Country Team UK?

[sparkes]

John Levin wrote:
> 
> On 29 Dec 2004, at 20:35, sparkes wrote:
> 
> This email gave much food for thought - hence late response.
> (Also, flu intervened)

me too.  I blame computer viruses ;-)

> 
> 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.

True, but internationalization for these languages should be led from 
the home country whenever possible.  Unless anytone wants a Cornish 
language version ;-)


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

It would be worthwhile getting in touch with the teams translating other 
free software projects.

> 
>> 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.

It only really needs a mailing list and support from cannonical for 
'offical' presences.  It's not a massive role and one that can be 
handled by a local list and volunteers.


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

Like Oxford before Matero ;-)  I think the social aspect will be one of 
the largest and most productive aspects of a UK country team.  Most UK 
LUG members are involved because of the social interaction rather than 
the technical.

> 
>> 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).

It certainly won't hurt ubuntu to have people spreading the word.  But 
most LUGs probably have someone doing this now ;-)  Certainly wolves LUG 
has a strong movement backing ubuntu (thanks to a large group of long 
term Debian users looking to move 'ordinary' people on to linux 
desktops) and South Birmingham LUG (thanks to a talk by Jeff Waugh and 
Scott James Remnant in the Summer).

As for pushing other things Ubuntu gives to the community things like 
Rosetta and Bazzar are really projects sponsored by Cannonical related 
to the Ubuntu project and not things that Ubuntu offers the community. 
While they should be part of the information given to the community (if 
every business attempting to make money out of Linux did a tenth of what 
cannonical are doing they would have a far better name) the real things 
I think are offered by Ubuntu are a stable release packed with the 
latest packages released every six months and apt to keep it all up to date.

What's happening with the components of ubuntu is an interesting idea. 
It might be nice to produce an email newsletter mailing list to round up 
things that are happening in the wider world related to ubuntu for the 
whole community.  Not that many people follow the dozens of mailing 
lists and blogs out there but a team of people could easily sum up 
what's happening monthly.  Perhaps that's our first project?

> Use it for organizing training, whether for community groups or businesses.

business training is really a thing that should be done on a commercial 
basis.  There is no reason when businesses offering these services can't 
be an active part of the country team as long as they offer something to 
the community and don't just see it as a commercial opportunity.  Lot's 
of linux businesses in the uk have supported free software and community 
projects in the past.

Community training is something interesting.  The Welsh ex-friends of 
the earth techno hippies (google foo wasted can't find link right now) 
had a cool network in a box thing they lugged around and set up anywhere 
to show the power of free software, a2rt.org (based in brum, and good 
guys) are building a community network thing and lowtech.org (in 
Shefield) have one too all based on free software and old computers. 
All of these projects have done training in free software use for 
community groups.

I am pretty sure openadvantange.org will help if anyone wants to offer 
training in the midlands for either businesses or community groups.

> 
> Must take cough medicine now.

and I need some sleep now ;-)

> 
> john
> 
> 
sparkes

-- 
<davee> "Sparkes, the Pete Best of LugRadio"
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