UGJ dates (draft)

[Stephen Michael Kellat]

On Wed, 26 Nov 2014 22:23:11 -0500
José Antonio Rey <jose at ubuntu.com> wrote:

> I remember having a proposal for having two a cycle: one mid-cycle,
> and one by the end of the cycle. The mid-cycle one would be useful for
> translations, testing, docs, and more, while the other one at the end
> of the cycle would be focused on quality efforts (which is most of
> what can be done at that point).
> 
[snip]

It is appropriate to mention at this point in time that LoCo Council has open work items derived from a blueprint. [1]  If anything these came about from the discussion Daniel Holbach referenced from UOS 1411. [2]

For the avoidance of uncertainty, the germane LoCo Council work items are:

[ubuntu-lococouncil] Develop in concert with Canonical Community Team appropriate feedback mechanism and measurements tools for assessment of UGJ: TODO
[ubuntu-lococouncil] Develop plan for AskUbuntu Patrol game/project/exercise including challenge coins for UGJ 1 to 2 during 15.04 cycle: TODO
[ubuntu-lococouncil] Cooperate with Canonical Community Team in developing developing AskUbuntu documentation for Patrol game/project/exercise: TODO

The "AskUbuntu Patrol" is a concept that can be used in addition to traditional activities by our community teams.  Questions need answered.  Sometimes questions should be asked with answers immediately proposed which is something you can do on StackExchange sites.  There are a wide variety of questions that earnestly seek answers and are considered "featured". [3]  There are also a wide range of topics that questions receive facet-tagging for. [4]  I spent a bit of time during the later half of the 14.10 cycle just trying to clean up questions either inappropriately tagged as being Xubuntu-related or not reflecting the correct facets of the question.

The Patrol concept would be a marathon rather than a sprint.  It is conceived as stretching between the first UGJ date and the second UGJ date.  The goal would be to improve the quality and quantity of content on AskUbuntu by having more eyeballs poring over what is seen there.  Improvements to AskUbuntu quality benefit our community overall.  Funds permitting and if we figured out the logistics, challenge coins would be offered at the end for participants to commemorate their participation in the event.  LoCo Council recognition of teams that collectively racked up the biggest change in team member point total scores on AskUbuntu between start and finish would also be contemplated.

The dates Daniel has proposed look good for attempting this Patrol concept if the Council and CCT can get something put together before Christmas for teams to consider.  Right now we've got a mediation/arbitration case we're working on and just finished a verification case.  Incidentally, congratulations to Ubuntu Oregon for securing Verified status for 2 years as of yesterday.

As to the worries raised by Nathan Haines over administrative burden, that worry bothers me.  A growing refrain as of late from the threads kicked off by the blog posts written by Jono Bacon as well as that discussion indicates people worry about "bureaucracy" and "administrative burden".  Activities do not spontaneously organize themselves and the skillset to plan such things isn't always congruent with that of a coder or designer.  I'm keeping those concerns in mind and trying to resolve two points that seem to be in tension between each other.

This took a little longer to write after I got done helping with the late night last minute cooking...

Stephen Michael Kellat


[1]: (https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/community-1411-planning-v-cycle-events)
[2]: (http://summit.ubuntu.com/uos-1411/meeting/22366/community-1411-planning-v-cycle-events/)
[3]: (https://askubuntu.com/?tab=featured)
[4]: (https://askubuntu.com/tags)