[RFC] LEP#2, Local Community Teams vs. Locale Teams

[Christophe Sauthier (Huats)]

First of all thanks for trying to fix that issue that is clearly
complex. And I am sure many of us know the difficulty to try to
organize teams/people that are already actve.

And regarding YoBoY recurring question : LEP stands for LoCo
Enhancement Proposal.



On Tue, Jul 19, 2011 at 3:27 AM, Chris Johnston
<chrisjohnston at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> Proposed-By: Chris Johnston <chrisjohnston at ubuntu.com>;
>  Paul Tagliamonte <paultag at ubuntu.com>
> Scope: All LoCo Teams, Worldwide
> Status: Draft
> Rational: Local Community Teams vs Locale Teams
>
> Greetings,
>
> Before we start, I'd like to make clear that this is in *no way* a
> critisism of how steller teams, such as Ubuntu France or the Catalan
> team are run.
>
> We both have the utmost respect for how well-managed and run the teams
> are, and look forward to their continued success. This is more of a
> philosophical guideline on how it "should" be.
I have never imagine that it would be a criticism.

>
> I would like to propose that we define what is already said in that a
> LoCo Team (or Local Team) is a location based team (as meant by local)
> and not a locale based team. It seems as though groups are forming
> language based teams, and treating them as local teams. The scope of
> the LoCo Team, and the LoCo Team Directory is that of users in a
> common location getting together as a community, and doing things as a
> community. The point of a locale based team is not properly able to
> support having events and gatherings under the scope of the LoCo
> Community.
>
> The proposal further states that locale based teams be moved into
> teams of their own, which can be made into a parent team of the LoCo,
> if all members of the LoCo are engaged in such activities.
>
> Teams like ubuntu-eo and ubuntu-fr seem to cover all countries that
> speak a given language, however, I'd hardly call an activity in
> Belgium local to an activity in Canada.
Well to say that is a shortcut (at least for ubuntu-fr that I am leading).

Yes Ubuntu-fr is present in many countries since we have a huge
collection of documentation pages and our forum is very active. So
naturally people are present all over the world, because so many
resources attracts people... A kind of snowball effect.
So I would say that the websites and the IRC activiites runned by
ubuntu-fr are covering all countries. But I am sure that anybody will
agree with me on saying that it is the purpose of Internet.
On another side, ubuntu-fr is not covering  IRL events in many corner
of the world. We are focussing on France (and are doing collaboration
event with border-side LoCos from time to time). So no ubuntu-fr is
not covering all countries that speak french.

>
> In short, I'd like to propose that LoCo teams try to stay within
> geopolitical bounds.
>
> As a solution, it would be nice to have "super-teams" that allow
> cross-team collaboration for LoCos, and LoCo Teams be members of this
> "super-team." This would look something like:
>
> ubuntu-language-XX
>  +-> ubuntu-NN
>  +-> ubuntu-MM
>
> With ubuntu-language-XX being the "super-team" and "ubuntu-NN" as well
> as "ubuntu-MM" being the LoCo Teams.
>
> In this situation, the orginizational unit "ubuntu-language-ISO_CODE"
> would not be a LoCo Team it's self, but would allow teams to share
> resources, such as support channels and support forums, while not
> trying to tackle more then one country per ISO code. This should
> actually provide a higher level of support from both the community, as
> more people will be focusing in one area, rather than a few people
> focusing on multiple different areas, as well as from Canonical, in
> the form of 6-month CD allocations, and other LoCo team care packages.
Sharing is already what we have try to do in the Past. I have
souvenirs of such idea with some french speaking locos with who we
decided to join forces and to link they forum to our...But the
realisation is REALLY painful and honnestly it is not doable...

Regarding your proposal, by instance for ubuntu-language-fr for the
super team and ubuntu-fr for our traditionnal LoCo, how / where do you
imagine the organisation of the super team ? only on the loco
directory ?  Because honnestly I can't imagine moving all our
infrastructure of forums and IRC (even if the latter would be simpler)
to that.
Do you plan to do the same for all language including english ? and by
instance to have ubuntu-language-en that will share all the support
activities for english ? It is just a question not trying to find weak
points.

Regarding that I would be in favor of putting that super team in the
LoCo directory so that it would be simpler for a newcomer to discover
the various teams, but not to apply  it to the other ressources. And
by the way I think it is a good idea...


Cheers !

         Christophe