Ubuntu Governance Reboot: Five Proposals

[Elizabeth K. Joseph]

On Mon, Nov 24, 2014 at 4:54 PM, cprofitt <cprofitt at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> 1.  Mission / Charter
> Jono notes that he could not find a mission statement or charter for the
> Community council.
>
> There is some guidance currently locate at:
> http://www.ubuntu.com/about/about-ubuntu/governance

In my role on the CC I've submitted patches (in the form of bug
reports against ubuntu-website) before to improve this page, we can
always work to do this more but I believe this does a pretty good job
of describing what we do. Maybe it's not visible enough when people
search for what the governance bodies do?

I'm kind of with Scott K. on the Mission Statement thing. I actually
own a book on developing Mission and Vision statements (geeky, right?)
and have gone through the process of creation with a non-profit I work
with, but I remain lukewarm on their effectiveness here.

> 4.  Annual In-Person Governance Summit
> "We have a community donations fund. I believe we should utilize it to
> get together key representatives across Ubuntu governance into the same
> room for two or three days to discuss (a) how to refine and optimize
> process, but also (b) how to further the impact of our 'impact
> constitution' and inspire wider opportunity in Ubuntu."
>
> I would like to see a community in-person event. It would be wise to
> ensure that the funding was secure for multiple years.

Right now the only in person events are invite-only sprints hosted by
Canonical. My worry is that a governance summit would end up similarly
restrictive (or seem that way, with people believing they aren't
"important enough" to request sponsorship to such an event). I'd hate
to see that. I want us to nurture the new people coming into the
project so we build up the next generation of project governance, not
just ship us oldies off to more exotic locales (as much as I enjoy and
value it, if there is no one to take my spot in a couple years I won't
value or enjoy anything).

I much prefer the Ubucon idea.

> 6.  Bonus: Network of Ubucons
>
> I like the idea of holding Ubucons for the community as well. It would
> help foster local energy in my opinion. Would Ubucons rotate location?
> Would they only be held in conjunction with existing Linux conventions?

As Jose, Stephen and Vincent pointed out, Ubucons already happen, just
this year the ones I knew about:

February: Los Angeles, California (co-located with SCaLE)
October: Katlenburg, Germany
August: Cartagena, Colombia
September: Orlando, Florida (co-located with Fossetcon)

There may be more. I had the opportunity to speak at both of the US
ones this year because I was speaking at the conference they were
attached to. Both were pretty exceptional events where I got to chat
with lots of Ubuntu folks, it was really energizing.

So we already have teams on the ground doing these events and they're
very well-dispersed naturally. What they currently lack is very much
support from the rest of the Ubuntu community. They are not typically
publicized on official Ubuntu social media and it's typically only
those directly involved and local who are doing the publicizing. It
would be wonderful to see these teams get more support as more
official events so the Ohio situation doesn't happen again where they
had eager organizers, free space and ended up with no speakers (I hope
to go to OLF next year, this year I had a personal scheduling
conflict).

Now, currently I believe all of these are presentation-audience kind
of events, but I'm sure if we wanted to put in a more UDS-type
community track alongside we could arrange it with most of these
groups and they'd probably be happy about it.

-- 
Elizabeth Krumbach Joseph || Lyz || pleia2
http://www.princessleia.com