Country Team UK?

[John Levin]

On 29 Dec 2004, at 20:35, sparkes wrote:

This email gave much food for thought - hence late response.
(Also, flu intervened)

> John Levin wrote:
>> Is anyone else interested in an Ubuntu country team for the UK / 
>> England ?
>> Make yourselves known, and I'll start putting things in motion.
>
> couple of points to raise here.
>
> Role of Country Team Leader
>   keep users up to speed with news who may not speak english
>   maintain local mailing list
>   remind users of Ubuntu code of conduct and remain impartial (that's 
> me out then ;-) )

Yup, in the case of England, as the default language is English (and as 
Canonical are based here), a large part of the raison d'etre for the 
country team is absent.

>
> Unless the team leader speaks 20 languages he/she is not going to be 
> able to help non-english speakers since they are a minority and have a 
> wide variation in native language.  So this (pretty important) part of 
> the role is not needed.
>

However, given the many languages spoken here - specifically for me 
here in London - an effort towards internationalization is a possible 
task. Also, if we try to reach out and support organizations - whether 
charities or businesses - it's quite possible there will be 
multilingual needs.

> so the UK team leader has to be the sort of person who toes the line 
> and maintains the mailing list.  Suddenly not such as attractive 
> community role ;-)

*gulp*

>  But I am sure there will be many people who want to take on this sort 
> of role and can handle all the problems that come with such a role.
>
> and the role of the team itself.
>
> Translation is not required in most cases since all large projects 
> already have either International or UK language packs and the ubuntu 
> project writes (mostly) in International english this large role is 
> reduced.
>

Brief interjection: are there any Welsh-speakers who want a Cymru 
country team?

<snip>

> Plus at expos there are already a large number of ubuntu developers 
> and users attending these events (perhaps as members of the debian 
> community, as cannonical employee's or as interested members of the 
> community) so less organisation will be needed to get a table together 
> in the dotorg sections than might be needed elsewhere in the world.
>

Nevertheless, it'll still require some co-ordinating, just to make sure 
buntu has a presence, rather than lots of ubuntu-folk being there.

> So the Team isn't going to be as important (in some respects) as teams 
> that require lots of input and translation effort and will be more of 
> a community with a smaller ubuntu-user/sounder and #ubuntu .
>
> I'm not saying it won't be an important part of the community because 
> it will but it should be organised and treated more like a Linux User 
> Group than a county team.
>

The social aspect shouldn't be discounted! Smaller events than Matero 
for UK ubuntists might be nice.

> Other than that, great idea, count me in.

Does the country team have a role beyond international- and local- 
ization?

Some ideas:
Use it for "spreading the word" by going round the LUGs, not 
neccessarily simply evangelizing (foul word) but talking about what 
Ubuntu gives to the community (eg rosetta) and what's happening with 
the fundamental components of ubuntu (Gnome, Project Utopia).
Use it for organizing training, whether for community groups or 
businesses.

Must take cough medicine now.

john