Summary of the LoCoTeam meeting, 2005-10-3

[Jane Silber]

Fouad -

I appreciate all the work you've been doing for Ubuntu, and hope you
will continue. 

>region. FOSSFP will carry out and effectively manage all the
>sophisticated/complex issues involved, trust me, 5000 CDs was a good
>exercise.
>  
>
If you would like to carry out the analysis, that's fine. But if
Canonical is to sign a contract with the providers and pay them, you'll
have to put us in touch eventually.   This is an expensive proposition -
as much as I trust your dedication to Ubuntu, distributing this service
requires signed commercial contracts and obligations. In the meantime,
the task to be done is to negotiate and assure a process which


1. Can accept weekly exports from our shipit database with order info
(name, address, numbers of CDs for each architecture).  The number of
orders/CDs will vary depending on the week and how large we define the
region, but for Pakistan and India alone it will be in excess of 10K
units per week, every single week.  We can extend this to other
countries in the region if we find a workable solution.  Orders must be
processed within a week of receiving the export.

2. Mailing labels for each order printed, the appropriate number of CDs
picked from existing inventory and packaged appropriately, with
appropriate label. 

3. A large order will be placed at the outside and maintained in local
inventory. The factory needs to have adequate storage and workspace for
the CDs, and report back on inventory usage so that more can ordered
when necessary.

4. Coordination with local shipping option.  There needs to be a cheap,
regular service as well as faster, high priority service.  I suggest
that you get price quotes and delivery times on shipping for packages of
10 units, 100 units and 500 units both on a regular service and a
priority service, shipping from the factory to a representative sample
of cities in the countries in which you propose to handle.  So for each
city, you need a cost for sending 10 units regular, 10 units priority,
100 units regular, 100 units priority, 500 units regular, 500 units
priority, and the estimated time of delivery for each.

Note that the EUR .45 target is for all materials and labour up to (but
not including) the actual shipping cost.

Please note that doing a one-time exercise for 5K CDs is still a bit
different than having the labour and processes for doing this on a
on-going basis. The most qualified people to do this are professional
production and fulfillment companies as they have the facilities,
materials, and processes to handle this sort of operation. I suggest you
start your search there.

Cheers,
Jane