We’re kicking off the regular series of LoCo stories with a great one which truly encompasses the spirit of Ubuntu.

It all began in October 2007, and the players are the New Mexico Loco Team and the Endorphine Power Company. Let’s introduce them:

The Endorphin Power Company, or EPC in short, is a non-profit organization “dedicated to improving the lives of people, with special focus on the substance-dependent and homeless, thus alleviating many of the challenges faced by current emergency medical systems. Additional purposes are the promotion of mental and physical health through exercise, energy consciousness and volunteerism.”

The New Mexico LoCo team is a group of Ubuntu and Linux enthusiasts active in a state in the US in which they live and breathe computing history (Altair and Microsoft were founded there). As such, one of their main goals is to live up to and continue that tradition by actively cultivating and spreading the ideals behind Ubuntu, Linux and Open Source.

Not being known for sitting on their thumbs, one fine day some of their members, with Dave Thomas and Eric Krieger in the front, started thinking what they could do as a community to bring “Humanity to others”. It was only an idea, but they thought the natural step would be to use their computing expertise to help their equals.

Said and done, Eric spoke to his boss at Charter Bank of Albuquerque asking him if the company would be interested in donating some used computing equipment to a local non-profit organization. The New Mexico LoCo would then take care of administrating this material and helping with the installation.

Charter Bank agreed and generously donated 25 computers, a server and several network switches for the project. With the equipment sorted out, discussion started taking place in the LoCo’s mailing list to determine which organization would receive the donation, in which it was agreed that the EPC would be the worthy candidate.

Working as a true team, the New Mexico folks set up a page for the project in the Ubuntu wiki, defining milestones and getting organized through their mailing list. The first big milestone in the culmination of this amazing effort came in February 2008, where they met to install and set up some of the workstations in the EPC computer lab. Of course, with the operating system we all know and love. That installation was a success, and provided a solid foundation to base the subsequent efforts on.

Fast forward 2009: a functional Ubuntu network at EPC, wi-fi, a wealth of side-projects, ideas for other initiatives, regular updates on the project, negotiation of a support and training agreement, and the satisfaction of doing a good job while having fun and helping others.

This really is an example of what we are and what we can do as a community sharing the Ubuntu spirit. It is more than the operating system we use, promote and support. It is the ethos we share, what moves us to get involved and help other people in real-world projects to make the world a better place.

Links

• Endorphin Power Company: http://endorphinpower.org
• Project site: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Endorphin_Power_Company_Ubuntu_Install_and_Support
• New Mexico LoCo homepage: https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NewMexicoTeam
• Contact
  • New Mexico LoCo Team contact: Michael Rimbert (mrimbert AT ubuntu DOT com)
  • EPC Project Lead: Eric Krieger (grammatoncleric AT ubuntu DOT com)
  • New Mexico LoCo IRC channel: #ubuntu-us-nm

Sources

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UbuntuWeeklyNewsletter/Issue82#Ubuntu%20New%20Mexico%20LoCo:%20Endorphin%20Power%20Company%20Ubuntu%20Install%20and%20Support
• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Endorphin_Power_Company_Ubuntu_Install_and_Support
• ttps://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-us-nm/2008-February/000582.html

A little while ago Nick Ali stepped down from the LoCo Council. We were of course very sad to see this happen, and would like to thank Nick for his great work on the Council. However, we are now down one person, and need to find a new member. I’m writing this mail to ask for volunteers to step forward and nominate themselves or another willing person for this position. There is only one position available, so if more than one person steps forward, there will be a
vote to decide on the successful candidate.

The LoCo Council is defined on the wiki. We meet up once a month over IRC to go through items on the team agenda. This typically involves approving new LoCo teams, resolving issues within teams, approving LoCo team mailing list requests, and anything else that comes along.

The process by which a new member of the Council is selected is defined by the Community Council is outlined on the wiki.

The first stage is for people to nominate themselves, or be nominated by someone else. We will confirm with each person whether they actually want to be put forward or not. We will give ~2 weeks for this process. Please pass this mail back to your own LoCo team so everyone is aware of the process. We welcome nominations from anywhere in the world, and from any LoCo team. Nominees do not need to be a LoCo Team Leader to be nominated for this post. We are however looking for people who are active in their LoCo Team.

** Please send nominations to loco-council at lists.ubuntu.com which is a private mailing list only for the LoCo Council members. **

The above mailing list is moderated, however all nomination mails will be approved before the end of the nomination period

If you’d like to ask any of the LoCo Council members questions privately then you contact us individually or use the above mailing list address.

** The nomination process starts now, and ends at 00:01 UTC on 7th October 2009. **

Once this period is over the LoCo Council will collate the nominations and double check that each person nominated is still happy to stand. We will then pass this list to the CC as per the process.

[Discuss New LoCo Council Members Sought on the Forums]

Originally sent to the loco-contacts mailing list by Alan Pope on Wed Sep 23 11:26:04 BST 2009

Recently I announced my brand spanking new book The Art of Community and so far the reception has been fantastic! Thanks to everyone who has been spreading the news about the book - continue to do your good thang! :-)

Well, I am a firm believer that you should look after your own family, and I am a member of the awesome Ubuntu family, so I have managed to swing a sweet deal with O’Reilly, the publishers of the book, to send all approved USA based teams a free printed copy of the book and all other approved teams a free electronic copy of the book. While we wish we could send all approved teams across the world a free printed copy, O’Reilly are only able to cater to USA based teams right now. Damn economy.

To keep this as simple as possible, you can request your book by following these steps:

1. The team contact shown on our LoCo Team List (and only the team contact) should send me an email to jono AT ubuntu DOT com with the subject line Free Art of Community Book For LoCo Team (be sure to type this subject line exactly as here or it may slip through the net). In your email include all the following details:
   • Your full name.
   • Which team you are from.
   • Your full address (including zip/postal code, region and country).
   • Your phone number, including country and area code.
2. I will assess whether you will receive a print or electronic edition.
3. A few weeks after the deadline you should receive your edition of The Art of Community, for free!

A few notes:

• Only approved teams are eligible for the free copies of the book.
• Only the team contact for each team (shown on this page) can make the request for the book.
• There is a limit of one copy of each book per approved team.
• O’Reilly will kindly cover postage, but not any import tax or other shipping fees.
• When you have the book, it is up to you what you do with it. We recommend you share it between members of the team. LoCo Leaders: please don’t hog it for yourselves! I would also really appreciate if you write a review of the book on your nearest Amazon website. :-)
• The deadline for getting your requests in Wed 2nd September 2009.

  Make sure you get your requests in by the deadline, anything after that will be sent to the bit bucket. :-)

  If you have any questions or queries, feel free to drop me an email. :-)

  All in all a pretty sweet deal, methinks. Enjoy!

  Originally posted by Jono Bacon here on Friday, August 21st, 2009 at 1:01 am

Recently I have been talking to Prentice Hall, the rather spanky-awesome publishers of The Official Ubuntu Book by Mako, Matthew Helmke and Corey Burger, and the brand new Official Ubuntu Server Book by our friend and yours, Kyle Rankin and Mako. These books were commissioned by Debra Williams-Cauley who has been awesome getting them on the shelves, and her sidekick is one Heather Fox who I have been chatting with recently to see if we can score some free copies for our rather fantastic Ubuntu LoCo Teams. Fortunately, Heather has been able to make the magic happen.

Prentice Hall are happy to send each and every approved LoCo team one free copy of The Official Ubuntu Book and one free copy of The Official Ubuntu Server book. To be entirely clear: this is one copy of each book per team. This will be a great addition to each team’s library of Ubuntu books!

To keep this as simple as possible, you can request your books by following these steps:

1. The team contact shown on our LoCo Team List (and only the team contact) should send Heather Fox an email at heather DOT fox AT pearson DOT com and include the following details:
   • Your full name.
   • Which team you are from.
   • Your full address (including zip/postal code, region and country).
   • Your phone number, including country and area code.
2. Heather will process your application and let you know if it is approved.
3. If approved, she will get your books in the post.

A few notes:

• Only approved teams are eligible for the free copies of the books.
• Only the team contact for each team (shown on this page) can make the request for the book.
• There is a limit of one copy of each book per approved team.
• Prentice Hall will cover postage, but not any import tax or other shipping fees.
• When you have the books, it is up to you what you do with them. We recommend you share them between members of the team. LoCo Leaders: please don’t hog them for yourselves!
• The deadline for getting your requests in Wed 12th August 2009.

If you have any questions or queries, don’t contact me or Canonical, contact Heather Fox at heather DOT fox AT pearson DOT com.

Also, for those teams who are not approved or yet to approved, you can still score a rather nice 35% discount on the books by registering your LoCo with the Prentice Hall User Groups Program.

All in all a pretty sweet deal, methinks. Enjoy!

[Discuss this on the Forums]

Originally posted by Jono Bacon here on Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 at 7:07 pm

The Ubuntu Indian team was founded in February 2006 and celebrated its 3rd anniversary last month. Since the very beginning, it has been growing gradually and now has over 1000 members (and counting). The community is managed by a team of enthusiastic individuals, Ubuntu Members and MOTUs. They are responsible for maintaining the mailing list, IRC channel and the community documentation.

Among the countless achievements, the prominent team activities include:

• Participating in the Global Bug Jam - I
• Being a part of FOSS.in 2007; Debian/Ubuntu Project day
• Promoting Ubuntu and distribution of Ubuntu CDs/DVDs at gatherings
• Representing Ubuntu-India at FOSS conferences, schools and colleges

Back in 2006, the LoCo team started their forums running on SMF 1.1.7. Due to some serious hosting issues, the forum had to be discontinued and it stayed down for about 4 months. Yesterday, a brand new forum was set-up and it is now open for registrations. You can find it at forum.ubuntu-in.info. The board runs on bbPress, a surprisingly light, fast and highly customizable forum software from the creators of WordPress.

So don’t wait any longer! Come be a part of the shining new forum and the Ubuntu-India community.

Feb 14th, was LoCo Docs Day for the Ubuntu LoCo Community, and it was a Rockin’ event. The LoCo Community came together to work on expanding and improving the LoCo Documentation on the Wiki. It was great to see folks from all the different LoCo’s coming together to tweak the already excellent documentation.

Here is a list of the work done:

Daniel Holbach:
* added CategoryLoCoTeams in a bunch of places
* linked Jam information on LoCoTeamKnowledgeBase
* fixed LoCoActivism to redirect to the right page
* fixed a bunch of links on LoCoComputerFairHowto
* added some more content to LoCoTeamJoining
Damokles (a.k.a. “ccm”):
* extended LoCoWorkingWithOtherGroups
* extended LoCoRunningInstallfest
* added comment on calendar apps on LoCoCreatingWebsite
Nathan Handler:
* Added note about Launchpad supporting team maps to LoCoCreatingMap
* Corrected minor grammatical error in LoCoFAQ
Craig A. Eddy:
* Added positives about lugs to LoCoWorkingWithOtherGroups
* Add points to “What LoCo Teams Can Provide” in LoCoWorkingWithOtherGroups
John Crawford:
* added link to LoCoTeamKnowledgeBase on available event speakers LoCoTeamSpeakers
* added link to LoCoTeamKnowledgeBase on working with area LUGs LoCoWorkingWithOtherGroups
* added a sub-header section on getting your team involved with the area LUGs to LoCoTeamHowto
Efrain Valles:
* added Team Reports to the “Running the Team” section of LoCoTeamHowto
* added LoCoRunningReleaseParty (redirect from BuildingCommunity/RunningReleaseParty) to LoCoTeamKnowledgeBase
* added Release Party information and references for other activities in the LoCoTeamKnowledgeBase in LoCoTeamHowto under Advocacy.
JonoBacon:
* added icons to the main menu items.
* updated LoCoTeamContacts
* restructured the front page, added a side bar and logo.
* updated LoCoTeamMeeting with new meeting.
Jorge Castro
* Edited the FAQ
* Syntax fixes on LoCoCreatingPlanet
Elizabeth Krumbach:
* Fix up gender unfriendly language and assumptions on LoCoComputerFairHowto
Nick Ali
* reference LoCoHosting in LoCoCreatingWebsite
* clean up LoCoHosting

Thanks to everyone for getting involved and contributing your time. Of course, today is just one day and we need to continue to work hard to keep our documentation as up to date and authoritative as possible. Jono is planning on organizing more LoCo Doc Days in the future. LoCoDocDay

That long needed suite of tools has finally been completed.

This suite is designed for any Ubuntu Local Communities wanting to host a website. It is designed to allow any LoCo team to quickly create a website using Drupal for their team.

What this suite offers:

• An approved theme for any LoCo
• A highly customizable theme
• Launchpad OpenID integration
• -> Users don’t need to create an account on your site
• Launchpad Teams integration
• -> Can control access levels in site based on LP team memberships
• Fast and friendly support

Official project: launchpad.net/ubuntu-drupal/

Release Downloads:
Drupal 5.x: launchpad.net/ubuntu-drupal-releases/5.x/0.5.0
Drupal 6.x: launchpad.net/ubuntu-drupal-releases/6.x/1.1.0
Drupal 7.x: in development

A Special Thanks:
This project would not be possible without all the collaboration involved.
The Ubuntu South Dakota Local Community - Michael Lustfield
The Ubuntu Quebec Local Community - David Giard
Joey Stanford
Stuart Metcalfe

12th Feb will be LoCo Docs Day!

Now, some of you may be wondering what exactly this LoCo Docs Day is. In a nutshell, it is when the Ubuntu LoCo community comes together to refine, add to and otherwise improve our Online LoCo Documentation. We already have some excellent documentation, but much of it needs a new lick of paint and a good ‘ol fashioned refresh. As such, we are all going to come together to help make this happen on the 12th Feb.

So, how do you get involved? Simple:

• Save The Date! Put the 12th Feb 2009 in your calendar as the LoCo Docs Day.
• On the day (or before if you want to join in the usual chit-chat) join the #ubuntu-locoteams IRC channel on Freenode.
• Contribute some of your time and expertise going in and contributing content to the wide variety of documentation. If you are unsure of where to start, why not take a look at our LoCo FAQ and see there are any questions that you have had in the past that the document does not answer. We would all love to see the FAQ become a hugely authoratitive document. There is a suggestion of other pages that need a refresh here.

Everyone can help with the LoCo Docs Day. You don’t need to be a LoCo Leader or expert. If you don’t know where to start, do come to #ubuntu-locoteams on the 12th Feb and we can help find something for you to work on.

We need every drop of help that we can get. Every word that you contribute, every sentance that you find the time to write, is going to help make it easier for LoCo Teams to be successful, and in turn make it better for LoCo Teams to share Ubuntu with others. This is such a great way to contribute and we hope to see you on the 12th in #ubuntu-locoteams!

Jorge Castro is happy to announce the second Ubuntu Global Bug Jam which will take place from 20 to 22 February 2009.

So, what is the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam? Jono Bacon explains it as “a world-wide online and face-to-face event to get people together to fix Ubuntu bugs - we want to get as many people online fixing bugs, having a great time doing so, and putting their brick in the wall for free software.” The short answer is … a super hug day taken to the next level. This is not only a great opportunity to really help Ubuntu, but to also get together with other Ubuntu fans to make a difference together, either via your LoCo team, your LUG, other free software group, or just getting people together wherever to fix bugs and have a great time.

If you are in a LoCo Team, the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam it a great opportunity for LoCo Teams to get together and have a physical bug-jam, which in turn becomes a great opportunity to socialize, meet exciting new people, and share the love for Ubuntu. To get started there is a Running a Bug Jam guide, which offers some helpful advice for getting your jam organised. If you are in a Linux User Group why not try and organise a bug jam for your LUG too?

If you are planning on organising a jam for your group, just follow these steps:

1. Decide on a venue and dates, and start letting people know about where and when the jam is. You might want to post to other local groups to let them know so they can attend. Take a read of the Running a Bug Jam page to help you get started.
2. Update the Ubuntu Global Bug Jam and add your jam to it. Be sure to add any specific applications your local participants are interested in in the Interests box - we will then try to get upstream specialists to the Jam who can help with debugging on IRC.
3. Blog about it, post to mailing lists, put flyers up in computer shops and other places and otherwise spread the word.
4. Involved in the global jam last year? Now is your chance to get that excellent feedback and feed it into your LoCo this year so that we continue improving.

Not involved in Ubuntu but in another upstream project? We encourage you to “pile on” and take advantage of this opportunity. At the bottom of the Bug Jam page you’ll see a section for upstream projects for the jam. Maybe you need someone to help you triage bugs, maybe you need someone to help you test new features or maybe you’re just looking for contributors. Either way this is an opportunity to find users passionate about your software.

We’ll see everyone there!

Every 6 months, the French Team holds release parties. For Ubuntu 8.10, a release party was held in Paris with 12 install parties throughout France.

Th release party, organized by ubuntu-party and the French loco team, ubuntu-fr, took place at the “Cité des sciences et de l’industrie” in Paris, 29-30 November 2008.

4000 people attended the event, which broke the record from last year, almost 3000 visitors!

But an Ubuntu Party is not only a party where geeks come, eat, drink beer and socialize. An Ubuntu Party consists of various activities, for all knowledge levels.

In a nutshell, there were:

• 14 hours of conferences on various subjects. Some basic, aimed at answering “What is Ubuntu?”, “How to Contribute to Ubuntu?” and “What is the French Community ubuntu-fr?” Others on more universal issues like accessibility, computer science and freedom, art and free culture, and open formats. Videos will be available online soon.

• 8 hours of initiation training: beginners (learn how to use ubuntu in a daily basis) and more advanced session (introduction to command line usage). Approximately 200 attendees have been able to practice on those two subjects.

• Hundreds of machines where Ubuntu was installed by lots of volunteers. More complicated cases were handled by the Parisian LUG: Parinux.

• April, a non governmental organization, and Mozilla European Foundation were also invited. They organized some conferences and activities which attracted and motivated the audience.

• 10 demonstration computers, with some team members around to help guests to go through and discover Ubuntu’s interface.

• A bug jam where 10 people learned how to triage bugs. Some programming and packaging courses have been also provided to people who wanted to get involved in FOSS development and contribution.

• More than 20 hours of radio broadcasts thanks to oxyradio, a French webradio broadcasting only free music. They interviewed the organizers, enabling those who could not go to Paris to interact with the party.

• Ubuntu-fr provided 3000 CDs. The CDs were localized.

Ubuntu-fr sold also tee-shirts and new awesome mugs!

Press

Thanks to our press contacts, we had a full page dealing with Ubuntu in a French national newspaper called “Libération” (circulateion: 140 000 per day).

After the party, the national French press agency published a story about the party.

More photos available here. They are all CC:by licence. Thanks to Kagou, Mauriz, Rock_n_pol, Darksiegfried and Luc Byhet!

Great events, incredible volunteers, a large audience discovering Ubuntu and free software! The road is open for organizing the Jaunty Ubuntu party! Hope to see you, with more and more people on the next turn, in May 2009!

Adapted from Didier Roche’s post.