I’ve been pondering this post for some time. Trying to work it out in my head before I put pen to paper!
I regularly get asked this what does a loco team do? What should they do? Is it ok if they do a talk, demo, install, hand out cds etc. Well in short. Yes, you can do anything, as long as you don’t breech the CoC. Many teams do things very differently and I think this needs to be addressed in some way. Take a team that takes part in multiple conferences either by helping at them by running a both, handing out cds throughout the year. They are spreading the Ubuntu word. They are being an active team. This is fantastic work and it is necessary.
Not all teams can do this though. Other teams have a different plan and can’t meet face to face, their entire community is based online, they communicate via meetings, IRC, giving classes and helping one another. This is a community too. It is harder to judge, it’s sometimes harder to review, which is why we often look at launchpad and see a teams membership, to see how active a team is. People may disagree with this, but we need some way to measure things from time to time and launchpad is useful in this case.
What I am trying to explain, is that a team can be active in numerous ways. It is great to see teams operate so differently and spread the word of Ubuntu in their own way. A team doesn’t always need to limit itself to only meeting when they are giving a talk, or attending a conference. You’re a community, many of the people you interact with are possibly your friends and you may have more in common with them besides Ubuntu.
A Loco team should be about having fun while educating and talking about Ubuntu to people, helping one another is very important, always help those close to you those who are part of your community before you start to change peoples perception of open source. By helping those in your team you help people in the long run. A locoteam that runs classes to help be it online or face to face is helping people understand and use Ubuntu. It’s about team work!
Teams that do other activities and embrace the community may find it easier to get more people involved as they can talk about other topics besides oss/foss/Ubuntu. We’re all about Linux for human beings, we need to remember this sometimes and have some fun outside of conferences and meet ups.
It just really hit me today, when reading my Irish LoCo team report, on the stuff they’ve been doing how much I miss that kind of interaction, it also is a reminder about the Ubuntu UK event I’ve organised. We’re going to a pub, watching Rugby, but the folks coming are members of the Ubuntu UK team who like Ubuntu and open source but also love Rugby. So we get to combine all things.
I miss my Irish LoCo today though!