Meeting started by czajkowski at 21:04:15 UTC. The full logs are available at http://ubottu.com/meetingology/logs/ubuntu-meeting/2013/ubuntu-meeting.2013-01-15-21.04.log.html .

Meeting summary

LINK: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/Agenda (SergioMeneses, 21:04:47) ACTION: czajkowski write blog post and post to lococontacts on the subject (czajkowski, 21:20:15)

• Reviewed Large Geographic counteries for locoteam structure.
• AOB

Meeting ended at 21:43:17 UTC.

Votes

Action items

• czajkowski write blog post and post to lococontacts on the subject

Action items, by person

• czajkowski
• * czajkowski write blog post and post to lococontacts on the subject

People present (lines said)

• czajkowski (99)

• BobJonkman2 (24)

• SergioMeneses (17)

• huats (9)
• meetingology (4)
• pleia2 (2)

Full Log

• 21:04:15 <czajkowski> #startmeeting

  21:04:15 <meetingology> Meeting started Tue Jan 15 21:04:15 2013 UTC. The chair is czajkowski. Information about MeetBot at http://wiki.ubuntu.com/meetingology.

  21:04:15 <meetingology>

  21:04:15 <meetingology> Available commands: #accept #accepted #action #agree #agreed #chair #commands #endmeeting #endvote #halp #help #idea #info #link #lurk #meetingname #meetingtopic #nick #progress #rejected #replay #restrictlogs #save #startmeeting #subtopic #topic #unchair #undo #unlurk #vote #voters #votesrequired

  21:04:30 <czajkowski> so we don't have anything on our agenda

  21:04:37 <czajkowski> but seeing as we're here lets just catch up

  21:04:47 <SergioMeneses> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoCouncil/Agenda

  21:05:05 <czajkowski> SergioMeneses: we;re doing that team via bug no ?

  21:05:15 <SergioMeneses> only the Ubuntu Iranian team, but they want to work on the bug

  21:05:22 <SergioMeneses> yes czajkowski

  21:05:50 <czajkowski> grand

  21:06:24 <czajkowski> so I've seen this come up on various blog posts in comments

  21:06:59 <czajkowski> how people feel unmotivated due to them not being an Approved locoo and how really that word doesnt really help motvate people in getting more involved

  21:07:16 <czajkowski> what I'd like to do is look at if there is an alternative and see if could be used

  21:07:35 <czajkowski> sometimes words in english don't always translate so clearly in other languages

  21:07:50 <SergioMeneses> sure, like free

  21:08:04 <czajkowski> so I just want to see if this is possible and it also may not be. But if we don't discuss it then well we'll never know

  21:08:14 <czajkowski> so some alternaives that kinda spring to mind are

  21:08:51 <czajkowski> Sponsored loco - downsides would people may assume un approved locos would lose hosting, email etc as they are not sponsored, when they would be

  21:09:01 <czajkowski> if anyone has any ideas please feel free to jump in

  21:09:26 <SergioMeneses> I was thinking on "official" or "sponsored"

  21:09:42 <czajkowski> I do like offical as that is a clear word and is less black and white

  21:09:44 <BobJonkman2> Hi, I'm Bob Jonkman from the Canadian Team, which has recently lost its "approved" status.

  21:09:56 <czajkowski> verified would also be a good one

  21:09:58 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: hi there

  21:10:14 <czajkowski> REviewed would also be good

  21:10:16 <SergioMeneses> and Bhavani said Sponsored or Authorised

  21:10:23 <czajkowski> so they are reviewed by the council

  21:10:39 <czajkowski> Authroised sounds a bit severe imo, but again that's just me

  21:10:46 <SergioMeneses> sure

  21:10:55 <czajkowski> and I'm trying to find a way to sum what up approved is, but also make it sound less harsh

  21:10:59 <czajkowski> huats: any ideas

  21:11:00 <SergioMeneses> it is a strong word

  21:11:06 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: any ideas there?

  21:11:18 <BobJonkman2> loss of approval has caused some agitation amongst team members. There is some feeling that we're not allowed to gather and have events focused on Ubuntu without approval. A different word would be welcome

  21:11:34 <huats> honnestly I have thought about that and approved is the best word for me

  21:11:44 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: why do people feel that way, we have many teams who don't have the approved status and all have events

  21:11:51 <czajkowski> huats: nods

  21:12:11 <huats> I don't llike sponsored nor authorised (team can exists without being approved)

  21:12:17 <czajkowski> Again, just like to point out, nothing is set in stone. it's jsut stuff I've seen and heard from many people and discussion is good.

  21:12:24 <czajkowski> huats: nods

  21:12:29 <BobJonkman2> It's the word, "Approved". Without "approval" the sense is that activities are disapproved

  21:12:55 <czajkowski> what I had in my head Loco teams ( unapproved) and reviewed loco teams (approved)

  21:13:04 <czajkowski> taking away the unapproved and approved words

  21:13:10 <czajkowski> so all teams are locoteams

  21:13:18 <czajkowski> but one of which has been reviewed by the council

  21:13:22 <czajkowski> so seems offical

  21:13:25 <czajkowski> but also less harsh

  21:13:27 <czajkowski> thoughts?

  21:13:39 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: never heard that but interesting to think about

  21:14:04 <BobJonkman2> The only direct benefit the Canadian Team sees to an "Approved" status is that Canonical provides branded Ubuntu disks (which are very welcome, and show proprietary software users that Ubuntu is not just some fly-by-night thing)

  21:14:37 <czajkowski> nods

  21:14:45 <huats> I might try the word 'official' but nothing besides that

  21:14:55 <BobJonkman2> So perhaps a new word might focus on the benefits a Team receives. "Sponsored" seems to work for that

  21:15:01 <SergioMeneses> huats, +1

  21:15:29 <SergioMeneses> BobJonkman2, huats czajkowski I think "official" would be better for this

  21:15:33 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: how would differenciate between sponsored and unsponsored then

  21:15:36 <SergioMeneses> imho

  21:15:51 <huats> BobJonkman2: I think there is something on what we can try to work : some teams (I am aware of ubuntu-fr and ubuntu-de) have agreement with Canonical to be able to sell ubuntu branded goodies

  21:16:27 <huats> I have been asked in the past by Jono to provide him that "agreement" so that he can work out on extending it to the rest of "approved" loco teams

  21:16:55 <czajkowski> So my only concern then would be for "unapproved" locos how seeing the word Sponsored and Offical not beside their team

  21:16:56 <BobJonkman2> From the Team members' perspective, the only thing we get out of "Approval" (or Sponsorship) is disks, which we give away gratis to anyone who is interested

  21:17:09 <czajkowski> and also the word Offical means what ?

  21:17:15 <czajkowski> any team not approved is not an offical team

  21:17:23 <czajkowski> I susupect our inboxes would explode in outrage

  21:17:42 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: makes a difference in conference packs also

  21:17:52 <czajkowski> which many teams use more so than CDs tbh

  21:17:57 <huats> this could be a real benefit to inform team that selling an ubuntu goodies without being approved is a copyright violation (and this is something people in FOSS are really looking carefully)

  21:17:58 <pleia2> there are sometimes also publishers who use approved/non-approved as criteria for giving out books (the official ubuntu book only went to approved teams)

  21:18:06 <czajkowski> also little known fact. Not many teams request the CD allocation each cycle

  21:18:10 <pleia2> so it's not even just canonical

  21:18:13 <BobJonkman2> czajkowski: True, but most members don't see the conference packs

  21:18:41 <BobJonkman2> and since the decline of Ontario Linuxfest 2 years ago we haven't had need of a conference pack

  21:18:47 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: my experience is the other way in fact

  21:18:51 <czajkowski> but nice to hear another side of things

  21:19:30 <czajkowski> well like I say nothing is fixed in stone, this is useful information and we'll follow up with a blog post and posting to the loco contacts list for wider discussion

  21:19:41 <BobJonkman2> czajkowski: That most members don't see the conference pack may be because the Canadian Team covers a large geographic region.

  21:20:15 <czajkowski> #action czajkowski write blog post and post to lococontacts on the subject 21:20:15 * meetingology czajkowski write blog post and post to lococontacts on the subject

  21:20:43 <czajkowski> #topic Reviewed Large Geographic counteries for locoteam structure.

  21:20:49 <BobJonkman2> But smaller geographic regions would reduce active membership to a small handful in each region

  21:20:50 <czajkowski> So BobJonkman2 this may be of interest to your team

  21:21:04 <czajkowski> This has come up time and time again over the last year or so

  21:21:13 <BobJonkman2> That's one of the reasons I'm here

  21:21:34 <czajkowski> We have counteries such as India, Australia, Canada and Brazil

  21:21:55 <czajkowski> all of which are massive georgaphic regions and it's not possible to be loco in that sense

  21:22:11 <czajkowski> what we would propse is to break them up into state/provence like USA has done

  21:22:20 <czajkowski> and there can be locos that way

  21:23:01 <czajkowski> the reason we would like to do this now rather than in 1+years is to put in place measures to help teams from the ground up, but also helps plan and better allocate resouces when planning eg. Canonical DVDs

  21:23:15 <BobJonkman2> For the Canadian Team, a good geographic area is maybe 100km across. Even members in a provincial team would be separated by hundreds of km

  21:23:29 <czajkowski> we've had this request in a number of times now from India and we've had to keep putting it off as we don't have the requirements in place.

  21:23:44 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: the same goes for many countereies and even states in the USA

  21:24:00 <czajkowski> what would also benefit is that the LTP would be able to have a section in the team page for a CITY contact

  21:24:12 <czajkowski> this merge has been ready for a long time as it was discussed at least 2 UDSs ago

  21:24:32 <BobJonkman2> +1 for City contacts

  21:24:37 <czajkowski> Brazil loco have already broken their team up into sub teams a long time ago , this would just help for making it offical

  21:25:18 <czajkowski> but if we don't set the standard up now, then it all becomes rather messy and has a knock on effect on other things, then such as Approved/offical locos

  21:25:25 <czajkowski> what do folks think?

  21:25:46 <SergioMeneses> but it doesnt work for all teams, russia said no

  21:26:03 <BobJonkman2> In Canadian Team IRC meetings the consensus is that provincial teams won't make much difference to members; our team groups are city-based

  21:26:34 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: right but in a provence you could have a city contact but not a city loco. this has been discussed at length at UDS and it was said no a city loco would not happen.

  21:27:28 <BobJonkman2> If Canada is split into provincial teams most members still would not meet face-to-face, and we'd probably continue to meet in IRC on a Canada-wide basis anyway.

  21:28:08 <BobJonkman2> So, splitting into provincial teams would create bureaucratic and administrative overhead that accomplishes nothing.

  21:28:25 <czajkowski> or it could help the team

  21:28:30 <czajkowski> the USA has a USA mentor team

  21:28:39 <czajkowski> we should try and be more encouraing about new ideas

  21:29:01 <czajkowski> rather than saying it wont work tbh

  21:30:38 <BobJonkman2> We're working on our Canadian Re-approval application now, and it's been difficult to get members working together in anything larger than a City. Most of the discussion takes place during the Kitchener and Waterloo Ubuntu Hours, face-to-face

  21:31:21 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: you may not understand my point, break ing up teams into provence/state may encourage others to step up and if they dn't that's fine, but the standard is put in place

  21:31:25 <czajkowski> and the option is there for the future

  21:32:01 <BobJonkman2> True, more teams would mean more involvement from people as local contacts

  21:32:41 <czajkowski> yes exactly

  21:32:55 <czajkowski> as a person living the other side of canada may not be interested in an event in that area

  21:33:04 <czajkowski> but may be interested in running on in their provence

  21:33:15 <czajkowski> lets try adn support the idea and work out the logistics as we move forward

  21:33:25 <czajkowski> this idea has hit roadblocks from people for the last 18 months

  21:33:26 <SergioMeneses> anyways this is a sensible topic and we need a lot of ideas and commentaries

  21:33:40 <czajkowski> yet we keep getting requests on a monthly basis for help in this area

  21:34:03 <czajkowski> so I suspect we'll A) blog mail loco contacts and the teams we have in mind

  21:34:13 <czajkowski> over the coming week(s)

  21:34:22 <czajkowski> but it would be nice to get the ball rolling

  21:35:06 <SergioMeneses> czajkowski, I think is the best

  21:35:31 <czajkowski> so for example there are 10 provences in Canada

  21:35:39 <BobJonkman2> A team leader may run an event in her City, but as each province is about 1000km wide having provincial LoCos doesn't make much difference to having a country LoCo

  21:35:44 <czajkowski> you could have 10 locoteams there rather than one large country one

  21:35:50 <czajkowski> surely this makes more sense

  21:37:23 <BobJonkman2> We have about 300 members, spread out over more than 5000 km; most of them are in Ontario. A Saskatchewan LoCo may have only one or two members...

  21:37:27 <czajkowski> so my georgaphy of Canada is a bit sketchy apologies, but you'd have ubutu-ca-on for Ontario loco and a city contact on the LTP for Toronto

  21:37:34 <czajkowski> if I have my provence and city right there

  21:38:00 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: true but at least the two there would have the option and feel empowered to have a loco in their back ice skating rink! 21:38:10 * czajkowski has a mate there, it's very cold!

  21:38:18 <czajkowski> but they should have the option there to have their own loco

  21:38:41 <czajkowski> equally they can mail the mothership the candian team for advice and help and that team could mentor people

  21:39:03 <BobJonkman2> In Vancouver there is a city-based (unapproved) LoCo, that seems to work well for them.

  21:39:08 <SergioMeneses> like a meta team

  21:39:22 <BobJonkman2> But Toronto, with a population of about 5,000,000 doesn't even have Ubuntu Hours.

  21:39:35 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: each team is so different on their events

  21:40:01 <czajkowski> and like I said city contact was discussed at UDS and it was said No it would not happen, at best the LTP would be edited to allow for a city contact.

  21:40:05 <SergioMeneses> BobJonkman2, but what can we do in that case?

  21:40:16 <czajkowski> anwyasy this was just to give an idea of what the council are working on

  21:40:50 <BobJonkman2> If Canada should be split into provincial LoCos we would like to keep the country-wide mailing list, IRC channel &c. because of the sparse membership.

  21:41:09 <czajkowski> BobJonkman2: thats not a problem this could be worked out n the future

  21:41:15 <czajkowski> it's not being decided this second

  21:41:49 <BobJonkman2> czajkowski: I understand.

  21:41:49 <czajkowski> #topic AOB

  21:41:56 <czajkowski> huats: SergioMeneses any other comments

  21:42:05 <czajkowski> or AOB

  21:42:16 <SergioMeneses> not from me

  21:42:23 <huats> I don't know what means AOB

  21:42:23 <huats>

  21:42:28 <czajkowski> any other business

  21:42:29 <czajkowski>

  21:43:05 <huats> not else

  21:43:11 <czajkowski> okie doke

  21:43:17 <czajkowski> #endmeeting

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