I was quite impressed with what I learned from the Ohio Linux Fest gang this year; they employ a wide open model for all to see and learn from, and Ontario Linux Fest is evidence that the knowledge sharing works. LoCos aren’t exactly the same, of course, but the larger LoCos could probably share a lot more information by telling the story of their events — bug/docjam, installfest, advocacy, whatever — than they could by trying to polish it into a KB “howto” article, where sincere effort at generalization can accidentally drain genuine detail.

During the Ontario Linux Fest, we had a presenter up from the US who asked for a show of hands if anybody was involved in a LoCo. Nobody put up their hand. He seemed surprised–when he’s asked the same question at the Ohio Linux Fest, or some event in Rochester, quite a few people were involved.

I think the solution to this may be giving the country group some autonomy in deciding how their region should be subdivided, and actively engaging people in those regions to organize. For Canada, that might mean provincial subgroups. For a lot of other countries, that might mean no subdivision at all.

While this is partly a geographic issue (I am aware a large amount of the population of the UK reside in the South of England) I think that solving issues like this is important for the Ubuntu community to grow at a grass roots level. Whether this means having “locos-within-locos” (Ubuntu-Scotland probably would not be able to exist as a standalone Loco, but I could see it being a “branch” of Ubuntu-UK) or simply encouraging people to hold events in varied locations, I think this is a problem that wont be too difficult to fix, but one that is important to try to sort.

Launchpad is not available in any other language, and as a result many people can’t contribute to it in their own language. Bug reports would need some special sauce to accomodate other people’s contributions, however.

The Answers system and its FAQs is perhaps where such language support would benefit the most.

Having a proper translation of several key LocoTeams wiki pages also comes to mind, starting with the Leaders code of conduct.

I like some of the ideas here and think some might be a good thing to implement into this project sometime in the future.

I checked and see that NZ still isn’t on the approved list, and would respectfully suggest that the barrier to official approval is too high. At least in that small country, where most of the LoCo members are already working through other channels (national Open Source society, LUGs etc), there is a good group of people who would make great representatives for the project, who already send out stickers and help people who post to their mailing list, but getting the “official seal of approval” involves having the group do three official things, a large hoop to jump through for little reward.

Perhaps the anointing of the team would spur the kind of activities you want to see the teams active in?

It is called Spreadubuntu, and the development site can be reached here: http://spreadubuntu.neomenlo.org

You can join the Marketing team if you want to help on the project, and you can also start uploading Dutch materials if you have something to share.

BTW it would rock for LP also (Google maps stinks!)

It makes sense to provide a repository of materials that LoCo s can use, translate and improve upon. It would also be nice to have an online gallery of the range of current materials.