the LoCo Council

P.S.

No extensions. We mean it!