[ubuntu-za] Ubuntu-ZA Moving Forward

[David Rubin]

I have been thinking of a few ways to improve Ubuntu-ZA. So I would
like to hear your suggestions/comments/ideas etc. If you don't have
the time to read it all, please skip to the bottom and read the ==
Summary  ==

== Website/Technical ==
As you know we have recently
[https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-za/2010-April/005738.html]
suffered a complete data loss of our wiki -- all the content is gone.
So I have a few ideas for ways we can move forward. Start afresh, and
improve on things we have done in the past.

Some background information: Jonathan Carter is currently, and has
been dealing with all technical related matters up until now. We do
appreciate this greatly, but it isn't ideal for three reasons:

1) one person is burdened with the task of all the maintenance
3) responsibility of all the costs involved with hosting.
2) any thing else that might crop up.

Current technical details about what ubuntu-za did/does host:

1) Wiki  (media wiki, our base website) -- Hosted by Jonathan
2) Planet (Aggregation of ubuntu-za bloggers) -- Hosted by Jonathan
3) ubuntu-za.org domain -- Currently under Canonical ownership
4) Maaz (irc bot) -- Currently hosted by Michael
5) ubuntu-za mailing list -- Hosted by Canonical
6) Google Calendar -- Hosted by Google, David currently has Admin access.

These responsibilities could fall under the loco-contact at the time
(currently Morgan and I(David), previously Jonathan). Generally
speaking the loco-contact should set aside time to ubuntu-za related
issues, but often the technical issues require attention that can not
be planned for. The result is that the ubuntu-za issues get neglected.
So I would like to set up a team of +- 3 people who are responsible
for making sure that ubuntu-za runs smoothly.

== Website ==
Since our current wiki is gone, we need to go about setting up a new
publicly facing website.

=== What it was used for ===

1) Front facing portal to ubuntu-za
2) wiki
2) Meeting minutes -- Can be replaced by Ibid's meeting plugin and
uploaded to the wiki
3) Place to store photos
4) Basic howto's specific to ubuntu-za

=== Choices for moving forward ===
1) Set up a new media wiki
2) Set up a proper CMS ie Drupal
3) Use http://wiki.ubuntu.com/TeamZA/
4) Do nothing

== Plan ==
We are going to switch over to a proper  CMS for our home page. In the
past we have mainly used our wiki as a CMS -- this way it allows us to
have a nice pretty home page linking to other things(planet, mailing
lists, forums, wiki ie moving our wiki related stuff to
http://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZATeam) The pretty home page is something that
I feel strongly about since it is the first thing new users see.

=== Hosting ===
The next thing we need to decide on is the hosting environment. Do we
continue to use the shared hosting that Jonathan has been providing to
us at no cost or do we switch over to a VPS/other shared hosting? What
ever we choose it would need to be sponsored, see the Financial point
below.

=== Financial ===
Ubuntu-za currently has no budget maybe this was intentional since
managing a budget does involved additional work, i.e. we can't pay for
hosting requirements, printing fliers/posters/cd's. I think that
ubuntu-za should have a "budget", but exactly how we do this I don't
really know.

Do we:
1) Set up a dedicated bank account,
2) Set up a paypal account,
3) Appoint a person to keep track of the funds (publicly) and just
keep the money safe, or
4) Hide some money under a bed.

All of these ideas rely on the fact that we can get limited funding.
Call me naive but although I think we might not get huge amounts of
donations but we might just get enough to cover small things like
domain registration, printing posters for releases, advertising and
whatnot, which would be great for us as a LoCo.

== Summary ==
1) We need a new improved website setup
2) We need some sort of budget.

=== How we plan to do this ===
1) I have set up a temporary redirect for all wiki.ubuntu-za.org to
point to http://wiki.ubuntu.com/ZATeam for now until the new site +
awesome new theme is ready.
2) Not exactly sure waiting on other peoples inputs.


Hope to get some good comments and suggestions
~ David Rubin