Pablo Rubianes and Marcos Costales appointed to the LocoCouncil

By Sergio Meneses | Published: April 26, 2013

Hello everyone!

The LoCo Council would like to take this opportunity to share with you an announcement of our newest members!  A few weeks ago ChristopheSauthier and EfrainValles took the decision  to step down, this was definitely sad news for us, but we understand and wish them the best. We would like to give many thanks to them both for their great work! :D

We needed to try and restore the team to six members, and asked the community for nominations. We received many good nominations, but only had two positions available at this time. After we received the nominations we forwarded them on to the Community Council. They have now had a chance to evaluate the nominees, and have came to a decision.

Without further ado, We would now like to introduce you to the new members of the LoCo Council:

– PabloRubianes: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PabloRubianes

– MarcosCostales: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/costales

Welcome Pablo and Marcos, we hope that you’ll have a good time working with us! We would also like give thanks to all of the nominees, as we always have great applicants. The decisions are never easy, when trying to narrow down who’s selected. We hope that those of you who were nominated will consider applying again in the future.

About Ubuntu 13.04 CDs/DVDs

By Sergio Meneses | Published: April 5, 2013

Hi,

Many people have been asking about the DVDs as it’s coming close to release time, Canonical have said that they will continue to print the LTS for LoCo teams to request for events, but they will only be printing LTS releases from now on, so there won’t be a 13.04 DVD.

Following is the text from Canonical.

Textually: “Canonical will not be producing CDs for standard releases.We understand that to convert interested experimenters to Ubuntu users we need to provide an outstanding initial user-experience, and the ability for the user to explore and learn in safety with a supporting network of experts around them. The LoCo teams are a key to that second part as you provide a personal experience that’s local to the user. While we love users to be on the latest version of Ubuntu, the key thing for new users is a known, stable and supported environment. So to make sure we provide that we’ll be shipping you the LTS release CDs/DVDs rather than the latest standard release.”

Therefore, there won’t be CDs/DVDs for 13.04 as going forward the focus will be on LTS releases. The next production of CDs/DVDs will be 14.04. To bridge the gap till 14.04,we will continue to supply 12.04 CDs/DVDs for events. You can request CDs/DVDs for events through Shipit as normal.

Thank you for your continued and valuable support in making Ubuntu great.

 

Call for nominations to the LoCo Council

By czajkowski | Published: April 5, 2013

Hello All,

We on the LoCo Council are being faced with the challenge of replacing two of our current Council members. A special thanks to Christophe and Efrain 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 e-mail to ask for volunteers to step forward and nominate themselves or another contributor for the two 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. 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: April 5th, 2013

Nominations will close: April 19th, 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 April 25th,2013).

Date new council members will be announced: April 26th 2013

 

Coming up with another term for Approved LoCo Teams – Discussion

By czajkowski | Published: February 6, 2013

A topic that comes up frequently on blog posts we’ve seen and also from talking to people is the word “Approved”LoCo it doesn’t empower people at times. The feedback is that the word approved loco is not great to motivate others who have not been approved or at some point were approved and then not approved.

There are many ways to look at this, and it may not change, but if we don’t discuss it then we’ll forever seen these comments elsewhere. Currently we have the group LoCo Teams and then two subsets, Approved and unapproved. Neither of which are particularly great but do convey in all languages what they mean. We also appreciate not everyone feels this way and many like the word approved so lets see if we could possibly find something better.

Ideally the unapproved loco team would just be called LoCo Team and then the Approved LoCo team could be called or their status level could be:

* verified loco team
* evaluated loco team
* sponsored loco team
* reviewed loco team

status = Verified, Evaluated, Reviewed, Sponsored

*Ubuntu LoCo Teams ($status)* — for the team that has been recognised as a team in good standing and that receives sponsored items from Canonical

*Ubuntu LoCo Teams –* for regular teams that are just formed and have not  been evaluated.

If you have a better suggestion why not let us know. This was discussed at the last LoCo Council IRC Meeting –
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/Minutes/20130115

An amazing cycle for the LocoTeams

By Sergio Meneses | Published: December 12, 2012

This has been a really amazing cycle! The Loco Council would like to say congratulations to all teams that have worked this cycle to become approved teams, in our work we have tried to help to the Loco Teams to fix any troubles and share ideas about how their teams are  and how they could encourage other Loco Teams.

We have had a lot of teams approved for this cycle (Quantal): https://launchpad.net/ubuntu-locoteams/locoteams/12.10 On this page you can see all information about the applications (in wiki format), these applications have all recent information about the status of the Loco Teams plus pictures, videos, projects and even more great items 😀

We have also approved the following teams that were from cycles prior to Quantal:

Ubuntu Quebec: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/QuebecTeam/ReApprovalApplication2012
Ubuntu Oregon: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/OregonTeam/ApprovalApplication
Ubuntu Russia: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/RussianTeam/ReApprovalApplication2012
Ubuntu Egypt: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EgyptTeam/ApprovalApplication2012
Ubuntu Belgiam: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BelgianTeam/ReapprovalApplication2012
Ubuntu Nederland: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/DutchTeamApprovalApplication
Ubuntu Montenegro: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/MontenegroTeam/ApprovalApplication

 

If interested, you can see our logs of the meetings between the LC and the Loco Teams here:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/Minutes

LoCo Council’s November Meeting, Re-Approvals

By Chris Crisafulli | Published: November 22, 2012

Salutations! The LoCo Council and I wanted to take a moment and give a quick update on yesterday’s (November 20, 2012) meeting. We had two teams go for their team re-approval, and both teams received unanimous +1’s from the LoCo Counselors that were present.

Ubuntu Asturian Team –

The Asturian LoCo has definitely done an outstanding job on spreading the word about Ubuntu, they have several projects that are geared towards reaching the youth, and have also been instrumental with helping with official agencies migrate to Ubuntu. They have done some really great translation work, and definitely harbor the Ubuntu Community Spirit! They have held several release parties and participated in Global Jams. For teams that are about to go through the re-approval process, check out their Reapproval Wiki here. We’d like to say thanks to the Asturian LoCo for doing such a wonderful job.

Ubuntu Czech Republic Team –

The Czech Republic Team has been very busy with Translations, Marketing and Advocacy, and their online forums. They have also participated in several release parties, and global events. Their roadmap looks very promising, and we are confident that this team will achieve even more during thier next 2 years of being approved. They had expressed wanting to create another published book that would be updated from 10.10, but unfortunately it is going to be cost prohibitive for them, since they no longer have a local publisher willing to reasonably take their work to print. We made the suggetion that if they really wanted to work on an updated version, to try something similar to kickstarter and see if they can raise funds in that or a similar fashion to realize their goal.
If you’d like to read more about their activities, they are spelled out quite nicely on their re-approval wiki located here.

It is very nice when teams get the chance to share and highlight all of their events and hardwork, and I and the rest of the Council really appreciate both of the teams that went for re-approval. Not only for all of the effort they put into their wikis, but especially for all of the wonderful things they have done and are planning to do for Ubuntu.

Quantal is Almost Here, Organize Your Release Party Now!

By Sergio Meneses | Published: October 5, 2012

Hello Guys!

As you know this is a big date for all Ubuntu community, the reason we’re going to celebrate the Ubuntu’s 8th Birthday and the release of Quantal Quetzal. And we hope that you can join us wherever that you are, so maybe you’re thinking: “What do I need to be part of the party?” The answer is very easy:

Ubuntu Cake

Cake, Drinks and even more!

 

  • Pick a date: I would recommend either Thu 18th October or the following weekend. Pick a date when you can arrange for a bunch of Ubuntu enthusiasts to be in the same building.
  • Pick a venue:  this can be someone’s back yard, a pub, a university room, a school, a parking lot…wherever. They key thing is not the venue, it is the people. With a venue and date, you are all set to let the world know about it.
  • Add your party to the LoCo Directory. here
  • Let the world know: blog about it, make up some fliers and put them in computers shops / libraries / cafes / educational establishments etc. Encourage a stack of people to come along to your party.

 

If you want to use Artwork for the party like: posters, brochures, countdowns and even more, you can find a lot of these in the spreadubuntu site: http://spreadubuntu.org/

I'm going to the Ubuntu Release Party

Will you attend the Ubuntu Release Party?

And finally, the most important, have a good time and share your experience with all the world, you can use your own blog and your social networks.

New Members of the Loco Council

By Sergio Meneses | Published: October 3, 2012

Hello everyone!

The LoCo Council would like to take this opportunity to share with you an announcement of our newest members!  A few weeks ago Paolo and Greg made decisions to step down, this was definitely sad news for us, but we understand and wish them the best. We would like to give many thanks to them both for their great work! 😀

We needed to try and restore the team to six members, and asked the community for nominations. We received many good nominations, but only had two positions available at this time. After we received the nominations we forwarded them on to the Community Council. They have now had a chance to evaluate the nominees, and have came to a decision.

Without further ado, We would now like to introduce you to the new members of the LoCo Council:

– Efrain Valles: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/EfrainValles

– Bhavani Shankar: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BhavaniShankar

Welcome Efrain and Bhavani, we hope that you’ll have a good time working with us! We would also like give thanks to all of the nominees, as we always have great applicants. The decisions are never easy, when trying to narrow down who’s selected. We hope that those of you who were nominated will consider applying again in the future.

New Member announcement, Originally posted to the ubuntu-news-team mailing list on Tue Oct 2 15:11:58 UTC 2012 by Laura Czajkowski

 

 

Ordering your 12.04 CDs for LoCo Teams is now available

By czajkowski | Published: April 5, 2012

I’m happy to tell you that it is time to submit requests for pre-orders of the new 12.04 Release! As always, please submit your requests via the online form at

https://forms.canonical.com/lococd/

It is vital that you correctly fill in all the required fields marked with an *.

If these fields are left empty or are incorrectly filled in, your request will not be processed successfully. It is also important to include a zip/post code if you have one as this will help us process your request faster. Zip/post code is no longer a vital field as we understand that some countires do not have one.

I would also like to remind you that only a Loco team administrator can request a pre-order for CDs. If the request is submitted by anyone else the request will be declined.

Please note that we are no longer including Kubuntu CDs in the Loco packs effective with this release. The software, of course, will still
available on-line for download.

The release goes Live on the 26/04/12, so please get your pre-orders in as soon as possible.

Approval / Re approval guidelines updated

By czajkowski | Published: March 21, 2012

One of the main functions of the LoCo Council is to approve/re-approve the great LoCo teams that make up the amazing base of the Ubuntu Community. As such, having quality documentation that tells LoCo teams in a clear fashion the expectations we have of all approved teams is of upmost importance.

The LoCo Council, in collaboration with the Community Council, recently updated our approval guidelines to answer more questions in a (hopefully) clearer way. You can review the Approval Guidelines and the Re-Approval Guidelines and tell us if we got it right!

Hopefully, with these changes more LoCo teams will be able to set out a plan to be great resources for Ubuntu and GNU/Linux enthusiasts in their area.