The Situation in Thailand

By Stephen Michael Kellat | Published: December 9, 2013

A prime minister fled police protection.

Protesters are assaulting police who have been ordered not to resist the assaults.

A financial wire notes on their Twitter feed that the Army chief won’t step in to stop the political unrest.

Protesters even sought the removal of barriers to police headquarters and Government House as part of the plan to seize the police headquarters.

A truce was effectively called to respect the King’s birthday.

The nation’s parliament was dissolved with a call for a fresh elections except that the leader of the opposition protesters said forcing a snap election was not the goal while getting an unelected body of picked “good people” to run the country was.

One could hope these were scenes from some new dystopian novel or film. Sadly, they’re what we found after we learned that Ubuntu Thailand had its website go offline when protesters knocked out the data center where it was hosted. Ubuntu Thailand handles their own web and forum hosting on their own server which unfortunately has non-technical issues at the moment.

With the civil unrest in Thailand now entering a third week, LoCo Council has decided to postpone further consideration of their Verification application until matters become more settled. In keeping with normal policy, Ubuntu Thailand will remain in Verified status until we conclude our handling of the application. The priority now must be preservation of the safety of life and the protection of property for those affected by this situation in Thailand. In the grand scheme, we come in a bit lower in priority when there is talk of civil unrest and insurrection being thrown about.

We’re keeping the Thai community in our thoughts as things have the potential to get very interesting very quickly. Hopefully you will remember them too.

Three Teams Verified

By Stephen Michael Kellat | Published: November 15, 2013

Due to time zone constraints, LoCo Council also handles Verification check-ins with teams via private bug e-mails in Launchpad. The Council recently closed out three separate check-ins with communities across the planet. Communities that have been recently verified include:

Leaders of Ubuntu communities are encouraged to read through these check-in applications and others to learn what is happening in other communities. The life of our communities cannot be a top-down directed matter and much can be learned from lateral team-to-team contact. Why re-invent the wheel when you have the experiences of others to possibly draw on?

Let us celebrate the diversity of Ubuntu communities we have around the planet and cheer on the efforts of our comrades in Morocco, Brazil, and Portugal. Coming up on the Council’s agenda is the Verification check-in for Ubuntu Ohio that is applied for here to be handled in an IRC meeting as well as such other check-ins that may be brought before the Council.

If you have questions about the Verification process, feel free to contact the LoCo Council at loco-council@lists.ubuntu.com to discuss the matter.

LoCo Logo Contest!

By Pablo Rubianes | Published: October 26, 2013

Hello all!

Here in the LoCo Council we think that out current logos are quite old, so we are opening a proposal for everyone who would like to participate. We are asking you to design one logo for the LoCo Teams and one for the LoCo Council, so we use that logos in all our pages/profiles and other LoCo related communications.

There are, though a couple rules to follow. First, you need to take in account the Ubuntu Brand Guideline, and also provide the logo in SVG format to the LoCo Council. Proposals should be sent to the LoCo Council Mailing List (loco-council [AT] lists [DOT] ubuntu [DOT] com), and should contain both logos.

Deadline for the proposals is the 25th November, we will quickly choose one after sumbissions are closed!  All submissions must be made under a Creative Commons BY-SA 3.0 license with copyright assignment.

Thanks for participating, we hope to see all your designs soon!

The New Era: From Approval To Verification

By José Antonio Rey Cama | Published: October 25, 2013

The “Trusty Tahr” development cycle has begun. The LoCo Council has a new look heading into the cycle as it has new members. In light of some statements by Jono Bacon about our local communities, it is time to recap what the LoCo Council does and does not do for the community across Earth.

Our main roles are to:

  • Equip communities
  • Advise communities
  • Mentor communities

We do not have the resources or manpower to engage in top-down control of local affairs. How things progress in local communities is ultimately their own choice. We can help ensure you have a clean bill of health and try to get you what resources we can. When it comes to speaking at a local fair or an UbuCon, it is up to you to put on the show and put Ubuntu in the best light.

We are currently engaged in a Verification Process for our communities. This is our health check. While it may seem like a bit of tedious paperwork, there are common things we ask for in verification and reverification applications to learn what is happening. This is much like completing a “medical history update” form before you visit a physician. From how your community is presented to us we ask questions. These are not meant to be negative things. We simply want to gather information and learn how you are doing. Over time we may adjust our template for the verification application to narrow down the information we seek.

Nobody can help you if you have a problem if they do not know what you have issues with. Our big goal in asking questions is not to seek some way to score against a community or mark you down. We are concerned with you succeeding and want to learn how we can assist you. We do not have the budget to travel the planet as a team to investigate how every community is functioning. To be able to consider all 178 local community groups, the Verification Process lets us do this in a structured manner.

You do not need to wait until Verification comes around to reach out to us. If something comes up that is a problem, you can e-mail us. You truly do not need to wait until a health check comes up. Sending us a message at loco-council@lists.ubuntu.com will copy all six members of the council and at least one of us will respond. If we have the resources to assist you, we will try to do so. If we cannot directly assist you we will try to refer to someone who can.

In the next few weeks we will be attempting to reach out to all active local community groups to check in. This will not be anything to be afraid of. Each of the six council members will take an even split of groups to contact. This will be a simple effort to greet groups, try to ensure we have current “team contacts” listed in Launchpad, and invite those not already subscribed to join the loco-contacts mailing list. Again, if something is not okay, nobody can help you unless you say something.

Let us grow together as we move ever onward!

Originally written by Stephen Michael Kellat.

Results of the LoCo Council Meeting – Oct 15th 2013

By José Antonio Rey Cama | Published: October 16, 2013

Today, the LoCo Council hosted its usual monthly meeting. We had some re-verification applications, and did some announcements.

With regards to the applications, two teams applied for re-verification. These were the California Team and the Pennsylvania Team. Both of them presented successful applications, gaining a verified status for two more years.

Photos from the California Team

Photos from the Pennsylvania Team

We also announced our new Twitter account, which went live today. There, we will be posting updates about verified and re-verified teams, as well as some other official announcements. Make sure to follow us!

Finally, I want to take advantage of this space and mention that the LoCo Council is always keen to keep helping the teams. We are here to mentor, give advice, and lend you a hand where needed. If your team needs help at any time, make sure to send us an email at loco-council@lists.ubuntu.com or go to the #ubuntu-locoteams channel on irc.freenode.net (click here to join via your web browser). We’re also pretty open to suggestions and feedback, or, you can just come around and say hello. Don’t fear, we don’t bite 🙂

I hope to see all of your teams go through verification/re-verification soon!

Updating Shippit to the New Term

By Sergio Meneses | Published: September 5, 2013

Hi LocoTeams!

In this moment we are working to update the new term -verified- and this change brings some troubles, by instance  the LocoTeams can’t order CDs in this moment, all this is because we are working on the updates to different sites and shippit is one of those. We expect to solve this deal as soon as possible! and don’t worry we shall publish another post when the trouble will be fixed

And remember if you have any problem about your local-community, feel free to contact us!

Ubuntu DVD/CD

Get Your LoCo Moving – Global Jam is Coming!

By Pablo Rubianes | Published: September 3, 2013

Hey all!, the new Ubuntu Global Jam Edition is coming next 13, 14 and 15 September 2013!

So this is a great opportunity to get together and meet other Ubuntu fans and contributors, make new friends in your area, and help to make the next Ubuntu release the best it can be so we can bring Free Software to the masses, improve our community or just have a great time.

So what do you need to do to have an event in your area, follow the steps below and if you get stuck, ask for help in #ubuntu-locoteams.

Organising an even can be easy in a few simple steps:

  1. There is a guide to to organising an event.
  2. Please update your loco team page and  add your event to the LoCo Team Portal if is not already there.
  3. Be sure to tweet/dent/facebook/G+ it and use the #ugj, #ubuntu, and #locoteams tags so others can see them!

Now who can come…. EASY EVERYONE!

  • Everyone is welcome – anyone is welcome to organise or join an Ubuntu Global Jam event. If you’re not organising one but want to attend contact your local Ubuntu LoCo Team.
  • You don’t have to be technical – There are many ways to take part and attending Ubuntu Global Jam events attract lots of different people, and you don’t have to be a developer or technical to take part. We welcome anyone to come along and take part in your own way.
  • Keep it simple to organise – pick a place to meet up on, agree on a date and time, and tell others about it. That’s it!

See you arround in the Jam

 

LoCo Team REBlogs: My second experience of the Ubuntu LoCo Team re- approval process…

By Pablo Rubianes | Published: September 2, 2013

Hi, we are starting the inspiring posts about LoCo teams Re Blog, and to start this here’s the blog post of  Airurando about his experience with the reapproval process.

Enjoy!

My second experience of the Ubuntu LoCo Team re- approval process. Not as straight forward as the first!

Back in the Summer of 2011 my first experience of the Ubuntu LoCo Team re- approval process was very positive and exciting. I happily helped in the preparation and delivery of the Ubuntu Ireland 2011 re-approval application. I even wrote a very enthusiastic blog post about the whole experience.

This time though, things were much different…..

Activity in the Ubuntu Ireland Team has decreased significantly since our initial re-approval in 2011. By the summer of 2012 I was becoming concerned that our low activity levels would reduce our chances of retaining our approved status at the next time of asking. I aired my concerns regarding the poor state of the Irish LoCo on the Team mailing list in August 2012 (my initial post can be found here).  The positive feedback received led to a team reboot discussion developing which started in November 2012 (my initial post regarding the team reboot can be found here). This team reboot is ongoing but there is no denying that our team activity remains weak. However, despite this low activity it was clear that there were still a few warm cinders in the Ubuntu Ireland Team fire and there certainly was a lot of good will being expressed towards remaining approved. Based on this I felt it was worthwhile for our LoCo to seek re-approval. I prepared our 2013 re-approval application, basing it on the standard template and our 2011 application.  Active Team member Keith Drummond provided some very useful suggestions that were incorporated into our application.

Our Team was up for re-approval at the 16th of July, 2013 LoCo Council meeting.   I was quite nervous and by no means confident about our chances. Despite this I was relieved that the time had come to honestly state the current condition on our LoCo and see how that would be received. We were the third and last team up for re-approval. Two very impressive teams preceded us (The Japanese Team and the Tunisian Team).

When the time came we gave a frank account of our slow demise over the last two years. We also maintained that some activity still existed and that the reboot efforts were ongoing. The LoCo council recognised this lull in activity as a somewhat common occurrence. Given due consideration to the remaining activity in our LoCo and the fact that four team members had turned up to offer support for our application the LoCo Council approved our re-approval application. I was truly delighted that we had achieved this and I am very thankful that the LoCo Council saw fit to keep faith in our little LoCo and maintain our approved status.

So now to the point of this post…… If you are part of an approved LoCo which has experienced difficulties since your last approval I would strongly encourage you to still seek re-approval for you Team when the time comes again (of course, only if the ‘approved status’ is still in effect).

——————————————————————————————————————————————————————–

Thanks Airurando

Call for Nominations to the LoCo Council

By Pablo Rubianes | Published: August 28, 2013

Hello All,

We on the LoCo Council are being faced with the challenge of replacing three of our current Council members. A special thanks to Laura, Chris and Sergio for all of the great contributions they have made while serving with us on the LoCo Council.

So with that in mind, we are writing this to ask for volunteers to step forward and nominate themselves or another contributor for the three open positions. The LoCo Council is defined on our wiki page.

Wiki: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil

Team Agenda: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncilAgenda

Typically, we meet up once a month in IRC to go through items on the team agenda also we started to have Google Hangouts too (The time for hangouts may vary depending the availability of the members time). This involves approving new LoCo Teams, Re-approval of Approved LoCo Teams, resolving issues within Teams, approving LoCo Team mailing list requests, and anything else that comes along.

We have the following requirements for Nominees:

Be an Ubuntu member

Be available during typical meeting times of the council

Insight into the culture(s) and typical activities within teams is a plus

Here is a description of the current LoCo Council:

They are current Ubuntu Members with a proven track record of activity in the community. They have shown themselves over time to be able to work well with others, and display the positive aspects of the Ubuntu Code of Conduct. They should be people who can judge contribution quality without emotion while engaging in an interview/discussion that communicates interest, a welcoming atmosphere, and which is marked by humanity, gentleness, and kindness.

If this sounds like you, or a person you know, please e-mail the LoCo Council with your nomination(s) using the following e-mail address: loco-council<at>lists.ubuntu.com.

Please include a few lines about yourself, or whom you’re nominating, so we can get a good idea of why you/they’d like to join the council, and why you feel that you/they should be considered. If you plan on nominating another person, please let them know, so they are aware.

We welcome nominations from anywhere in the world, and from any LoCo team. Nominees do not need to be a LoCo Team Contact to be nominated for this post. We are however looking for people who are active in their LoCo Team.

The time frame for this process is as follows:

Nominations will open: August  28th, 2013

Nominations will close: September 18th, 2013

We will then forward the nominations to the CC, Requesting they take the following week to make their selections (hopefully by their meeting on September 19th,2013).

Date new council members will be announced: September 20th, 2013

 

New Local communities health check process

By Bhavani Shankar | Published: August 25, 2013

This will be the new process, aiming to replace the current re approval process. It aims to be less formal, more interactive and above all still keep people motivated to be involved in the Ubuntu community.

Every team shall be known as a LoCoteam, teams that were previously known as an “Approved LoCoteam” shall be known as a “Verified LoCoteam”. New teams shall be a LoCoteam, teams do not have to be verified.  The term Verified means that a  Launchpad team has been created, the team name conforms to the correct naming standard and the team contact has signed the Code of Conduct.

Every two years a team will present itself for a HealthCheck – This is still beneficial to everyone involved, it gives the team a chance to show how they are doing and also the council can catch up with the team.

What is needed for a HealthCheck?

Create a Wiki with the activities of the period – Name the wiki page with Name of your team plus the YEAR example – LoCoTeamVerificationApplication20XX with the below details:

  • Name of team
  • How many people are in the team
  • Link to your wiki page / Launchpad group page
  • Social Networks (if they have any of them).
  • Link to loco team portal page, Events page, Paste events page – this is a good reason to encourage teams to use the team portal as all of the information is there and saves duplication.
  • Photo Galleries of past events.
  • Tell us about your team, what you do, if you have Ubuntu members in your team, your current projects.
  • Guideline of what you plan on doing in the future.
  • Any meeting logs, if available.

Teams will still remain verified this is just to check in and see how things are doing,  If you can’t make a meeting, it can be done over email/Bugs.

In short, the overall process should remain pretty much the same as now.

If in case of any doubts/questions regarding the new process please dont hesitate to discuss or ask us 🙂