Once upon a time the Swedish LoCo was verified, but due to circumstances we no longer are. And TBH I don’t understand how that matters in practice.
In 2015/2016 members of the Swedish LoCo participated in a couple of conferences, and our requests for funding of the expenses were granted. Nobody even asked if we were a verified LoCo.
IMHO the status of a LoCo ought to be determined by the activity level. So possibly there is room for simply dropping the paper work related to applications for (re-)verification, and solely focus on supporting and encouraging true and relevant activity.
Oh, I mean When people starting a new LoCo, It can be consisted with group of users first. Since it would be easier approach. it wasn’t mean about setting up another sub-community inside LoCo.
I was also thinking that we can also consider LoCos to do self re-verification by filling in simple form and then LoCo council to check it later and contact them only in case needed.
Motivation to get re-verified, That’s also a good questions to think about. And I think I haven’t think about that sorry There would be many reasons to get verified, but if it doesn’t expires. I think there won’t be much reasons to apply for the process.
As a former loco council member i second the thoughts too of @gunnarhj
Verification or reverification can be like a discussion thread like the present one where the loco council members get involved in the discussion or how about dropping the existing verification or reverification process and take on a more activity centred approach?
By activity centred approach , even if there are two persons in a loco team and they meet for a common cause involving ubuntu or ubuntu advocacy would also count as activity.
In short focussing on quality rather than quantity.
Folks, since we are talking about re-verification, how about easing the verification process of new LoCos? Like the one in Mauritius exists since 2011. We do events one and off but we exist and there is activity.
Thanks for the clarification on the ubuntu user groups… it will be more like a matured growth and transition from a specific user group to a local community in that particular region.
Maybe just starting a discussion thread here with few links to the loco activities will do i guess or is there any other better idea for determining status of a loco?
+1 If a LoCo is active it should not have to go through the re-verification paperwork. Whether it is active should be determined by the number of meetings and events that it conducts in a 2 year or what ever time frame. I am sure that there are LoCo’s out there that are active but do not go through the process of getting re-verified because it is a pain. Obviously the Swedish LoCo may be an example.
That brings me to another question. What do you think should be the motivation behind a loco team applying to the loco council to be a verified loco?
Excellent question. We definitely need to offer a compelling reason for folks to apply for verification. Here are a few that we’ve discussed in past conversations:
Access to various Ubuntu merchandise packs to use for LoCo events.
Additional sponsorship opportunities at larger conferences and events.
Custom Discourse badges, certificates or additional forms of recognition.
Those are just a couple ideas that we’ve tossed around within our team. I would love to hear from the LoCo leads on other incentives that we could possibly provide.
Thanks! So autorenewal is the best option then with the loco council reaching out to the loco team after reverification, about the loco team’s next plans.
And if expired accidentally just a mail to the loco council for reinstatement would suffice i guess.
Also, giving a loco team an opportunity to share their story to the wider audience at ubuntu summits like in the previous summit where we heard about ubucon asia and ubucon Europe would be great as well…
I didn’t had much contact with the LoCo Council before, so I don’t know what to say about it.
I think we shouldn’t define very strictly what LoCo’s should be allowed to be, except a community that focus on Ubuntu, or some sub-set of Ubuntu, or in doing some things with Ubuntu. Teams Like Ubuntu Women, Ubuntu Testers, Ubuntu Flutter Developers, could also be managed as a LoCo, I have no issues with that.
Regarding the LoCo reaching the community, I don’t think I’m understanding what you mean. LoCo only exist because they’re community, do you mean LoCo’s reaching the broader Ubuntu Community? Can you elaborate more?
Having permanent technical infrastructure is critical to support community building efforts.
While building some infrastructure can actually help the community coalesce around that effort and grow, often the need to set up infrastructure it can actually be a barrier to the operationality of the LoCo, and block community activities. Additionally, having some Ubuntu wide infrastructure shared among LoCo’s not only reduces costs, but it also helps the LoCo’s bound, and gives LoCo members an additional incentive to get involved with the Ubuntu Community behind their LoCo.
So I do believe something like the LoCo Portal needs to exist, I’m just not convinced it should exist as is, and likely it should be not just a LoCo Portal, but an Ubuntu Community Portal, where LoCo’s would have their place too.
Providing information about LoCo’s and their activities is necessary for sure, but probably also include links for AskUbuntu, to Ubuntu Forums, the the Weekly Newsletter, integrate the Fridge, Planet Ubuntu, the Youtube (and competitors) channels, Ubuntu Blog, Snapcraft Blog, the Discourses of Ubuntu, Snapcraft, and Linux Containers, the Charmers, etc…
Likely all these communities around Ubuntu would also benefit of having a profile like the Ubuntu LoCo’s have currently on the LoCo Portal, and of having a way to organize events and meetings independent of services like meetup.com, but that could integrate with them, a possibly even with the Fediverse.
I think there’s a lot to explore here.
Kind of! Having a LoCo Portal and integrations with third party services like social media presence o the LoCo, and other things allow to automatically collect metrics about the community activity ahd have automated health check, that could, if needed, raise additional non-automated health checks.
The Ubuntu-pt team, also uses the LoCo Portal (it’s not the only thing we use), as it’s practical to have a formal record of our activities, and offers a platform that people who don’t want to use meetup.com or facebook, can use to communicate events, or register for events.
Thanks for the elaborate answers to the questions. Below are my 2 cents
I didn’t had much contact with the LoCo Council before, so I don’t know what to say about it.
Do you think that the loco team structure should be setup in a different manner than it is at present?
I think we shouldn’t define very strictly what LoCo’s should be allowed to be, except a community that focus on Ubuntu, or some sub-set of Ubuntu, or in doing some things with Ubuntu. Teams Like Ubuntu Women, Ubuntu Testers, Ubuntu Flutter Developers, could also be managed as a LoCo, I have no issues with that.
How about having a local team within a loco like ubuntu-pt-women which can be run by the ubuntu-pt team liaising the Ubuntu women team to guide the ubuntu-pt-women team?
Regarding the LoCo reaching the community, I don’t think I’m understanding what you mean. LoCo only exist because they’re community, do you mean LoCo’s reaching the broader Ubuntu Community? Can you elaborate more?
Yes, like as in the above response if ubuntu-pt-women would exist… how do you think they can reach out to the wider community beyond Portugal to have their team activities heard of?
Having permanent technical infrastructure is critical to support community building efforts.
While building some infrastructure can actually help the community coalesce around that effort and grow, often the need to set up infrastructure it can actually be a barrier to the operationality of the LoCo, and block community activities. Additionally, having some Ubuntu wide infrastructure shared among LoCo’s not only reduces costs, but it also helps the LoCo’s bound, and gives LoCo members an additional incentive to get involved with the Ubuntu Community behind their LoCo.
So I do believe something like the LoCo Portal needs to exist, I’m just not convinced it should exist as is, and likely it should be not just a LoCo Portal, but an Ubuntu Community Portal, where LoCo’s would have their place too.
Providing information about LoCo’s and their activities is necessary for sure, but probably also include links for AskUbuntu, to Ubuntu Forums, the the Weekly Newsletter, integrate the Fridge, Planet Ubuntu, the Youtube (and competitors) channels, Ubuntu Blog, Snapcraft Blog, the Discourses of Ubuntu, Snapcraft, and Linux Containers, the Charmers, etc…
Likely all these communities around Ubuntu would also benefit of having a profile like the Ubuntu LoCo’s have currently on the LoCo Portal, and of having a way to organize events and meetings independent of services like meetup.com, but that could integrate with them, a possibly even with the Fediverse.
I think there’s a lot to explore here.
Thanks! How about having the Ubuntu community page on ubuntu.com for events and the loco portal as like an editable directory with team information and syndication of team related links on Ubuntu platforms like on ask Ubuntu , discourse etc which can help in health checks using python and selenium but the topic of health checks is broad and my personal opinion it should not be restrictive but exhaustive.
Providing information about LoCo’s and their activities is necessary for sure, but probably also include links for AskUbuntu, to Ubuntu Forums, the the Weekly Newsletter, integrate the Fridge, Planet Ubuntu, the Youtube (and competitors) channels, Ubuntu Blog, Snapcraft Blog, the Discourses of Ubuntu, Snapcraft, and Linux Containers, the Charmers, etc…
Absolutely! This is the motivation behind the new The Ubuntu Community | Ubuntu site that we’ve been working on. A front page for all things Ubuntu community related – Governance, community support, contribution, teams, etc. Moving the LoCo portal communications to Discourse would be a really nice addition as it’s all linked.
We’d be able to build out a LoCos directory and all the LoCo documentation within Discourse and serve it as nicely formatted ‘static’ content. Discourse itself will enable those dynamic conversations, provide proper content moderation and allow us to utilize badging and other incentivization capabilities.
In terms of timing, we should establish a reasonable timeline as well:
Building out the new LoCo home
Revising the LoCo guides (Joining/Creating a LoCo, Verification Process, Best practices & FAQ)
+1 for this and let’s decide the other nuances later
If we can have the loco portal info linked up on the Ubuntu community page and start transition to discourse it will be a start and we can modify on the fly.
Please let us know about timelines as well
New loco portal will be an editable directory with updated contact information from launchpad for a start
Static topics can be created on discourse like the Ubuntu documentation on discourse and information regarding the loco team process too
So updated migration
A team like loco ecosystem reboot enthusiasts would do for a start and creating bugs with milestones will do for a start i guess
I haven’t yet seen strong evidence supporting either change or not.
I would certainly love if ubuntu-pt-women existed as an ubuntu-pt subteam, and I believe that the team should ideally be an integral part of ubuntu-women (a subteam), and that they had a voice inside the ubuntu-pt council (I would concede even my place on that council if needed, as I believe a woman’s voice is more important there than mine).
At Ubuntu-pt we already have something like that, for the UBports in Portuguese Language Community. This group was created by Ubuntu-pt while Ubuntu Touch was still developed by Canonical. When Canonical stopped working on it and UBports took over, it was obvious to us that the longest existing and still very active regional group of users of Ubuntu Touch, should also integrate the UBports Community, so and because several of the Ubuntu-pt members where also active UBports contributors, and follows the same Code of Conduct, we agreed that it completely made sense to have a shared “custody” of the community and expanded it to not be only Portuguese community to be a Portuguese speakers community (many are from Brazil).
It helps that the people leading Ubuntu-pt, and representing UBports, but I believe the general feeling is that the community fully integrated.
They should have all the autonomy possible. Ubuntu-pt should be mostly an enabler, and only step in if requested by them or if requested ubuntu-women. They should also have a voice and vote on the ubuntu-pt Council.
so majorly as per the feedbacks received in loco team would be self driven with delegation in place locally with the relavant teams stepping in when required, also having the verification cycle in autopilot mode…
Not necessarily self-driven (or fully serlf-driven), but autonomous (as they have actually been so far). I do think there’s a role for teams that are not regional in definition and even to a LoCo Council, and the Ubuntu Community Team in setting direction, porpose policy and directives on the aspects that make sense to be more centralized, and to facilitate cooperation and dialogue across teams, always taking into consideration feedback from the LoCos.
Getting back to the ubuntu-pt-woman, example, I do beleive that the there’s a role of cooperative leadership from ubuntu-woman (proposing and boosing projects/ideas/tasks/people, setting up cooperation with other teams), where the Ubuntu-pt-woman should also be integrated (at least some ideally most of them), and had an active voice, and a role for Ubuntu-pt as a local sponsor facilitating their activitiy as much as possible, to and integrate the ubuntu-pt-woman representatives within the ubuntu-pt leadership.
Now I really wish there was a real Ubuntu-pt-woman…
There would be many reasons to get verified, but if it doesn’t expires. I think there won’t be much reasons to apply for the process.
it will be more like a matured growth and transition from a specific user group to a local community in that particular region.