Fwd: Re-Energizing LoCo Teams

Jared Norris jrnorris at gmail.com
Sat Aug 31 00:57:53 UTC 2013


Good morning all,

I came across this message on the Loco Contacts mailing list today and
thought I'd pass it on. Jono is essentially seeking Loco re-energisation as
well as getting some enthusiastic and commited people to the Loco Council
(which has a call for nominations current and linked in Jono's message).

I realise we as a team aren't hyper active but it doesn't mean we can't
think of ways to improve that or for any individual to be elected to the
Loco Council board. If anyone has any suggestions for the re-energisation
of the Loco please share them with the list, if you want to bounce them off
someone before making them public you're always welcome to send me an email
any time.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jono Bacon <jono at ubuntu.com>
Date: 31 August 2013 05:30
Subject: Re-Energizing LoCo Teams
To: "Ubuntu local community team (LoCo) contacts" <
loco-contacts at lists.ubuntu.com>


Hi All,

I believe that in the entire history of Ubuntu we are at the most
exciting time we have ever experienced.

With Ubuntu we set out with a clear mission: to build an elegant,
beautiful, Free Software platform that brings powerful, easily
accessible, technology to all. We are gritted in our determination
around this mission.

All the pieces are starting to come together. A powerful converged
platform, a beautiful user experience, a new SDK and app upload
process, powerful cloud orchestration technologies, and a growing
eco-system of users, app developers, and devops.

Awesome technology is not enough though. Silicon Valley is littered
with the corpses of many great technologies that didn't catch on. The
key to successful, living, breathing technology is *adoption* and
*passionate users and developers*.

## Building Adoption

LoCo Teams are a *critical* piece of how we drive this adoption.

LoCo teams are our front-line troops out there living Ubuntu and
sharing it with others. If we have successful LoCo teams we will have
a successful Ubuntu.

In recent years we have faced some challenges with LoCo Teams though.
Fewer people have been participating in teams, we have some rather
bureaucratic processes in place for how and where people can form
teams, and LoCo teams are not as optimized for success as they could
be. Put simple, I feel our LoCo Team community could benefit from
stronger and more visible leadership.

I want to change this. I want to re-energize our LoCo community to
bring out the best in our wider community and to open doors to more
and more people who can be touched by Ubuntu. I am not talking about
just welcoming Linux fans to LoCo teams...but app developers, content
creators, devops, partners, general users, and more.

The potential is tantalizing.

For us to achieve this though we need a crisp strategy.

At UDS the other day we had a session that I found personally rather
frustrating. At every UDS we always have a session about LoCo Teams,
and there are always lots of ideas around what LoCo teams should be
doing and how we can support them. These ideas are usually expressed
as "*we should do XYZ*" or "*the problem with LoCo teams is XYZ and we
need to fix that*". We always have lots of ideas but few people are
willing to sign up to work items to deliver that work.

Ideas are easy to have, delivering real practical solutions that drive
improvements is harder, and we need more of the latter. We need people
who are *willing to make change happen* in a practical way.

There is too much opportunity with Ubuntu and bringing technology
freedom to people to let our LoCo Teams wither on the vine.

## Help Us Lead

Recently the LoCo Council announced a re-election for seats on the
next council (
http://lococouncil.ubuntu.com/2013/08/28/call-for-nominations-to-the-loco-council-2/
).
The LoCo Council is the most natural place for this leadership to
occur, and I want to encourage those of you who are willing to commit
the time and effort to bring change to LoCo Teams to apply to join.

I want to transition the mental model of how the LoCo Council works
from merely joining meetings and reacting to agenda items and tending
to the business of the week. I want to see the council bring
leadership, challenge the norms, challenge our bottlenecks, and build
a culture of innovation and change around our LoCo Teams.

Our community is laden with great people who can bring this kind of
leadership, and I want to encourage you to join the council.

We need people who are willing to commit more than providing +1 and -1
votes on our LoCo Council meetings, but people who want to think about
the next generation of LoCo Teams and what work needs to be completed
to achieve that vision, and commit to driving it forward. I would ask
that only those of you willing to (a) lead and (b) commit time to
actively participate in the strategy the council focuses on should
apply. If you can only commit to joining the LoCo Council meetings and
not driving strategy and leadership forward, please don't apply to
join.

This is not to suggest our existing and previous LoCo Councils has and
have not been doing great work; I am tremendously thankful for their
remarkable contributions. I just think we need to amp up our game, in
much of the same way we have been amping up the Ubuntu platform. Now
is our opportunity and we need to grasp it with both hands.

This is a tremendous opportunity for great leaders to have a real
world-changing impact on Ubuntu and Free Software in general.

If you are excited about the opportunity of re-energizing LoCo Teams,
bringing leadership, and challenging the norm, I strongly encourage
you to apply. Please share your ideas for leadership and change in
your application.

I am doggedly committed to helping to make our LoCo Teams successful
and I have some ideas around how we do this when the new council is
formed. I am looking forward to working with our new generation of
leaders to help our LoCo Teams to do incredible world-changing work
with an incredible world-changing platform.

Thanks,

    Jono

--
Jono Bacon
Ubuntu Community Manager
www.ubuntu.com / www.jonobacon.org
www.identi.ca/jonobacon www.twitter.com/jonobacon

--
loco-contacts mailing list
loco-contacts at lists.ubuntu.com
https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts



-- 
Regards,

Jared Norris
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/JaredNorris
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