Building a strong LoCo community

[Christer Edwards]

List

My name is Christer Edwards and I started the ubuntu-utah team (utah,
US).  We've been going for about a year now and officially recognized
for about 8 months.  We're have our ups & downs as a team as far as
productivity but we're trying.

It seems involvement has slowed during the summer (but I hear that is
ordinary).  We have monthly meetings, bi-annual installfests (to follow
each Ubuntu release) and weekly & monthly goals.

This is the first LUG that I've personally put together so I often feel
like I'm questioning my direction but I have some great members that
offer helpful experienced feedback.

Since we started a year go we went from three initial members to 45
members on the mailing list, an active IRC community and good attendance
to our monthly meets.

I'm always open to outside suggestions on places to take our team & how
to get us there.  We're all just very passionate about OSS &
Ubuntu--whatever we can do to spread the word.

On Wed, 2006-09-06 at 13:48 +0100, Jono Bacon wrote:
> 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
> 
> 
-- 
Christer Edwards
President, Ubuntu-Utah
christer.edwards at ubuntu.com
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