Building a strong LoCo community

[Jono Bacon]

Hi all,

My name is Jono Bacon and I recently started at Canonical as the Ubuntu
Community Manager. My role is to help grow and maintain the Ubuntu
community, and I am really keen to make LoCo teams a central theme. We
have some really awesome teams, and I would like to help take this
progress and develop more teams and better communication between teams.

The way I see it, LoCo teams are essential in growing Ubuntu in lots of
different areas such as advocacy, translations, getting new users and
contributors, education, support, marketing, press and more. I have
always believed that there is real value in a geographical connection to
other people. I myself have set up user groups in the past
(Wolverhampton Linux User Group and PHP West Midlands) and I have also
run events such as LUGRadio Live 2005 and 2006 which brings people
together. Evidently, user groups kick ass. :)

So, what are the plans? Well, first and foremost, like anything
community related, I want *your* feedback. This is our community and I
would love to hear your opinions and thoughts on LoCo teams and what you
believe LoCo teams should be doing. I would also like to hear of any
concerns and problems you have about LoCo teams.

Naturally, each LoCo team is different, and some teams have a natural
success rate due to team leaders and community leaders who are
experienced at running teams. There are also some other teams who are
enthusiastic, but are not quite sure how to go about running the team
and where to get started. I am hoping that we can level this out a
little bit and have more success everywhere. :)

So, I have a few things I am interested in working on in the interim:

 * Using this list to share experiences and thoughts about the best way
to run a team. It would be nice if teams could share with the other
teams successes and tips where things just work. As an example, if a
team is advocating Ubuntu to people in the local area, what kind of
approach has your team found successful?

 * Organising and promoting events that LoCo teams take part in. This
could be serious events such as sprints, talks and campaigns or it could
be events such as creating Ubuntu crop circles. ;)

 * Developing regional relations between different teams. Some countries
have more than one team, and it makes sense for those teams to be in
touch.

 * Helping LoCo teams to develop relations with other groups such as
LUGs, Perl Mongers, UNIX groups, .NET User Groups and more.

 * Helping LoCo teams to work with other Ubuntu teams to collaborate to
make cool stuff happen. As an example, Rich Weiderman, who is working on
education stuff at Canonical, and a member of the Edubuntu project is
interested in working with local groups to help with our education
effort.

So, there is plenty to get started with, and do let me know your
thoughts - feel free to reply to this thread. :)

	Jono

Cheers,

	Jono

-- 
Jono Bacon
Ubuntu Community Manager
jono(at)ubuntu(dot)com
www.ubuntu.com / www.jonobacon.org