Hello Australian LoCo Team! I'm writing on behalf of the LoCo Council with regards to the Australian Team Re-Approval process.
First let me apologise for the length of time this process has taken. We've not been doing this long, and hope to streamline the process in the future. The Australian LoCo team has a long history of great contributions to the Ubuntu project. It's great to see a bunch of keen, energised participating members of the Ubuntu community. However, it is with a heavy heart that we must reject the Re-Approval of the Australian Local Community Team at this time. The reasons for this decision are:- * The number of active members of the team have been waning, possibly due to a lack of direction. Members of the community want to contribute but feel they can't. We've had multiple team members mail us privately regarding the situation in the Australian LoCo. They felt strongly enough that they needed to share their feelings about the current state of the team. The common theme seems to be that they are not happy with the way the LoCo is being run. Most of them have noted the inactivity of LoCo. This is often a sign of a lack of strong leadership within the team. * There is a sub group of Ubuntu enthusiasts who feel they cannot work with the Approved LoCo and have setup a separate team of their own. They might not call themselves a "LoCo" but they do the same job in the same area. It is a shame to see this, and we would really like to sit down with both teams and work this out. Things you can do which can improve the team include:- * Nominate team leadership (be it individual or group) to drive the team in a defined direction. Setting goals for the team and developing a roadmap can also help here. * Consider revising your IRC channel structure to make it easier for people to find support, local resources and chat. The current setup appears to have stopped a lot of the community chatter in the main channel that helps to keep a team active. * Holding regular meetings (on IRC) to help get discussion going, presently the wiki shows that you're holding regular meetings, which is currently. The wiki appears to be out of date. An overhaul of the current wiki is something to consider as well. * Perhaps members could rotate roles within the team, this could help prevent burnout and also help the team, by allowing people to participate in ways that will help them feel they belong, and can contribute. This is not a reflection on peoples roles at present, however many of the comments we received felt they were being rejected due to not having as much experience as others. We felt that they were still enthusiastic about contributing and wanted to step forward. Keep in mind LoCo activity is not tied to Ubuntu development efforts, people who do not know how to use the command line interface sometimes turn out to be the most effective LoCo members. Remember, most LoCo activity relates to the average user. Your team needs to encourage new members to actively participate. The creation of a mentoring program within your team to learn about these roles might also be a good idea in order to encourage people to participate more. We would be delighted to re-approve the Australian LoCo Team once more in the future once these issues are sorted out, and the team is revitalised. We look forward to the progress that we know will occur. Please do contact us with any questions or concerns, LoCo Council -- ubuntu-au mailing list ubuntu-au@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-au