[ubuntu-uk] UKTeam meeting update

[Nik Butler]

Snipping from David and Alans post.

First off, David hello and welcome to the list I see from your posts 
your taking time to read various postings which is great and I am glad 
to see that your taking time to comment.

You are spot on about the issues of numbers on this list vs numbers in 
irc. Ive mentioned this on the IRC channel  (#ubuntu-uk on 
irc.freenode.net ) a number of times that the total number of people 
reading the forums and maillists and Wiki certainly is not represented 
by those who join in on IRC. As Alan ( Alan Pope, popey on irc )  has 
pointed out, the numbers of people contributing on the maillist is also 
disproportionate to the number of people involved in reading the lists, 
and so it is with the  wikis. I am not sure there is a  balance to be 
had though in defining where we are as a community UK wide. I , like 
you, also have my reservations about IRC and if it wasn't there I 
wouldn't kick start it as a product to use. There are plenty of other 
channels for meetings such as Skype, Talkshoe and Flashmeeting, as well 
as Wikis, Forums and Mailists they all have their strengths and their 
weaknesses equally.  IRC has proven to be the lowest common denominator 
when it comes to a mechanism to enable near instant communication across 
the team and its been there for most of the Ubunut community worldwide. 
I do however understand not using IRC I find it at times to be very high 
in geek level utilisation and it comes with yet another group of 
etiquette and "learned rules" which for many is just one more thing too far.

So who are the team ? Well theres no real definitive answer  on that 
one. We dont actually have a "leader" but we do have a number of people 
whom you could consider a point of contact for various activities. The 
LocoContact in this case , me , is a person  ( or group of persons ) who 
are considered to be reliably "available" and consistently involved in 
the Loco community which I hope is a good bottom line description since 
I dont feel technical merits should be the definition of who can get 
involved .

But I am glad to see another contributor who is diving right in , asking 
pertinent questions and getting things out there so welcome to the list 
and do come say hello .


Nik Butler

ps , for more details on the usual suspects see :   
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/Contact