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 duanedes...@ubuntu.com 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
