Best Practices and Guidelines

[Matthew East]

Hi,

On 26 August 2010 12:42, Paul Tagliamonte <paultag at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Can anyone think of reasons that creating a standard that dictates
> that LoCo teams must foster growth at the lowest granularity possible
> for their region?

I think it is appropriate to encourage "growth" at a local level,
certainly. However, if such a guideline is interpreted as encouraging
teams to organise themselves at a particular level of granularity, I
don't think that this is appropriate, whether as a standard or as a
guideline. The reality is that our local teams serve a vast variety of
functions. These include face to face local support and Ubuntu
advocacy (which is very well suited to low granularity organisation).
But there are plenty of other functions which are well suited to high
granularity organisation, including advocacy, support and discussion
at a regional level. Certain functions go beyond even national
granularity: see for example local teams that collaborate on support
or localisation in a particular language, which can cover several
countries.

I think that the optimum system will allow our local communities to
develop according to the different needs that vary on a geographic,
cultural and linguistic basis across the world. Each local community
will frequently be best placed to evaluate the different levels of
granularity which are appropriate for the culture and region that they
are familiar with, and we shouldn't seek to be too prescriptive.

What we should encourage of course is collaboration. Collaboration
between individuals within a similar region, or who share a common
language, or who live in the same country. I think that this is
already in pretty good shape, with the default position to be that
local teams organise themselves on a national basis (albeit that
exceptions could be entirely appropriate).

-- 
Matthew East
http://www.mdke.org
gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF