Australian LoCo Re-Approval Application

[Ubuntu LoCo Council]

Hello Australian LoCo Team!

I'm writing on behalf of the LoCo Council with regards to the
Australian Team Re-Approval process.

First let me apologise for the length of time this process has taken.
We've not been doing this long, and hope to streamline the process in
the future.

The Australian LoCo team has a long history of great contributions to
the Ubuntu project. It's great to see a bunch of keen, energised
participating members of the Ubuntu community.

However, it is with a heavy heart that we must reject the Re-Approval
of the Australian Local Community Team at this time.

The reasons for this decision are:-

  * The number of active members of the team have been waning,
possibly due to a lack of direction. Members of the community want to
contribute but feel they can't. We've had multiple team members mail
us privately regarding the situation in the Australian LoCo. They felt
strongly enough that they needed to share their feelings about the
current state of the team. The common theme seems to be that they are
not happy with the way the LoCo is being run. Most of them have noted
the inactivity of LoCo. This is often a sign of a lack of strong
leadership within the team.

  * There is a sub group of Ubuntu enthusiasts who feel they cannot
work with the Approved LoCo and have setup a separate team of their
own. They might not call themselves a "LoCo" but they do the same job
in the same area. It is a shame to see this, and we would really like
to sit down with both teams and work this out.

Things you can do which can improve the team include:-

 * Nominate team leadership (be it individual or group) to drive the
team in a defined direction. Setting goals for the team and developing
a roadmap can also help here.

  * Consider revising your IRC channel structure to make it easier for
people to find support, local resources and chat. The current setup
appears to have stopped a lot of the community chatter in the main
channel that helps to keep a team active.

  * Holding regular meetings (on IRC) to help get discussion going,
presently the wiki shows that you're holding regular meetings, which
is currently. The wiki appears to be out of date. An overhaul of the
current wiki is something to consider as well.

  * Perhaps members could rotate roles within the team, this could
help prevent burnout and also help the team, by allowing people to
participate in ways that will help them feel they belong, and can
contribute.

This is not a reflection on peoples roles at present, however many of
the comments we received felt they were being rejected due to not
having as much experience as others. We felt that they were still
enthusiastic about contributing and wanted to step forward. Keep in
mind LoCo activity is not tied to Ubuntu development efforts, people
who do not know how to use the command line interface sometimes turn
out to be the most effective LoCo members. Remember, most LoCo
activity relates to the average user.

Your team needs to encourage new members to actively participate. The
creation of a mentoring program within your team to learn about these
roles might also be a good idea in order to encourage people to
participate more.

We would be delighted to re-approve the Australian LoCo Team once more
in the future once these issues are sorted out, and the team is
revitalised.

We look forward to the progress that we know will occur.

Please do contact us with any questions or concerns,
LoCo Council