lubuntu-desktop team mailing list archive

[Phill Whiteside <phillw@xxxxxxxxxx>]

 Hiyas Duanne,

as you know I'm also one that concentrates on the 'boring' stuff for
lubuntu. I'm really interested on how the FG's pan out as, for example, I
have a lubuntueer who wishes to only focus on IRC help and not get invovled
with the forum stuff. I certainly think the UBT does outstanding work and I
do actively encourage those who are knowledgeable on the Lubuntu side to get
involved with UBT as it helps everyone out, the general community benefit
from their experience and the Lubunut project benefits from them getting to
know people to ask questions of when they are unsure and generally how to
handle support issues. Our project developer is agreeable to host a session
to help any padawan on areas that he can teach them, for example
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/slooksterpsv wishes to learn more about backporting
and iso creation, this can only help the whole community. I will ensure that
notice is given of any sessions that Julien gives and have a quiet 'nag' to
see if he will do it in the classroom.

I look forward to our two teams continuing to work closely together;
assisting others is what it is all about and UBT has put that on to a
structure where I can say to someone "go look at
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BeginnersTeam " and see if you can help.

I'm glad that UBT is getting the recognition it so richly deserves and I'm
proud to be a member of it.

Regards,

Phill.
P.S. Julien, once you get over the jet lag and iso rebuilding etc, could you
spare a bit of time to get your backporting / iso building / bug triaging
tutorial that you are going to do with slook onto the classroom, the UBT
will give you every assistance in preparing classroom sessions as they did
for my LAMP one I did several months ago.


On 30 October 2010 09:46, Duane Hinnen <duanedesign@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Over the last several years the Beginners Team(BT) has been growing from a
> small group of wonderful Ubuntu Forum contributors, to a large multi-faceted
> group of community mentors. This transition occurred as the team was helping
> Ubuntu users and they started to realize that a large part of helping Ubuntu
> users is guiding people into the community. The community needs have also
> been helping to shape the goals and mission of the Beginners Team. One thing
> that every part of the community is looking for, is how to mentor and get
> people involved in their area of the community. The Beginners Team with its
> experience working with beginners, a wide variety of member skills, and
> Focus Groups that help users work in a chosen area of the community put BT
> in a good position to really make a difference in improving the community
> on-boarding experience.
>
> Like every team we have had some scaling issues. Over the last year we have
> been taking steps remedy the scaling issues and ready the team to take on a
> wider role in the community. We have elected a Council to deal with the team
> administration. I think many people will agree that this has worked very
> well and improved the functioning of the team. Recently we appointed a
> Mentor Administrator to help organize our growing mentor program. Also over
> the past year we have worked to reorganize and keep the conversations in our
> IRC channels CoC and family friendly. These are just a few of the steps we
> have taken and we have a few more to go.
>
> I have sent out emails across the communty over the last 3 or 4 months
> looking to increase the cooperation between the BT and the community. It is
> important we know what the communities needs are and what is the best way to
> educate someone on that particular area of the community. Through the emails
> I got some information, but not enough. I went to UDS this last week and was
> able to have many conversations that filled in a lot of gaps. Additionally I
> made many contacts with the different areas of the community. This will help
> us coordinate with the community to make sure we are producing the best
> possible experience and creating a very productive community member with all
> the appropriate skills.
>
> The first thing I am going to be working on is a restructuring of our Focus
> Groups. Based on input from several of our members, our councilors, and
> community leaders we have come up with a slight modification to our Focus
> Groups that is going to make a huge difference in how effectively we can
> serve the community. Moving forward our Focus Groups will be organized like
> so:
>
> *Developers
> Documentation
> Artwork
> Support
> Bug Squad
> Accessibility
> *
> I think their are many benefits to this. The categories cover a large
> portion of the community without us having to create dozens  of Focus
> Groups.  Instead  of creating a Forum Focus Group, and an IRC Focus Group,
> and a Launchpad Answers Focus Group, all those activities would fall under
> the Support Focus Group. I think this structure will serve our present needs
> as well as allow for, and encourage, future growth. Having these community
> categories and getting rid of Focus Groups organized around community assets
> will also help prevent the blocker "there is no Focus Group for that". As
> the list get implemented over the next week their is the slight possibility
> of an unforeseen issue that might cause a group to be added or subtracted.
>
> As we move forward with the new list we will also be finalizing the
> membership requirements for membership in the Beginners Team. When someone
> joins the Beginners Team they will pick a Focus Group as an area of
> interest. The area of the community they want to be involved in. Each FG
> will have a different membership path determined by the skills and knowledge
> necessary to master that area of the community. We will no longer have
> separate membership processes for the Beginners Team and the Focus Groups.
> Maybe you can think of the Focus Groups like majors at a University. You can
> not graduate from Harvard(Beginners Team) without having a major(Focus
> Group) and you can not have a major(Focus Group) without going to
> Harvard(Beginners Team)
>
> These are some exciting times for the team. The Beginners Team is starting
> to be recognized by the community.  This will lead to the team having the
> opportunity to increase its contributions to the community in a big way, The
> community on-boarding experience is a very important part of the community
> process. We have in front of us a great opportunity to make an outstanding
> difference in this very important part of the community.
>
> I am so very proud of this team. The compliments and feedback I got about
> the beginners Team from the community and community leaders was
> overwhelmingly outstanding. I heard over and over people saying that
> Beginners Team does some wonderful stuff. To insure you continue to
> contribute awesome stuff me and the other councilors are going to work hard
> to make sure you all have the tools and processes available to make the most
> of the time you volunteer to the Beginners Team and the Ubuntu Community as
> a whole. If you have any questions please email, poke me on IRC, or leave me
> a message on IRC and I will get back to you asap.
>
> --
> Duane Hinnen
> duanedesign@xxxxxxxxxx
> Ubuntu Beginners Team
>
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