Best Practices and Guidelines

[Ralph Janke]

On 08/24/2010 11:40 AM, Laura Czajkowski wrote:
>
> What I have noticed on this thread, is that many of the issues raised
> seem to be USA centric.  I think we can all learn from other teams and
> how they do things, perhaps this is a topic for the LoCo Health Check
> next month if someone wants to bring it up we can kick off a discussion
> there and from there work on some guidelines
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/LoCoHealthCheck
>
>
> Laura
>
>    
Well.. probably even more Canada-centric. Randall is from Vancouver, 
Darcy from Ontario ( I am now in Ontario, but I have had experiences 
from Germany and UK LoCos before I came to Canada).

In the US, the granularity is one official LoCo per state, in Canada, I 
believe the approach was always (or at least in the beginning) all of 
Canada is one Loco. (Quebec might be an exception, I have never figured 
out the exact status, but this is also a language issue) Canada has a 
1/10 of the population of the US with lot more geographic area and more 
timezones (at least of you talk about continental US).

I believe driving from one corner of Ontario to the other can take you a 
whole 24h or something like that (Darcy correct me if I am wrong), and 
flying from Newfoundland to British Columbia is further than London-NY 
if I have the numbers right.

Therefore, it is quite difficult to think you could have any kind of 
face-to-face conferences or meetings in a Canada-wide loco as you could 
have in Ireland, England, Germany or France, or any state in the US by 
itself.

I think especially Randall's push comes from out of these circumstances. 
However, I think the discussion is lead a little bit on two different 
tracks.

Let's backup a little and ask what is a LoCo. The LoCo that Randall 
describes is the local community that is tight knit is the tradition of 
LUGs. You might even have more than one in a big city.

The LoCo that is described in a lot of the Ubuntu wiki pages is the 
administrative organization that builds the point of contact to other 
countries and the Ubuntu community as a whole, and also to Canonical.

Maybe the biggest confusion comes from the double usage of the same 
term. I think the term is irrelevant. We just need to make sure we know 
which of the meanings we are talking about at a particular time.

In order to bring some things forward in Canada, and after some talks 
with Darcy, Darcy and I decided to start what we called a local chapter 
to the Canada LoCo in the Waterloo Region of Ontario, Canada. I think 
this kind of size is what Randall has in mind and is talking about. We 
called it "chapter" in order to avoid the name confusion.

To explain the situation here in Kitchener/Waterloo, we have a very well 
functioning LUG, which also recruits most of the organizing team for the 
annual Ontario Gnu/Linux Fest, which will again take place 22/23 of 
October.

We decided, that there was place to in addition to the active LUG there 
was a place for a more Ubuntu-centric group. And this works very well 
since the two groups work together and add to each other.

On the other hand, Darcy and I also believe that we need to strengthen 
the collaboration over all of Canada. Therefore, Darcy was so kind to 
start regular IRC meetings on the #ubuntu-ca channel to enable some more 
collaboration and also seed more similar chapters in other areas. I 
believe most people participating currently are from within Ontario 
(more or less). However, we hope to get more provinces and territories 
involved too.

I believe we are on the right track with this and it just takes some 
patience and continuous work to see more progress under the 
circumstances described above.

I also believe that at this time it is better to keep an umbrella for 
all of Canada, because we do not want to end up having only doing 
something in B.C., Ontario and Quebec. However, that is administrative 
and in my opinion secondary. You can always find ways to make a 
structure work, or adapt it so that it will.

I also believe, to answer Darcy's question a bit, that there is not one 
way. I think, we have basically two extremes, areas where we know one 
person, trying to currently get something going, and other places where 
there is a LUG with Ubuntu users, but there is currently no connection 
to us or other groups.

Where there is nothing, it might work very well to start with Ubuntu 
hours or similar and start other Ubuntu chapters (however, hopefully 
with the openness to other Linux distro users too. In the places were 
there are already good LUG, I believe we can start to build connection 
with the LUG irrelevant of them wanting to officially associate 
themselves with Ubuntu or not. We have the same goal anyways, spreading 
Linux. And in some places with LUGs, there might be a similar situation 
like we have here in Kitchener/Waterloo, where it is a positive 
development to add to the existing LUG with a (sub)-group more focused 
on Ubuntu.

One of the things that are going on at the moment, is that we have build 
a new server for Ubuntu-ca so that we can be flexible to the 
communication needs that will come from those activities. Hopefully, 
that will also lead to the point where we can support each other more 
face to face, i.e. with visits and speakers/presentations to smaller 
groups. Our local LUG is i.e. booked out with speakers for 9-10 month! 
While we certainly start this on shorter distances, hopefully, there 
will be an knock-on effect that pushes the boundaries to encompasses all 
the area between the three coasts of Canada.

So, I think we are not really apart with what has been said so far in 
this thread, there are just some problems with the terminology, and the 
particular circumstances of Canada. Otherwise, I am happy and thankful 
to see so much hard work and enthusiasm. I just also ask for the right 
amount of patience. Rome has not been built in one day, and so I think 
we don't have to stress ourselves out too much. Always remember, we 
don't want to burn out, but keep it also fun. Only in this way can we 
maintain a high level of voluntarism.

Only my 2 cents (Canadian)

Ralph (txwikinger)

Ubuntu KW-chapter
Ubuntu Canada
Kubuntu-de.org