Loco Council, or an alternative idea of what it could be :)

[Jan Claeys]

Op woensdag 03-10-2007 om 10:52 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Jono
Bacon:
> The crux of this discussion is that LoCo teams need money to do stuff.
> This in itself is a point of debate - personally, I have run a number of
> community booths over the years. I have run three booths for KDE, helped
> with the ubuntu-uk and Jokosher booths and have been a primary organiser
> for a large event for three years - LugRadio Live 2005, 2006 and 2007
> and the LugRadio Live events in the UK and USA in 2008. All of these
> efforts were completely community run, including LugRadio Live - there
> is no large funding body.
> 
> I am aware of the intricacies of what is involved in funding a community
> booth, and I believe you can away with a lot without any formal funding
> - people provide different parts of the booth (posters, flyers, name
> badges, laptops, t-shirts etc, Canonical provide a chunk of CDs) - the
> team contributes their own expertise to resource the different things
> they need.

Money is money, no matter who provides it.  (And Canonical does *NOT*
provide enough CDs/etc. for most active LoCoTeams, so they have to make
CDs themselves.)

Also, in many countries a certain level of formal non-profit structure
is needed to get any substantial contributions from companies.


> I believe that each team is its own autonomous unit that performs its
> own organisational functions, and the wider LoCo project is merely there
> to provide largely mentoring advice and guidance - I am conscious that
> the wider LoCo project does not become a "big brother" and interfere
> with what each team does. Therefore, I believe it is each teams
> responsibility to source any additional funding and resources - if
> ubuntu-<cc> wants to have a very large and lavish presence at a show, it
> should source the additional funding itself from a company in its region
> of the world.
> 
> Every community has inefficiencies that need to be fixed, and the LoCo
> community has plenty of its own, but I believe the concerns raised
> around this issue affect relatively few teams, and I would much rather
> we put our efforts into getting a solid LoCo Council up and running,
> encouraging more excellent mentoring schemes like USTeams (AfricanTeams
> is a dream of mine), get our resource request bottlenecks fixed, and
> think of worldwide plans and online events for the wider community to
> take part in - we are all advocates, and I would like us to focus on
> better ways of advocating Ubuntu instead of the cyclic discussion of
> money.

Well, I think for some things a co-operation between locoteams (with or
without a formal structure) could be useful, e.g. printing CDs, large
banners, etc.  I also agree with what some people brought up that many
things can't be solved by a non-local non-profit (e.g. tax-exemption).
IMO a multilateral cooperation is better there.

Maybe an international non-profit backed by money from Canonical, other
companies and private gifts will be able to provide (more) free/cheap
CDs for everyone? And cheap/free gadgets, tools, etc. for booths etc.?


OTOH I think LoCoTeams should be allowed any formal structure they need
to fulfil their job.  Saying "locoteams don't need money" is an insult
to those people who paid lots of money to keep things going.  And I mean
"lots" compared to the money they have available (sabdfl might not
suffer from paying 100 euro/month for events, but many people will, even
in western Europe!).


-- 
Jan Claeys