Re: LoCo tools, development
and if I may add; and you will have to explain what would happen if the LoCo teams failed to use the new proposed system. I still believe that communication between LoCo teams or at least team leaders/contacts is crucial and we should encourage it and find a way to keep it active and healthy. -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
Here in Israel we exchanged phone numbers between all the heads of the community. It works pretty well for us, sharing ideas and new stuff we wanna do in the future. Amir Eldor Ubuntu-IL On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 11:56 AM, Jad madi [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: and if I may add; and you will have to explain what would happen if the LoCo teams failed to use the new proposed system. I still believe that communication between LoCo teams or at least team leaders/contacts is crucial and we should encourage it and find a way to keep it active and healthy. -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
I'd like to suggest to create a tool for the administrators/heads, one that keeps track of the activity of each member on launchpad.net as well as other ubuntu-related websites, such as wiki pages and outputs it in a nice daily activity log, with pie charts etc :) (There isn't one, is there?) -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
Here is my take on this, and I may be completely off base, but just hear me out. For those who don't know me, I'm the Leader for the GA LoCo. Over the last 12-18 months we have been trying to brainstorm, and implement ideas to engage young people. The reason for this is, if you can get Ubuntu into the schools, you can really make a significant impact. One more than one occasion, our communication methods have been referred to as old fashioned, lame, not very interactive so on and so forth. I think what Martin is discussing has many valid points that don't need to be explained in too much detail because I think it is clearly obvious. 1. We are trying to attract members who come from a myspace / facebook / twitter / youtube / SMS, MMS / video chat, IM generation. We need to be forward thinking if we want to make our LoCo's attractive, and inadvertently the community attractive. 2. Trying to explain what IRC is to a teenage or college student is like watching a deer in headlights. 3. Wiki's are generally extremely useful for organizing thoughts, ideas, how to's and any other element you want to document. It is however not a very great tool for interacting with others. 4. Forums are great, IRC is great, Wikis are great, I've also been using Linux and involved in the community since 1996. So of course all of that is great, for me, someone who has been involved a long time. I watch my girlfriend's younger brother who just graduated high school. I see how he interacts with his friends online through all the social networking sites, through playing WoW, Xbox Live, video chatting, and IM. It's time we be forward thinking is all. Be open to new ideas. I've been working on a web platform for LoCo's to do live broadcasts of their events, interact with other members through live streams, audio and video. A Place to upload and watch install fests, release parties and the sort. Why? Because we need to be engaged on all mediums. If this is something that fails, that's ok, we move on to trying something else. So Martin, I think there is a need here as well, and I know other teams that I talk to have noticed it too. I think using methods like updated platforms, viral videos, podcasting, streaming content about the community will make us be more attractive and will make people get the feeling that they want to be a part of this team and community. So party on, let's make something happen. Kind Regards, Joshua Chase http://linuxcrypt.net On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 3:43 AM, Matthew East [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi, I'll reorder the quoting a bit. 2008/5/25 Jad madi [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Maybe we do not need to develop a new tool or anything at least before using the current tools that we have starting from this mailing list ending with the wikis and discussion forum, what we need is to encourage sharing experience and ideas rather than a new tool unless you convince me with a tool that would increase the means of communication between the teams. On Mon, May 26, 2008 at 3:14 AM, Martin Owens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You can not plan with communication, communication is in it's self a tool. now what your saying is that the wiki, forums and mailing lists are good enough for communication; yet this isn't good enough for planning and organisation, the wiki here is particularly bad because it's so unstructured that you find yourself spending most of your time fixing the problems that others have put in. As easy as a wiki is to set up I don't think we should be using them for everything. I'll work with others to make the tools, it's up to you and your team if you want to use them. As it always is. I just won't be help back by a belief that what we have is good enough, because it isn't. I have to say I don't think that is a satisfactory response to an honest query, which I share myself. I'm not a big fan of setting up new websites when existing community resources exist (wiki, this mailing list, Fridge, UWN, etc). The advantage of the existing community tools, is that all the teams in the community use them, not just local teams, so there is better inter-team communication. On the other hand a new website gives everyone an extra resource that they need to follow *in addition* to the existing ones, which is burdensome. While I understand what you are saying about the deficiencies of the wiki, the Ubuntu community currently uses the wiki for its collective organisation, and departing from that for any team is a serious step. Obviously, it's possible that you have something in mind that the existing tools can't address, but if you are talking about setting up a website for local teams to use, I think you have to at least explain in detail what your ideas are, and why the existing resources aren't good enough. -- Matthew East http://www.mdke.org gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com
Re: LoCo tools, development
Joshua, On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 1:41 PM, Joshua Chase [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I think using methods like updated platforms, viral videos, podcasting, streaming content about the community will make us be more attractive and will make people get the feeling that they want to be a part of this team and community. I can see and understand your enthusiasm here. I think that it's true that initiatives like that will continue to be important for attracting users and contributors. Having said that, I don't think it follows from this that it is useful for local teams to depart from the existing methods of communication and organisation in the Ubuntu community. Until the whole community takes the step that the wiki ceases to be the central place for organisation and mailing lists the central place for communication, local teams shouldn't work any differently. That doesn't mean that there can't be initiatives outside those resources in relation to different types of collaboration or marketing (for example the marketing team currently has an open thread in relation to such a project for local teams), but my view is just that core communication and organisation should be the same throughout the community. That's why I invited Martin to give some more details and explain further. -- Matthew East http://www.mdke.org gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
You've managed to get me annoyed, not good Mr East. Are you seriously suggesting that you know better for our LoCo team here than we do? I find it offensive that anyone could have the authority to dictate what each individual LoCo group should use or should work on. As I said in a previous email, nothing said here will stop me making useful tools for my own team. Now I disagree on weather the wiki system is good enough for events, for organising resources, notifying mailing lists, calendaring, scheduling, karma raising, taking minutes in meetings or even keeping up to date on a regular basis. I don't want my team to be spending half it's time updating the wiki. Maybe other teams haven't reached this point yet, after a certain size it's difficult to manage everything through plain text, everyone has full time jobs they can't be having with the messing involved with the wiki. I'll have nothing said against the mailing list, the forums or irc. they serve us all well. Although I was admiring ubuntu-th irc bot for notifying people about forum posts. I won't go into further details unless it's with people who are actually interested in helping. Otherwise I'd be wasting my keyboard paint. Regards, Martin -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
Thanks for your quick response, you've put my mind at ease for a few things. I think that's a shame. If your idea is about a tool for sharing resources between teams, it's important that such tools get thought through by the community first, so that when we move, we do so as a community and not just as individual units. That's why I suggested that you explain further what sort of things you had in mind building, and what sort of collaboration they would encourage which can't currently be done with our existing infrastructure. OK we're not just talking about sharing resources such as media or print images. I'm not thinking just in terms of collaboration, we have that much in our existing tools if not ideally. For instance one tool I want is an event manager, a website which members can propose events inside a team, people in the team will at their discretion join up to fill the roles required and organise the resources required to hold the event. I'm thinking of everything from meetings to installfests, postering to school visits. Each one is modelled differently and requires different resources to manage. I see each event being fundamentally run by a single motivated person with the aid and support of the loco team, obviously events which are discussed and agreed upon are more likely to get all the resources they need but I see no reason to hold our organisation to a centralised model. Not only that but I'd like people to be rewarded for taking part in events, I'd like to see notifications being sent out to make sure different parts get done and I'd like to see the events automatically added to calendars and available on the front page for visitors to see what is going on. Best Regards, Martin Owens -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
Hi, On Tue, May 27, 2008 at 3:47 PM, Martin Owens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK we're not just talking about sharing resources such as media or print images. I'm not thinking just in terms of collaboration, we have that much in our existing tools if not ideally. For instance one tool I want is an event manager, a website which members can propose events inside a team, people in the team will at their discretion join up to fill the roles required and organise the resources required to hold the event. That is a pretty interesting idea. Depending on how complex such a tool would be, have you considered whether it could be achieved by way of a drupal module that could be added to the Fridge? There is already an events module, but it could possibly be improved or supplemented to make it more interactive. http://fridge.ubuntu.com/ We hope that the Fridge will be able to handle open-id authentication for users and editors alike in the not-too-distant future, so that might help. Developing your idea in that direction would also be consistent with a general push in the community to improve inter-community communication via the Fridge and to increase its visibility and contribution. Adding the fridge mailing list to cc. -- Matthew East http://www.mdke.org gnupg pub 1024D/0E6B06FF -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
That is a pretty interesting idea. Depending on how complex such a tool would be, have you considered whether it could be achieved by way of a drupal module that could be added to the Fridge? There is already an events module, but it could possibly be improved or supplemented to make it more interactive. http://fridge.ubuntu.com/ Sounds like you have an ideal framework set up already, we were looking into drupel anyway. If we can get the login stuff, abstract the cal for a front page (doesn't strike me as hard using rss) and make sure all the interesting stuff is designed right I can see it being a very useful starting point. I always thought of the fridge as an inta-loco communication type site. We hope that the Fridge will be able to handle open-id authentication for users and editors alike in the not-too-distant future, so that might help. Developing your idea in that direction would also be consistent with a general push in the community to improve inter-community communication via the Fridge and to increase its visibility and contribution. I'd like to know what other LoCo people feel about going down this route, thanks for adding the fridge mailing list too. Best Regards, Martin Owens -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
Maybe we do not need to develop a new tool or anything at least before using the current tools that we have starting from this mailing list ending with the wikis and discussion forum, what we need is to encourage sharing experience and ideas rather than a new tool unless you convince me with a tool that would increase the means of communication between the teams. -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
You can not plan with communication, communication is in it's self a tool. now what your saying is that the wiki, forums and mailing lists are good enough for communication; yet this isn't good enough for planning and organisation, the wiki here is particularly bad because it's so unstructured that you find yourself spending most of your time fixing the problems that others have put in. As easy as a wiki is to set up I don't think we should be using them for everything. I'll work with others to make the tools, it's up to you and your team if you want to use them. As it always is. I just won't be help back by a belief that what we have is good enough, because it isn't. Regards, Martin 2008/5/25 Jad madi [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Maybe we do not need to develop a new tool or anything at least before using the current tools that we have starting from this mailing list ending with the wikis and discussion forum, what we need is to encourage sharing experience and ideas rather than a new tool unless you convince me with a tool that would increase the means of communication between the teams. -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
One of the projects I am heading up is a web framework for LoCo's powered on Django. It has been slow moving as I haven't had the time as of late to get the core up but a lot of ideas have been floating about and a few have been put into the Blueprints on Launchpad and the wiki. The only thing I've been contemplating is weather to keep with Django or move to Pylons or Turbogears 2. As both support the WSGI standard, and I have yet to hear anything from Django as to them moving to the standard. WSGI allows you to switch out any component of you base framework with another with out much work. i.e. If you don't like SQL Alchamy as your ORM then change it out with something else. This may be something I put up in front of the group to debate on. You can find the project here https://edge.launchpad.net/loco-django On Wed, May 21, 2008 at 11:21 AM, Martin Owens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Greetings, I want to talk to you all about getting some loco specific web based tools in development to help loco teams organise resources, members, events and meetings. I have some ideas about the kinds of web tools which we could make and share between our various teams, something that could form the basis of our team websites to keep everyone up to date on our events and projects. What we'd need for such a collaborative project would be people, html, javascript, css and perl/python people. I'm thinking druple or some other easy to use FOSS framework and a nice mysql/postgress db backend. Thoughts? As a side note, having a place where we can list loco software would be very useful, things like irc bot software, useful scripts ect, i'm sure there is already one so we can add the above idea to there. Best Regards, Martin Owens -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts -- Nick Verbeck - NerdyNick NerdyNick.com NerdyNick.org NerdyNick.net SkeletalDesign.com Dynamicticity.com -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
Martin, As a side note, having a place where we can list loco software would be very useful, things like irc bot software, useful scripts ect, i'm sure there is already one so we can add the above idea to there. On a communications channel... There is the locoteams-dev list, which I asked for myself a long time ago, but I guess that as long as people don't start complaining, it might be better for critical mass to keep discussion on this list. Concerning infrastructure to build on, it might be a good idea to start looking at google app engine. Maintenance free, and you can use your favorite WSGI python framework. Especially the maintenance free part is the big selling point towards locoteams if you ask me... Mark -- Mark Van den Borre Noormannenstraat 113 3000 Leuven, België +32 486 961726 -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
In reply to Nick, One of the projects I am heading up is a web framework for LoCo's powered on Django. It has been slow moving as I haven't had the time as of late to get the core up but a lot of ideas have been floating about and a few have been put into the Blueprints on Launchpad and the wiki. That is always a problem with foss development, it requires more than 1 person to really get things moving. If you haven't done any code yet than perhaps it might be worth joining our efforts? If you've got a base to work from then perhaps it's worth using it. And to reply to Mark, Concerning infrastructure to build on, it might be a good idea to start looking at google app engine. Maintenance free, and you can use your favorite WSGI python framework. Especially the maintenance free part is the big selling point towards locoteams if you ask me... I'm not keen on google app engine; I'd rather write the thing from scratch and own and license it without fear that others could not host it for their own teams. Besides there are plenty of people with plenty of servers even in my state who would lend space for such projects. Best Regards, Martin Owens -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
Re: LoCo tools, development
I have started a good chunk of the base for the project. The really big remaining part is getting the starts to each diffrent sub set of the site that everyone will use as well as replacing the Django admin with a more custom built admin. To allow better and faster administration of the website. From what I understand the Google App Engine isn't meant so much as a hosting platform but as a means to offset work from your web site. i.e. parsing data. You allowed a lot of bandwith and cpu space but only 500mb of space. Not really a lot to run a website. The other we would have to battle is that its still in a some what closed beta. On Thu, May 22, 2008 at 6:27 AM, Martin Owens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In reply to Nick, One of the projects I am heading up is a web framework for LoCo's powered on Django. It has been slow moving as I haven't had the time as of late to get the core up but a lot of ideas have been floating about and a few have been put into the Blueprints on Launchpad and the wiki. That is always a problem with foss development, it requires more than 1 person to really get things moving. If you haven't done any code yet than perhaps it might be worth joining our efforts? If you've got a base to work from then perhaps it's worth using it. And to reply to Mark, Concerning infrastructure to build on, it might be a good idea to start looking at google app engine. Maintenance free, and you can use your favorite WSGI python framework. Especially the maintenance free part is the big selling point towards locoteams if you ask me... I'm not keen on google app engine; I'd rather write the thing from scratch and own and license it without fear that others could not host it for their own teams. Besides there are plenty of people with plenty of servers even in my state who would lend space for such projects. Best Regards, Martin Owens -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts -- Nick Verbeck - NerdyNick NerdyNick.com NerdyNick.org NerdyNick.net SkeletalDesign.com Dynamicticity.com -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
LoCo tools, development
Greetings, I want to talk to you all about getting some loco specific web based tools in development to help loco teams organise resources, members, events and meetings. I have some ideas about the kinds of web tools which we could make and share between our various teams, something that could form the basis of our team websites to keep everyone up to date on our events and projects. What we'd need for such a collaborative project would be people, html, javascript, css and perl/python people. I'm thinking druple or some other easy to use FOSS framework and a nice mysql/postgress db backend. Thoughts? As a side note, having a place where we can list loco software would be very useful, things like irc bot software, useful scripts ect, i'm sure there is already one so we can add the above idea to there. Best Regards, Martin Owens -- loco-contacts mailing list loco-contacts@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/loco-contacts
