Czajkowski » Ubuntu

UDS-P Day 5

Laura Czajkowski — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 01:49:33 +0000

It’s a sad day, it’s the last day, and I’m still running around like a headless chicken trying to get to meet people I’ve not seen or need to resolve some issues which have come up during the week with the people that are there and in hands reach! Today was the day we confirmed and finalised action items, a day to say goodbye to old and new friends I’ve gotten to know this week. It’s been great!

The final day kicked off with hanging out in the folks in the community round table. During this final round table we got around to summarising many of the topics that we will aim to focus during the Precise cycle and these are the areas we will focus on and get behind and work on.

Create and share opportunities for all levels of skills to help everyone make Ubuntu great.
Support , motivate and encourage our leaders and governors to be successful to deliver leadership that furthers the community.
Create a better environment of gratitude and appreciation towards our community and Canonical
Have a constructive critical environment, where you protect it against anti-social and unconstructive behaviour.
Make sure our community are approachable to help our community to contribute and be successful, he us to help others.

Next up was the Community Bug Involvement session, I found this interesting as a person who has done testing both in my day job and in Ubuntu. There are a few reasons why this session took place, but it boils down to people assume issues are bugs, not everyone realises it could be a configuration issue or something else not working. It’s not a bug till it is confirmed a bug.

Firstly to get involved people are pointed to the ReportingBugs page when they want to report a bug and told to go from there.
It’s not easy to read, it’s long winded, and it’s not really user friendly to understand.
As we grow more people start to use the bug tracker not just to log bugs but this is where they are going to get support which is because they don’t know the issue between a bug and an issue and they don’t know where else to ask for help.

We looked at ways to make support easier to find and shortening the basic ReportingBugs page, all the information is there, but it just spans a very long page and people are not using it correctly.

I attended the next session Ubuntu Accomplishments and Trophies out of curiorsity as me personally I don’t like trophies but was interested in what was being planned and discussed. The idea being that there would be a number of goals that could be achieved by people but not all people could ever unlock the achievement , but also there would be no pressure put on a person or a team to take part. I’m still not overly convinced on it’s merits but I am interested to see how it pans out. I can see how they want to drive motivation in the community, but I’m not sure how dangling a carrot in front of people will work. I do wonder will it breed an over competitiveness between some people which could be good, but it could also lead to demonstration to others which is my big fear.

I did some more LoCo Council work for the next session as it’s been very good being here and able to meet people who had questions and it’s nice to bounce ideas off one another and help them with some of the issues they are dealing with.

After lunch today I got to meet and hang out with the Community Council today for an informal met up and come up with a plan for the cycle. It’s no different from any other governing body and it’s nice to have some goals to achieve. If we have nothing to aim for we won’t improve. The CC is full of new blood and as leadership was a massive topic at UDS we’re going to be looking at that by bringing each board/council in for a monthly check up over the cycle and just checking in our leaders to make sure things are running smoothly and if we can help in any way offer assistance.

My final sessions was Ubuntu Government Campaigning, this topic came up in Mondays session and Alan Bell had done a brain dump into the etherpad. It was a good informal discussion where we learned how other teams had been successful in getting Ubuntu into schools. It was good to hear peoples ideas, and we did think having more case studies of successful stories out there to help locoteams and also encourage new people to try it in their business. How best LoCo teams could attract and talk to local government representatives, talking to them about Ubuntu and showing them the case studies.

That was it, sessions were all over. The week has flown past. We had a final wrap up session kicked off by Jono Bacon who led a moment of silence for André Gondim. I did find it slightly odd not to hear from all the track leads as usual to hear their plans for the coming cycle from the work they had decided this week. We did hear from Arm, Desktop and Server, Rick and Jono which was great to hear the plans they are going to be focusing on.

There was an after party, ice cream and hugs goodbye to friends old and new and it was lovely to be here this week. The week has come and gone so fast but also been really productive and I look forward to the coming months and seeing how the community are going to work on future plans!
Photos from the party are on pix.ie

Elected to the Ubuntu Community Council

Laura Czajkowski — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 14:08:35 +0000

I’m somewhat gobsmacked here. I and 6 others have been elected to the Ubuntu Council. There were many excellent candidates and all are deserving. Thank you to all those who voted and took part in the election.

I look forward to working with the rest of the council and working on future plans and if you want something raised let me know as I’ll be poking and prodding and hoping to improve things where I can.

The results of the elections are HERE

What is also great to see is, there are 3 women on the Ubuntu Community Council well done to Lyz and Amber.

Why the CC

Laura Czajkowski — Sat, 24 Sep 2011 09:17:09 +0000

May as well come straight out and say it, I’ll be looking for nomination and support as I would like to take a place on the CC.

No I’m not mad (although I am Irish), I love being on the LoCo Council and that’s not changing as I love to work with loco teams, trust me it’s interesting, motivational and extremely heartening to see and hear the stories of what teams and members do. I’m also on the EMEA, which in itself gives me an insight into how our community is changing, where people are coming from, how they interact with the community, internally, with Canonical, upstream and on the projects that give us our user experience of Ubuntu, Launchpad, and my saving grace of back up Ubuntu one.

So why would I like to add the CC to my list of monthly meetings eh not to mention more email in my inbox. Well I think we can do better, we can always do better, the current CC are great don’t get me wrong, but I think we’d be foolish to say we can never stop trying to improve or open up a better dialogue between groups.

I would like to see better community between Canonical Organisation and the Greater Ubuntu Community, sometimes I feel announcements come too late, we learn of things when they land in Ubuntu or when a change has been made yet not been conveyed more publicly.

Not so long ago I signed the Ubuntu Code of Conduct I hold that to quiet a high standard, both by my actions and interactions with people. I believe it truly is what makes our community stick together. It encourages people to get involved, empowers them to want to get contribute more to the project which is how we grow our community.

The CC like the LC works with people teams and issues that are sometimes difficult, controversial and does need mediation. I think my experience on the LC here has helped me learn how to deal with these areas and how also communication and working closely with people clears up ambiguity and gets things resolved.

For me to be elected to the CC would be another way for me to help the Ubuntu Community, but also another way to give back what I already believe in, working in the Ubuntu community promoting Ubuntu and helping the community grow is what I do truly want to do and I’m good at it. I’m good at getting things done, organising and getting things in motion, sometimes through no fault of anyone, things can sometimes fall on the long finger, I’m cattle herder and I tend to push things along and if I was fortunate to be elected, the cattle prod would be used at times to push things along that are brought to our attention.

Lastly, it’s not a case of being elected or not. For me it’s a chance to help you the Ubuntu community and if not it’s not going to change or alter my involvement in the community, I’m not going anywhere any time soon!

Thanks Laura

Ubuntu Ireland August Geeknic

Laura Czajkowski — Sat, 06 Aug 2011 17:01:40 +0000

The poll for the August Geeknic is now closed. St. Stephens Green was the winner. It’s a big park so I recommend this location as the meeting point on Sunday the 14th August at 1pm.

Everyone is welcome, bring along some food, maybe a rug to sit on and come and chat with other people who want to meet you! We’re meeting HERE!!!
I’ll be the one with the Tux baseball cap. Plus crutches. Two other locations were suggested in comments for a the location. It

was too late to add them to the poll but I will make sure that they are offered as locations for the next Dublin Geeknic.

Fingers crossed the weather stays dry for us.

See you there,
moylan

PS Me – czajkowski won’t be there See you soon folks

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