During the Oneiric cycle the Ubuntu LoCo Council reviewed many teams and dealt with team issues, this post is to explain what the council has done during this cycle and to let people know how they can approach us if needs be.
Firstly we had a large re approval of teams this cycle this was down to the re approval process that was introduced three cycles ago and has proved to help teams keep up to date and let everyone know how things are progressing. So for the Natty cycle we looked at the following 26 LoCo Teams which were up for re approval having been approved for 2 or more years:
The following teams were selected for the Oneiric cycle for re approval:
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
To simplify things we create a bug in launchpad for each team that is due for renewal. The text from this wiki page http://loco.ubuntu.com/loco-council/approved s sent to their team contact and we use the bug to keep track of progress throughout the cycle. We ensure all communication is posted to the bug report, and send reminders & comments via the bug. Finally we vote on the approval and then make the bug public after the process is finished.
This process has worked out very well for teams who are not able to take part in the IRC meeting but do want a more interactive review. We also still have a monthly IRC meetings which gives teams the flexibility to talk to us directly or use the bug tracker to manage the approval process. We have found this makes our team more accessible to LoCos around the world.
There was some initial reluctance to use the bug tracker to manage approvals, but it was quickly accepted once we explained it’s needed for us as a council to be productive to keep things on track and not let the ball drop on our action items. A by-product of this is it’s a great way for teams to communicate with the council and document information when needed in the bugs.
We keep the bugs private initially so they don’t end up being spammed with inappropriate comments and we use them to remind one another to vote or attend to items. They have worked well now in the last cycle and we will continue to use them again in the future as we do feel they have served the council well and helped up keep up to date with teams.
8 Expired ( 30% Total )
18 Processed ( 69% Total )
Unapproved: 2 ( 11% Processed )
Approved: 16 ( 88% Processed )
Total Unapproved: 10 ( 38% Total )
Total Approved: 16 ( 61% Total )
26 LoCo Teams were processed
During this cycle we were called (by IRC or email) upon by some loco team members to help in mediation or give advice to them to help their team. We often invite them into our IRC channel which while it is private as we can be dealing with people from teams in there at a given time is open to anyone who wants to talk to us all you have to do is ask to join to discuss something. We had to make it private as we had people popping in during sensitive discussions and having this channel has helped us help teams. It is also where many of us idle or log sessions so we can review the conversation and give advice.
We can invite multiple people in here and help resolve issues or bounce ideas and solutions off one another in a real time environment. We follow this up by joining their IRC Channels in some cases, in order to be there for them whenever needed idling so they can ask questions but also so we could see for ourselves how things flow as every team is so different.
We get weekly if not fortnightly requests for help with changing of ownership of a team mailing list, ownership, website and domain issues and lot regarding RT tickets, here we help where possible, logging the issues for teams on launchpad, or asking for IS help in resolving the issues.
We’ve also worked closely with the LoCo Directory Dev team and helped reporting bugs to make the Loco Directory more user friendly. We idle on IRC in #ubuntu-locoteams and we even had our own factoid created if people used it it pings the team but also tell the user how to contact us. !lococouncil 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
I am sure the Precise cycle will be just as interesting for the council working with loco teams and look forward to hearing from the ubuntu community.