Czajkowski

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