To do list

Mon May 5 11:29:32 BST 2008

As a matter of priority, I suggest we start with the SysAdmin Day followed by the Annual Conference. The rest of the priorities can develop when people meet and share. We can hook up with the Computer Society of Zimbabwe to check if they can not help with a slot in one of their monthly meetings for a start.

I agree with Ronald that we join user groups in order to meet face to face and share experiences. The sharing or "socializing" can start online and develop from there. Lets go for it.

  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: ronald munjoma 
  To: Kalpesh Thaker 
  Cc: ubuntu-zw at lists.ubuntu.com ; Neil Coetzer 
  Sent: Friday, May 02, 2008 10:42 AM
  Subject: Re: To do list

  Hello Kalpesh,

  Neil, this is what I think is "value":

  Being a member of a Ubuntu Linux users group can be useful.  Ubuntu Linux Zimbabwe (what the official name?) will;

  0) organizes free learn sessions.

  1) organizes a yearly conference.

  2) prints and publishes a journal with news, information and technical articles.

  3) host sysadmin day
  4) host Ubuntu installfests, boot camps

  But, other than the things I mentioned above, what is the added value of joining an Ubuntu Linux ZIM users group? Especially with the abundance of freely available information on the Web and the presence of HLUG and ZOSS!. Whenever I think about it, I always come back to the same conclusion. I believe that the most value of being a member of a users group are the people you meet during these group events, the face to face interaction, the referrals and experience sharing.

  It's that socializing and communicating with people, who share the same interests as yours, what makes joining a users group in general, and an Ubuntu one in particular, worthwhile. Don't you agree? What users group are you a member of? What do you think a users group should do to justify its existence and value to its members?

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  2008/5/2 Kalpesh Thaker <luminary06 at gmail.com>:

    Hi Ronald, great to "meet" you..

    I definitely agree with your points as well..... a person with your experience could be a great 
    asset to the ubuntu community.

  See my point above. 

    its great to hear that companies are now going native with ubuntu
    infrastructures! for me that is a great achievement..as once apon a time
    nearly all companies were using pirated software.

  We need to find out who else is using Ubuntu and for what? We need to build up database of Ubuuntu users in Zimbabwe. 

    Okay, as far as what yoafrica has donated, basically, they've donated a co-located hosting 
    package, which involves hosting a dedicated server in our data centre, with its own dedicated bandwidth. Unfortunately, this does not include support other than physically keeping the machine connected and running 24/7...as discussed before i'll volunteer to do this...
    (no one else will get access to our data centre in any case) and if ray from enet will agree, i can help with maintaining the repository as well.

    Due to the nature of service for the repository, international bandwidth is expensive, and should be heavily limited by the shaper...i'll confirm to what specs... 
    im sure international bandwidth would only be used to update the repo in any case. 
    however, the repository will work extremely quick locally.....
    at whatever speed your connections can handle..as local bandwidth is free.

    However, this is completely different from our usual webhosting..as these have their own dedicated hosting servers... i dont think there was any talk of hosting an ubuntu website on these...?

    Neil, The alternative is to setup apache2 and virtualmin on the ubuntu repository itself, and install joomla 1.5 on it...then host the site from there... i can draw up a backup strategy for this as well....however, someone will have to communicate with ENET on that one, to find out if its okay to do so. i dont mind setting it up if we get a go ahead from enet, and if their too tied up with other things..i can then get the dns setup at yoafrica for www.ubuntu.org.zw to point to the repository... just an idea.??

    I will try and follow up with the domain registration with comone.....

  why Comone and not Yo!Africa, does this mean that if Yo!Africa is going to host the site we have to transfer the domain to Yo!. Will you talk to Helen and find out what it takes to register the domain with Yo! (I have registered a couple of domains with her help) 

    i know i've been having endless delays with registering .org.zw lately... but basically, either way the website wont be happening until the domain is registered.

    i think a meeting would be super cool... that way things can be discussed and planned out more clearly and formally.

  Is there anyone who is prepared to host us for an informal, meet and greet meeting? What will be aganda apart from meeting and greeting?  Any dates in mind?

  Ronald. 

    kalpesh.

    On Fri, May 2, 2008 at 1:41 AM, Neil Coetzer <ncoetzer at halsteds.co.zw> wrote:

      Hi again Ronald,

      Some valid points.

      Firstly, when you talk of people "joining" Ubuntu Zimbabwe, are you referring to the LoCo Team or just the community as a whole? Can you elaborate a little on what 'value' you think people should get from membership? 

      0. Mission - Yes, I agree.
      1. Vision - Once again, agreed.
      2. Organisation - Team Structure - In some cases LoCo Teams operate fine without any formal structure/leadership, and in other cases formal structures have been established. I don't particularly mind either way myself, but this would have to be decided on by the LoCo Team as a whole and we would need opinions from all the members as to whether or not they feel a formal structure is necessary at this point, and if so, to what extent.
      3. Ground Rules/Constitution - You might want to take a look at these, which already apply to our community, as part of the worldwide Ubuntu Community.
      This Code of Conduct applies to everyone in any Ubuntu Community: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/conduct 
      The Leadership Code of Conduct applies to anyone in a leadership position, which includes all LoCo Team Members: http://www.ubuntu.com/community/leadership-conduct 
      4. Registering as a non-profit organisation would definitely be a good thing and is something we have discussed briefly before but never acted on. Do you know how to go about this? Registering with CSZ could also be a good plan.
      5. I agree that we need to have a structure in place to handle the sourcing of funds and handling of donations, etc. I would suggest however that we wait until the country stabilizes a little more before making any decisions. Should we decide to open our own bank account, the last thing we need is to discover that the signatories have suddenly emigrated to the UK :) However, I must be honest and say that I would be strongly opposed to any form of membership subs as I don't feel this would conform to the ideals of Ubuntu. Membership must be free for all, remembering that there is no lower or upper age limit for membership and any lack of finances for an individual should never be an issue where membership of our community/team is concerned. Any funds that come in must be in the form of donations, or as a result of any fund raising projects that we might run. As a compromise, we could perhaps have a voluntary subscription for those members who are willing and able to pay it, but at the end of the day it would basically be a donation.

      Web site:

      As far as I know Yo!Africa uses Joomla as a default (Kalpesh, please confirm), and in my opinion Joomla is the best to use so this would probably suit us well. Raymond and I did work on a site last year and most of the graphics and layout were completed, with only the content left to do. However, both of us have recently changed jobs and moved to Harare (him from Kwekwe, me from Masvingo) so have not had much time lately to continue working on it. At the time, we designed a standard site (without using any content management systems). I'm at home until Monday but will make a plan next week to let everyone see the "look" for the site that we had come up with. What I would suggest, if everyone approves the "look" of the site, is that we then apply that look to a custom Joomla template. Since the site was designed with css, we could just transfer those style sheets to the Joomla template. I have only messed around a little with customising Joomla templates, so if anyone else is more confident in this area I would most willingly hand it over.

      Off the top of my head, I would say the main priorities for the site are as follows: 
        a.. To provide links to Ubuntu resources for Zimbabweans, including local repository information, local downloads of Ubuntu iso's, the Zimbabwe Ubuntu forum, mailing list and LoCo Team pages (which could be relocated from the wiki to the local site, once it's up and running). 
        b.. To provide information and further links relating to open source. I did e-mail ZOSS last year in connection with some sort of affiliation and interlinking of sites, but to date have not received a response. 
        c.. To provide notice for any upcoming/planned events in Zim. 
        d.. To provide updates on Zimbabwean projects (such as the Freedom Toaster). 
        e.. In the future it might be an option to have our forum hosted locally with the site, but I think we're still too small for this. At present with the forum being hosted along with all the other Ubuntu forums, we can benefit from the exposure and experience of Ubuntu users worldwide, whereas a local forum would only be read by the relatively few Zimbabwean users. 
      We have received approval from Canonical to register the domain www.ubuntu.org.zw and I have requested this to be done through Yo!Africa but have not received feedback yet. Kalpesh, can we liaise on this? As a side note, I did notice that somebody has registered the domain www.ubuntu.co.zw which has nothing to do with Ubuntu Linux - I'm not sure if we have any grounds to complain regarding copyright infringement under Zimbabwean law? Probably not. Does anyone know?

      Ronald thanks again for your input and enthusiasm. I must admit that I have been a bit lax following my move up here, but I'm fairly well settled now so we definitely need to get the ball rolling again. I think we should definitely organise a team meeting if possible at some point soon.

      Regards,
      Neil

      On Thu, 2008-05-01 at 18:55 +0200, ronald munjoma wrote:

        Hello,

        I am sure you should be sick and tired of my emails by now (my apologies, I had to go through the mailing list, this is my last email today, I will summarize everything I have to say here - based on your previous emails and my thought, think of it as digest)

        I am a member of HLUG and ZOSS (founding member in both cases) to be honest with you I have not derived much value frommy  membership (I also feel that I have not added much value to the other members). The two organizations are "dead" when it comes to activities, mailing list posts, forums, meetings, installfests....

        When people join Zimbabwe Ubuntu they expect to derive so value from their membership, please make sure that these people get something back and at the same time let us allow them to add some value to us (networ-effect). That been said we should come up with a compelling value proposition (Whats In It For Me) for prospective members.

        I strongly feel we nedd to formalise the group, right now we are just but a bunch of individuals posting on the net. Yes open source projects, groups
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