Mentoring Systems Within the Community

Sat Dec 13 17:10:37 UTC 2014

The Beginners team was originally formed by the Ubuntu Forums Staff, going back to Ubuntu Geek and Matthew.

I was honored to ask to lead the team and started the team when I was a moderator on the Ubuntu Forums.

My goals for the team were to welcome new users to the community, foster comradery and friendship, and to integrate ubuntu forums members into the greater Ubuntu community.

As the team grew we encouraged users to  contribute back to the community and the team branched out to all major areas of the community from IRC to wiki to MOTU. Various members of the team mentored , startign with the basics for new users, to starting to become contributing Ubuntu community members. BT members graciously offered their time to mentor and guide people in many areas from support for new users to starting wiki to IRC to packaging (MOTU) to questions on security or system administration.

The team was quite successful and members of the BT moved on to become contributing members of the community and members of the BT have gone on to become MOTU -> Debian maintainers, Ubuntu forums administrators, IRC moderators, and even Community Council Members.

There came a time when I felt the team had served it's purpose combined with the inevitable real life course of events. I had less time for the team and I turned the BT over to "the community" in that I asked various volunteers to lead the BT. Over a 6-12 month period of time I established a core group of leaders to succeed me and steeped down as the leader of the BT.

After I stepped down there were a number of factors including again real life demands of BT leaders, BT leaders moving on in the community, etc. To be honest, because of the success of the BT, the team itself was no longer needed.

There are now well established routes to begin to use Ubuntu, obtain support (from forums to IRC to askubuntu), and to move on to become a MOTU, use IRC, or contribute to wiki team. This is largely because of better integration across the Ubuntu community as well as now clear and established pathways to become a contributing member of the Ubuntu community.

Ubuntu remains the single distro most welcoming to new users, both to the OS and to the community.

This was simply not the case when the BT started, the community was much less integrated and it was difficult, to say the least, to feel welcomed on #ubuntu, or MOTU or wiki.

Now, largely as both a result of the BT as well as maturation of the Ubuntu community, the situation remains much improved.

First there is integration with development and the Ubuntu forums (ubuntu +1). This brings developers and the community together and has been quite successful. The ubuntu forums is no longer the red headed child in the closet.

Second, #ubuntu is a much better place then it once was. I recall a time when #ubuntu was quite hostile to new users, but this is no longer the case. #ubuntu is friendlier them most IRC channels (just try to get irc support in say #apache).

Third there is now an established MOTU team with a mentoring system and clear, concise packaging guides as well as maturation of Launchad / ppa . ppa was in it's infancy when the BT started.

And last, previous members of the BT remain active contributing members of the Ubuntu community.

Such is the short history of the BT.

There were many great times, lots of laughs, and I have life long friends as a result of my time with the BT.

There were also disagreements, as there are with any project, but the disagreements were not the undoing of the BT. The BT served it's purpose and was a success and ended on a very positive note, community integration, what more would you have the team do?

As to http://wiki.linuxpadawan.net/LinuxPadawan , now we are at the next generation -> move from an isolated Ubuntu community and integrate into the larger, complex, and diverse Open Source community.

Not everyone uses Ubuntu (I no longer use Ubuntu) and Ubuntu will need to transition from Upstart to systemd, and perhaps to wayland, who knows ?

I will assist with linuxpadawan as time allows, but my time is very limited at this time. I can give guidance and advice, but I spend much of my free time testing Fedora (starting with beta), debuging selinux, spending time with my children, and frankly with music (I now play piano and mandolin). I really do not have the time to lead such a project.

I am also the upstream maintainer of my own package - http://wiki.linuxpadawan.net/LinuxPadawan It was a major re-write of the C code, major update and bug fix on the code, adding a translation, re-writing the make file, updating it to use notify-send, security fixes, etc .

Proud to say there really have not been any major bugs ;)

I wish linuxpadawan all the best and would encourage discussion, and even disagreement, so long as it clarifies the purpose of the team and results in improvement.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Phill Whiteside" <PhillW at PhillW.net>
To: "Svetlana Belkin" <belkinsa at ubuntu.com>, "bodhi zazen" <bodhi.zazen at ubuntu.com>
Cc: "José Antonio Rey" <jose at ubuntu.com>, ubuntu-community-team at lists.ubuntu.com
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2014 7:00:17 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Mentoring Systems Within the Community

Svetlana, 

to stop any bickering, as you can see - I've asked the founder of UBT to tell us what it was founded FOR, as opposed to people who joined later thought it was for. As you know he is the gentle hand that is guiding linuxpadawan[1]. He can swiftly put an end to what UBT BECAME, as opposed to what is WAS for. 

Personally, as the page[2] has as at the start of the mission statement " The Ubuntu Beginners Team exists to enhance the initial experience of new Ubuntu users and to guide existing Ubuntu users to become part of the global Ubuntu community...." I do believe that Jose is factually incorrect in his answer to you. 

@Bodhi, if you'd be kind enough to put this 'argument' to bed. 

Kindest Regards, 

Phill. 
1. http://wiki.linuxpadawan.net/LinuxPadawan 
2. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam 

---------- Forwarded message ---------- 

On 12 December 2014 at 17:28, Svetlana Belkin < belkinsa at ubuntu.com > wrote: 

I need your help here. 

-------- Forwarded Message -------- 
Subject: Re: Mentoring Systems Within the Community 
Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2014 12:28:04 -0500 
From: José Antonio Rey < jose at ubuntu.com > 
To: Svetlana Belkin < belkinsa at ubuntu.com >, ubuntu-community-team at lists. ubuntu.com 

Incorrect. 

Why is is that people keep thinking that UBT was to train new people 
into the OS? We have clearly stated, several times, that it was to train 
new *contributors* into the community. It served its purpose (you can 
ask people like Charles or Elfy, who were part of it) and the workflow 
wasn't working anymore. Things have a lifecycle and UBT had its own. 

As I see it, Linux Padawan is to assist new *users* and not 
contributors. So, what are you focusing on here? End-users or 
contributors? Please clarify. 

On 12/12/2014 12:25 PM, Svetlana Belkin wrote: 

All 

I would like to create a discussion (this can be forwarded to the other 
teams) that focuses on the various mentoring systems within the 
Community. I also would like to know what has worked and not worked. 

I know one and that is the Ubuntu Beginners (UT) but that died because a 
council was created for it and was disbanded because of it. But UT was 
rebirthed as Linux Padawan: http://wiki.linuxpadawan.net/ AboutUs 

I know Ubuntu Women had one but I think the problem with it was the 
whole lack of time to mentor or to be mentored. 

Now I will hand it over to you guys. 

-- 
José Antonio Rey 

-- 

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/phillw