Lack of Connection Between Canonical and the Community

[Elizabeth K. Joseph]

On Mon, Dec 8, 2014 at 10:31 AM, Michael Hall <mhall119 at ubuntu.com> wrote:
>
> On 12/08/2014 01:13 PM, Craig Maloney wrote:
>> One suggestion that might help would be for Canonical to allow for more
>> participation in local events. But then we run the risk of "Canonical is
>> taking over the community" complaints which further divide our already
>> fractious community.
>>
>
> I'm a bit confused by this part. Canonical doesn't "allow" participation
> in local event, you don't need permission from us to host or attend
> them. Canonical can and does provide resources for them, and if asked we
> (Community Team specifically) help help with the organization and
> arrangements for them. But we're not a gatekeeper, there's nothing
> stopping local events from being run however they want.

When I read this, I thought about how this manifests in my team. There
are a lot of tech events that happen in California, and the
communication between Canonical and the California LoCo is
non-existent.

There was an Ubuntu+OpenStack event half a block from my home, at a
venue the LoCo had used for events before, and I only heard about *the
morning of the event* it because I follow an Ubuntu Cloud Twitter
account. Not much time to invite the local community, indeed, after I
shared it on our mailing list I was the only one from the team who was
able to go at such short notice. There was also no contact when there
was a Canonical sprint in Oakland, even details about a public
Discourse meetup that coincided with it weren't shared with the local
community, we learned about it from a Canonical employee's social
media stream afterwards.

I know I'm bringing up old issues as examples, but this is still
happening and I haven't seen anything that's going to change this.
This disconnect is pretty painful for our team and in spite of the
ability to ask for community funding, it makes people in the team
believe (and say) "Canonical doesn't care about the local community."
After the first time telling them "I'm sure they just forgot to tell
us" that line wears pretty thin.

Now I can understand if the sprints themselves are
Canonical+invite-only for business purposes, but even offering a small
evening meetup, or Ubuntu Hour, or inviting us along to a 3rd party
event some Canonical employees are going to because it's of interest
to Ubuntu would make a huge difference in how the company is perceived
in our local community. It breaks down the barriers between "us" and
"them" significantly. It makes us feel valued and that we're important
to Ubuntu too and instead of ignored.

-- 
Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph || Lyz || pleia2