[ubuntu-za] Leadership change

[Jonathan Carter (highvoltage)]

Hi

Morgan Collett wrote:
> On Monday Craig Adams stepped down as co-leader of the Ubuntu-ZA
> LoCoTeam, as he has had no time to contribute in recent months.

Thanks to Craig for getting the initial set-up of the loco team done. I 
hope the he jumps back in when he has more time again. Craig, you're 
always welcome here.

> After a long conversation with Jonathan Carter last night I'm very
> happy to announce that Jonathan will be the new co-leader. For those
> of you who don't know him, Jonathan is a long time contributor to
> Ubuntu, specifically Edubuntu where he was the first project webmaster
> and community contact. He is an Ubuntu member, and has been involved
> with local projects including Skubuntu and the tuxLabs derivative
> distro. Jonathan has worked for the Shuttleworth Foundation,
> Inkululeko and Impi Linux.

That's quite an interesting mini-bio :)

 From November onwards I'll have some dedicated time to spend working on 
our loco team. The timing is slightly off though, since our Loco team 
will be up for review in October, where we'll have to report on our 
activities for the last two years. The loco has been practically 
non-existent in its first year. Basically, we might have to re-apply for 
our loco status. Morgan has done a great job of getting it going with a 
few hard pushes. Since Feisty we've had release parties in Cape Town, 
and since Hardy, in Jo'burg as well. Mailing list and IRC participation 
has improved, and we now host our own wiki and planet. We also have 
members that have taken good initiative with the local Get Ubuntu program.

I think that we have to take what we've done the last year, which our 
little team can be proud of, and solidify it over the next year. Let's 
get more people involved in making themselves available to burn Ubuntu 
discs for other people (I should do that too, I know), and make some 
more Ubuntu noise on the planets, get some nice avatars for our current 
planet, finish our wiki migration (I'll put some specific effort into 
getting this done), etc. On top of that, we should expand on what we're 
doing. I think most people will agree that a community is much more than 
a mailing list and a website (although those are important). We need to 
get more physical.

Morgan and I talked for a few hours about this on Tuesday evening at 
Sandton City in Johannesburg. We had a bunch of ideas, our biggest 
concern is that we might get a bit too ambitious and choose to pursuit 
too big tasks and projects that we may be too small for at the moment.

There will be some separate threads on the subject where we'll discuss 
the future of our loco team, and where we as a team would like to see it 
going.

I suggest that everyone take some time when you're in the bath, shower, 
in the loo, stuck in traffic, stuck in boring meetings, etc, take some 
time and think about the loco team over the next week or so. Where do 
you want to see it go? What can we do to improve the Ubuntu experience 
in South Africa? How can we improve our national footprint and be of 
service to new users?

The loco report will also require us to list what our plans are for the 
next year. Let's put together a plan that is achievable and that will 
make our loco team a solid and progressive organisation.

Who's in?

-Jonathan