It’s been more than a year since we did it the last time, and the LoCo team had undergone some fundamentally changes in the meantime, and has been quite inactive. So the event was of great importance – not only to the spread of Ubuntu, but to the local community in general as well.

The day was quite a success. We handed out about 120-130 CD’s which we’ve received from Canonical in the 6 hours we were there, and, just as importantly, showed the Ubuntu name and brand to thousands of people. I also think we “recruited” a lot of people to attend our bi-monthly Ubuntu meetups, where people can get technical help, listen to presentations and contributing to Ubuntu.

But what I think was an even greater success story, was the fact that about 15 people from the community turned up, and at least half of those was “new” community members, who never before have contributed to the community! A lot of old community members, who in the pas has been very active, are not so active any more, and it’s vital that new members take over.

This event shows that not only are there new members who wants to contribute, but also that we will end up with even more active contributors!

We have already evaluated it and what we want to improve, and we will repeat the event in May – hopefully other cities in Denmark will do the same

A special thank you to Carsten, who coordinated much of the event, Troels who built the booth you see in the above picture, Britta and Anders who came all the way from Copenhagen to participate, Henning and Poul who took the journey from Southern Jutland to Aarhus, and of course all the rest of you who were there

See more pictures here (Carsten Aggers blog)

So, I actually managed to get married. Yeah, can you believe that?

It wasn’t without hassles though, and the missy was not happy with me all the time either.

You know, I juuuust had to check my e-mail before the ceremony…:

(Click to enlarge)

I’m running my own Ubuntu Solution Provider company in Denmark, but managed an incredible three days off for our honeymoon. I’m so romantic…

(Photography by Rune Mokastet)

The cooperation has now moved another step forward, as we have established a team between us with focus on packaging, development and bug triaging.

It has been hard for all the Nordic LoCo teams indiviually to maintain a stable dev-team, but by combining forces we actually get a pretty strong and interesting team. We are getting ready for Global BugJam!

The initative came from Canonical virtualization specialist Soren Hansen, who also happens to be from the Danish team, and the idea were forwared to the newly created Ubuntu Nordic mailinglist.

Here it received positive feedback, and the mailinglist subscribers brought back the idea to their local community team.

And thus #ubuntu-nordic-dev were born

Of course we do not stop here. To really becoming successful there are still some things we need to do:

• Gather information and materials on a wiki page
• Structurate some bug triage learning sessions
• Creating more ways for people to join the team
• And very important: Getting ready to participate in the Global Bugjam!

The Danish Team has already planned their first ever BugJam weekend, and has even planned a physical event Saturday the 21th in Aarhus, where we will work with bugs.

Getting the rest of the Nordic LoCo teams with us should definitely increase the number of attendees.

I’m really looking forward to this, and I hope it will be a great success! If you have any suggestions on how to further improve this new dev-team, please do not hesitate to post it

We have created a common planet, which aggregates feeds from the national planets, and the Swedes who made it did a fantastic job (thanks andol, larslj and the rest of you!). The planet has been translated into eight Nordic languages, so it’s ready for the smaller countries if they have blog posts to contribute with.

It is not neccesary to have a national planet to get Ubuntu blog posts in a specific Nordic country. If, for instance, an Icelandic person wants to broadcast his blog to a wider audience, but does not have a national planet to that with, he can use the Nordic Planet.

But the planet is not the only thing we have created until now.

So far the primary discussion has been taken place on the Swedish forums, though there have been some things as well on the Danish, Norwegian and Finnish forums. But we have now created a mailinglist where we can discuss future cooperative measures, without being dependent on one countrys forum or mailinglist.

We have an IRC channel where we meet and get to know each other (come see us at #ubuntu-nordic@irc.ubuntu.com). We have a Launchpad group and a wiki page. We are all set to improve our cooperation in the future.

I’m certainly looking forward to see what eventually will emerge from this

Links:

Planet Ubuntu Nordic

Ubuntu Nordic Mailinglist

Ubuntu Nordic wiki page

Launchpad Ubuntu Nordic group

For one we have more activities now which require debate or decisions made by our monthly IRC meeting. Two, we have expanded our monthly meeting to two monthly meetings, and three, there are a lot more attending the meeting than before.

With the increase in both agenda items and members that want to discuss them, it was necessary to make come up with some guidelines and make the meetings more structured.

So, at the todays IRC meeting, the first one in the new year, we decided on some guidelines which previously had been proposed to our main mailing list. If you are Danish, or can read Danish, you can take a look at the guidelines here.

If not, here’s a summary:

(Preliminary note: The Danish team decides most thing on our IRC meetings, sometimes after a discussion on our mailinglist – sometimes not.)

1. All agenda items which needs a decision MUST be sent to the mailinglist at least one week before the meeting. If not, the items are not valid.

2. Items which do not need a decision can be added the agenda at any time, marking it with a  [debate] tag. A limited amount of time is set on the debate items.

3. Agenda items which are for decisions must be dealt with before debate items

4. The agenda is checked the day before the meeting. If there isn’t any items on the agenda by then, the meeting is called of.

5. The meeting starts EXACTLY on time, so don’t be late.

6. Only the meeting-moderator is speaking. If anyone wants to say something, they do that by marking with a ! (exlamation mark). You are then given the word when your turn is up.

7. At referendums the questions is answered with +1 for yes, 0 for blank vote and -1 for no. If the questions are an yes/no question of course.

8. After the meeting, the meeting-moderator set up a new agenda on the wiki, and the minute taker posts the resumé on the wiki and mailinglist.

There are additional things in our guidelines, but they are intended at reminding us what needs to be done before and after each meeting, and who does it. This way new people can get a quick overview on how we things around here, and nobody are ever in doubt about anything surrounding the meetings.

These guidelines are just that: Guidelines. If a situation arises where we need another approach, or we want the meeting to be less formal, we can just decide that.

I’m curious: Does YOUR LoCo team has a similar structural IRC meetings? Or how does it work in your team?

Starting a LoCo Team and get it to grow is not an easy task, and getting the ball to roll is the hardest of all the tasks.

The European Nordic countries share similiar languages and cultures, and though they definitely are not the same, they share great many things. So about a half year ago I proposed on my blog that the Nordic countries should cooperate a lot more. While everybody thought it was a great idea, the only specific things that came out of it was a wiki page and an IRC channel.

So this blog post explores the idea of a regional cooperation can optimize LoCo Teams that share geography, culture, language or other important things that constitutes a society.

In the Nordic countries we are just about to launch a Nordic planet, that gather all feeds from the national planets. A kind of super planet. Now, the great thing about this is that it requires so little: The setup of a new planet with the feed URLs from the other planets.

But the benefits are great: The big Nordic Ubuntu communities can give a much bigger sense of activity, when they combine their two or three daily planet posts; It gives a better picture on what is happening in the region; It may inspire similiar thinking people to try new things; It can inspire people to create brand new events or other LoCo related activities.

But also very important: It offers the smaller countries a possibility to be among more active communities, and share their thoughts and ideas and get inspired by them. Smaller countries that do not have enough participants to keep a national planet interesting. It means that as soon as a new community emerge in a small regional country it becomes a part of something bigger – without becoming lost in something TOO big.

Now, the Nordic countries share a common language base. It means the especially three of the  Nordic countries can understand each other (although sometimes with difficulties), that is Denmark, Sweden and Norway, while the other Nordic countries (such as Iceland and Finland) has languages that differs too much from the rest to be understood by most people.

This give us the dilemma whether the planet should be an English-only planet, or if we should just accept that there will be some posts that we simply cannot understand.

Personally, I kind a like the idea of the planet being in our own languages even though we do not understand everything. Though 90% speaks and understand English there are just so many things you can express in your own language that you cannot in another language.

The idea of a common planet is just first step. The easy step. The super planet is meant to clear the road towards a greater and bigger cooperation between LoCo Teams in the same regions. Teams which share culture, national legislations, to some degree language as well and who can inspire eacht other.

Let us see what will a common regional planet, a common eye on activities will bring the LoCo Teams of the Nordic countries in the new year.

(For a summary of previous discussions on this matter see this link)

http://jasontemple.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/p-640-480-0b6f9521-81e0-4eac-a060-64fc2aa26b41.jpeg

In October the Danish LoCo team had the most insane month ever. We started the month with a big whole-paged article about Ubuntu in the largest Danish tabloid newspaper starring our forum moderator as an example of a Ubuntu user with children using it as well.

Next we had eight articles in various online medias Monday and Tuesday the week of the release – only with Danish perspectives on Ubuntu; the international news about Ubuntu are not counted!

Wednesday in the release week was the big day: National Danish TV (DR1), our equivalent to BBC,  had a 25 minutes show about Open Source, where a familiy of four tried Ubuntu in 14 days. They were really happy about it, and intended to keep it. I need not to say, that this show got us all VERY busy in the support forums and other places…

Thursday was release day, and Saturday we held release party in Copenhagen. A busy but very fruitful week! In a two months period we saw an awesome 100% increase in visitors and about 5-6 times as many new registrations in our forum.

So yeaterday, Wednesday, the show did a follow-up on the shows from the last year, and of course they had 5 minutes about the family from October.

They talked to the father of the family and he told they still use Ubuntu. It is free, it is good, and it is easy to use. He also told the journalist, that his company with 8 employees all had shifted to Ubuntu! A small like that company can save a lot of money on various software licenses, and since Ubuntu is so easy to use, there is no reason not to shift.

His elleven years old son, however, begs from time to another to have Windows back. He feels somewhat tired of it being so complicated to get his games working properly on the Ubuntu installation. So perhaps a dualboot machine gets into the house someday, and I guess that will do so far.

This reappearance on national Danish TV wraps up 2008 pretty well. It has been a fantastic year for the LoCo Team, and 2009 looks even more promising. Perhaps we will never see a Linux Revolution, but we are definitely participators in a Linux Evolution.

Here you can view all the Press Coverage about Ubuntu with a Danish perspective which we have gathered since September 2008 (Danish).

You can also read Søren Bredlund Caspersen’s blog article about the first appearance on DR1 (English). He and I participated in the show together as the ‘experts’ and we brought the computers to the family.

Danish visitors can see the show again in DR1′s NetTV and the show Pengemagasinet from Wednesday the 17th.

The answers are many and not one particular thing is decisive, but the great community is definitely one of the main reasons. When I look at other international Open Source projects I participate in there are a great portion of dynamics in difference. In the Ubuntu project it is quite hard to keep up with all the interesting projects, the mailinglists and even the Ubuntu participants personally blogs about Ubuntu.

So what it is that makes it such a dynamic community? That easily makes myself spend 20 hours a week after normal work, my girlfriend and my family and friends?

Well, first of all Ubuntu manages to balance the often difficult line between clear leadership, and the freedom for every participants to do whatever they like. This means that a very personal relationship exists between the participant and Ubuntu, and that people feels like Ubuntu is also their project (too). A different feeling than when you buy a product that you really feel should be free, and you also know that a huge company gets the money you pay for it.

No, when you know that the product only exist because you, among other, has contributed, you feel much different about it.

Another thing is that the Ubuntu project puts a lot of efforts into crediting the contributors. And lately this has resulted in the Ubuntu Hall of Fame, where the people who really has put efforts into Ubuntu get higlighted.

The first person the Hall of Fame was Nick Ali, who has contributed in so many areas, that I will not start to list them.

The next person has just recentley been added. It is Alberto Milone who vreated Envy, a tool to assist in installing Nvidia drivers. You can read a lot more about Alberto in the HoF, where you also can see who triage most bugs and a lot of other great things about the contributing powers of the Ubuntu project.

This ability to credit people where credit is deserved is definitely one of the key reasone why the Ubuntu community is so viral and dynamic compared to a lot of other open source communities. Another proof of point is the amount of volunteers NOT working with classic technical areas such as development and translating, but who work with advocacy and other areas of less technical character.

Please visit Hall of Fame and credit the incredible people displayed here! http://hall-of-fame.ubuntu.com

Spørgeskemaet kan udfyldes uanset om du bruger det privat, eller om du bruger Ubuntu Server professionelt på din arbejdsplads.

I annonceringen står der følgende:

The Ubuntu Server community wants to ask a broad set of users to share
their experiences. A previous shorter survey from Canonical was
completed (public results at: www.canonical.com/campaign/server) by
those requesting free server CDs, but this is the first time the
Ubuntu server team is requesting information from the community
worldwide.

Så hvis du har sølle 10 minutter, så brug dem på at give dine erfaringer med Ubuntu Server videre til de rette folk, og vær på den måde med til at gøre den bedre.

Læs hele annonceringen her.

However, some of the content I saw got me to thinking about the similarities between our countries and how that affects the way we each organizes ourselves in the LoCo teams. Sweden is by far the largest of the Nordic Ubuntu communities but their organizational structure looks much alike the one we are currently building in the Danish community.

Because the Nordic societies are so very similar in a both cultural sense as well as in general legislative structure I think we could benefit much from a closer cooperation between the communities. Together the countries are close to 25 mio. people and a lot of the these people understand other Nordic languages than just their own.

For instance, if Sweden produced some materials, e.g. brochues in Swedish, it would not be a requirement for a Norwegian Ubuntero to be able to understand English for him to translate the material to Norwegian.

Another thing could be a common IRC channel which could have two purposes: One would be to benefit the already online ubunteros but would offer them a ‘chat’ channel more. This would increase the Nordic network and could lead to closer cooperation between Nordic MOTUs, triagers and so on. The other purpose would be to offer new Ubuntu users another channel in which they might get help in a non-English language they can understand. While most Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can understand each other, a lot of Finnish people understand Swedish, and a lot of Icelandic people understand either Norwegian or Danish.

This was just two small examples and this blog article was just a preliminary thought. Perhaps some more of you Scandinavians out there have further thoughts on this matter and perhaps even some good ideas to how a closer cooperation between the Nordic communities could create some effective synergy to the benefit of Ubuntu marketshare in the Nordic countries.

The ball is in play…