Here we are, just a matter of weeks away from the Ubuntu 12.04 release on 26th April 2012, and what a cycle it has been.

Ubuntu 12.04 is a release that has been talked about within the Ubuntu community for quite some time. It marks our next Long Term Support (LTS) release, an important milestone for Ubuntu deployment in business, education and elsewhere, and an important checkpoint in delivering precision and quality in Ubuntu.

Unlike previous LTS releases, Ubuntu 12.04 had a different history leading to it. In it’s preceding releases we had brought Unity in as the default desktop shell, and there had been some consternation about the design and quality of Unity and other elements of Ubuntu. Some of this criticism was deserved, and some was not. Throughout the 11.04 and 11.10 releases we were trying to get a balance in something that has always challenged software; the balance of innovation and quality.

While Unity was a disruptive technology, I believe it was important for the future of Ubuntu. The introduction of Unity was not just a new software component, it was an evolution of of the Ubuntu ethos: Linux For Human Beings.

Eyes On The Prize

I see a lot of talk in our wider community about Free Software and the various ethical opinions of it. I am sure you folks have seen the discussions too, debating the freeness of this license verses that one, the freeness of Ubuntu One, the freeness of various kernel components, where Ubuntu stacks up compared to other distributions in terms of these software freedoms and more. There are then the debates about what being a good Free Software citizen means, whether we refer to ‘Linux’ enough on our website, how much upstream development Canonical contributes, whether we work on existing upstreams, and the rationale around why we would dare to challenge the norm with such contributions as Unity.

These are all valuable debates, and if Linux and Free Software is your hobby they can be an entertaining way to spend an evening.

This is how I like to spend an evening.

Speaking personally, I think these debates sometimes dwell too much on which nuts and bolts we are using rather than how we build a more effective machine. They are important and valuable discussions, and they often do improve the Free Software machine, but sometimes they get a little too introspective and shoe-gazey. What really interests me and what was my primary attraction to Free Software when I first got involved in 1998 is how a collaborative community and Free Software can break down the digital divide and open up technology for everyone.

I think we would all agree that this is an important goal, but for this to happen our technology needs to be usable and accessible to all. Many of the core Ubuntu values speak to this; Ubuntu available freely, in your language, and available to all users regardless of disability. We don’t make technology accessible to all by just making great software though. We need to create great and memorable experiences that empower our users.

Traditionally the Free Software development model has been succinctly described as scratching your own itch. This approach works well: if you have the technical chops and want to see your computer work in a certain way to meet your needs, you can get the Free Software code and adjust it to work for you and deliver your requirements. If you then contribute your work to others, everyone benefits. Winner.

Sometimes the fruits of my sharing are not really worth sharing.

The challenge with the scratch your own itch philosophy is that it can sometimes produce fairly one-dimensional software that purely meets the needs of those who created it. As a part-time developer myself, I always start out writing programs that meet my own needs. As my programs mature though, the greatest improvements in my software has been when others have challenged the presumptions that I made as I created the software to meet my own needs. It helps my software grow, be more accessible, and more interesting to people not like me, and that is tremendously rewarding.

When Ubuntu was founded, one of it’s core principles was to build something that just works. As a vision, I believe that the introduction of the various Unity components, the messaging menu, notify-osd, application indicators etc, continued this philosophy. The goal was to build a simple, easy to use, elegant, Free Software Operating System that continues the evolution of Linux For Human Beings.

Of course, while the vision and design was evolving, there was both a technical and cultural chasm that we needed to cross. From a technical perspective Unity suffered from various quality issues; first performance, then stability, and finally rubbing off the rough edges in the design. From a cultural perspective the move to Unity was controversial. While it excited many, it also alienated some members of our community who felt uncomfortable with Ubuntu heading in this direction. I place no judgment or criticism at the feet of any of these folks; everyone has their own Free Software vision and story to tell, and we can’t please all the people all the time. I am confident we are now over the most challenging aspects of this cultural adjustment.

Ubuntu 12.04

Now this brings us to 12.04. Before this cycle kicked off we started making significant plans around meeting our quality responsibilities. Together we restructured QA in the Ubuntu Engineering team in Canonical, hired Nick Skaggs to grow our QA community, put in place acceptance criteria, built automated testing farms, developed manual testing plans for different milestones, and various other efforts. I believe that you can feel the quality in 12.04 far more than in the last few releases, and we are not finished yet. 12.10 is going to see more and more focus on quality and to ensure Ubuntu delivers a rock solid experience.

Going back to 1998 when I first got involved in Free Software, I always dreamed of the potential of a Free Software experience that is simple and effective to use by everyone.

Me in 1998. Sorry.

Spin forward to 2012 and I believe that Ubuntu 12.04 is shaping up to be a solid contender in continuing to break down the digital divide and bring a stable, simple, effective, and powerful experience for everyone, whether you are Martin Pitt (Ubuntu super-hero) or Martin Bacon (my brother who doesn’t care about his computer, just the experiences it can deliver).

Of course, Ubuntu 12.04 is not perfect; nothing is. There will be some bugs, and there will be some things that won’t please some users. Despite some of these elements though I do feel it offers a wonderfully integrated, slick, and fun experience. Sometimes I think it is important to just take a step back and look at what we created.

…and we as a community really came together to create Ubuntu 12.04. Whether you fixed bugs in packages, created features, filed bugs, translated Ubuntu, contributed art and design input, supported our users on the Ubuntu Forums and Ask Ubuntu, wrote documentation for the features, contributed news to our various websites, introduced Ubuntu to members of your local community or anything else, you should feel as proud as I do about Ubuntu 12.04 and how it is shaping up.

Thankyou to every one of you for being part of Ubuntu; you make it a pleasure every day.

A little while back I created the following video that outlines many of the technologies available in Unity that your apps can neatly integrate with:

Can’t see the video? See it here!

Thanks to the wonderful work of Michael Hall and David Planella, see the developer documentation and tutorials for how to get started integrating these technologies into your app by clicking here.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask in the comments!

Are you a web developer who uses Django to build web apps?

We are looking for a developer to contribute to the Ubuntu Accomplishments editor to help make it easy for people to contribute documentation for accomplishments across the community, Ubuntu desktop, and elsewhere. I started working on this, but I need to focus my time on the core system so I am looking for folks who might be interested in helping with this.

The first cut, but we need your help!

I have documented much of this into a spec which you can find here and you can also get the implementation I started putting together at:

lp:~jonobacon/ubuntu-accomplishments-system/accomplishments-web-editor

If you are interested in helping, either get in touch with me at jono AT ubuntu DOT com or feel free to join the mailing list. Thanks!

Sorry, folks, I forgot to blog these.

See the notes from today’s team meeting.

Speaking of the Ubuntu Global Jam, if you are in Northern California, you should come and hangout with us fun Ubuntu folks in sunny, beautiful, Walnut Creek on Fri 2nd March 2012 at Caffe La Scala in Walnut Creek.

What will we be doing? Hanging out, working on Ubuntu, sharing tips, tricks and other ideas, and helping to make Ubuntu 12.04 even better. Everyone is welcome, everyone can help (no matter what your experience, technical knowledge, or familiarity with Ubuntu), and everyone can have a fun time meeting new folks and enjoying Ubuntu…all within this really rather awesome little coffee shop.

It is easy to get to from BArt (Walnut Creek station), plenty of parking nearby, and great coffee.

All the details can be found right here.

Hope to see you there!

This weekend is the Ubuntu Global Jam happening all over the world with 31 LoCo Teams participating across 22 countries. Be sure to find an event near you!

Much of the fun of an Ubuntu Global Jam event is keeping up to date with what is going on around the world and knowing things that you can do at your event to help Ubuntu.

With this in mind we have put together a handy little dashboard:

Access the dashboard at http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/globaljam/dashboard/

The dashboard has a number of cool features:

• A list of fun tasks you can work on to help Ubuntu 12.04. This covers a range of different topics and there is something for everyone!
• A built in chat window so you can chat to other Ubuntu community fans all over the world and see what is going on at their jams.
• A Twitter/identi.ca stream that shows the latest tweets and dents with the #ubuntu hashtag. Be sure to tweet and dent throughout the weekend about what you are doing.
• A regularly updating collection of photos from flickr, picasa, and pix.ie that are tagged with #ubuntu. Be sure to take plenty of pictures, put them online and tag them!

Thanks to Michael Hall and daker for their efforts on the dashboard, and thanks to Charles Profitt, Randal Ross, Laura Czajkowski, Benjamin Kerensa, Daniel Holbach, David Planella, Jorge Castro, and many others for helping to promote and raise aware of the Ubuntu Global Jam. Have an awesome weekend, folks, and thanks for contributing to Ubuntu!

Nick has a call open for manual tests that we can include with the Ubuntu 12.04 Beta 1 testing that will kick off on Thursday. We really want to throw open the doors to a wide testing campaign to ensure quality for 12.04 but we need your help writing manual tests for:

• firefox
• rythmnbox
• empathy
• thunderbird
• nautilus
• libreoffice
• software-center
• system-settings
• deja-dup
• totem
• evince
• file-roller
• gedit
• eog
• gwibber
• seahorse
• ubuntuone
• update-manager
• shotwell

If you have never written a manual test for Checkbox before, fortunately it is simple and Nick has all the guidance you need.

See his blog post here for how to get started and please get involved ASAP; Beta 1 is this Thursday so we want to get a good set of tests created ASAP. Thanks, everyone!

Recently I have been working on the Ubuntu Accomplishments system and at the heart of the system is the ability to be able to detect if someone has successfully completed various tasks in the community. We can also provide guidance and recommendations for how to get started with new tasks in the community; this will help people be able to explore our community more easily.

I have brainstormed a list of potential accomplishments we could write scripts to detect on this wiki page but I wanted to ask if any launchpadlib expertt can contributed some guidance for how I would get started writing these scripts.

I have also included other accomplishments outside of Launchpad (e.g. loco.ubuntu.com and summit.ubuntu.com related topics), so if those of you familiar with sites could offer any guidance, that would be great. Thanks!

Here is the wiki page gathering this advice.

Ubuntu 12.04 is going to be an awesome release, but we are asking our community to download the current daily development release, test it out, and file bugs to let us know where the defects are. This will then help our developers to resolve the problems ready for the final release.

Fortunately, filing a bug is dead simple. Below is a quick tutorial video that I put together to explain how:

Can’t see it? See the video here!.

I would like to encourage you all to test Ubuntu 12.04 (you can run it from a USB stick and boot into if you don’t want to install on your computer), and be sure to file bugs for any problems that you see. Let’s all come together as a community to test, and this is a great thing to do next weekend at the Ubuntu Global Jam!

Any questions? Feel free to ask in the comments!

Just a quick reminder that in the next 30 mins I will be running a video Q+A session to explain how you can organize an Ubuntu Global Jam event next weekend.

My videocast will be at:

• 11am Pacific / 2pm Europe / 7pm UTC/UK / 8pm CET – watch live here!

Be sure to bring your questions! If you want to ask a question, you will need to register on ustream.tv first; this is free and simple to do though.

Another great place to ask questions is Ask Ubuntu!

For more information on the Ubuntu Global Jam, see the video:

Can’t see it? See it here!

Find out more on the Ubuntu Global Jam website!

Are you in the San Francisco Bay Area? Would you like to meet some fun Ubuntu folks and hang out with them on a Friday in sunny, beautiful Walnut Creek?

Ditto.

This is why you should come and hangout with us fun Ubuntu folks in sunny, beautiful, Walnut Creek on Fri 2nd March 2012 at Caffe La Scala in Walnut Creek.

What will we be doing? Hanging out, working on Ubuntu, sharing tips, tricks and other ideas, and helping to make Ubuntu 12.04 even better. Everyone is welcome, everyone can help (no matter what your experience, technical knowledge, or familiarity with Ubuntu), and everyone can have a fun time meeting new folks and enjoying Ubuntu…all within this really rather awesome little coffee shop.

It is easy to get to from BArt (Walnut Creek station), plenty of parking nearby, and great coffee.

All the details can be found right here.

Not near Walnut Creek? No worries, find an Ubuntu Global Event near you or why not organize one?

I would like to open up Ubuntu Accomplishments to a little wider testing. Please note a few caveats:

• You need to be running Ubuntu 12.04 to test this.
• This is still a work in progress; there will be bugs.

Please follow the instructions at here for how to install. If you have questions feel free to ping me on IRC (I am jono and I am around in #ubuntu-community-team most of the time).

If you find a bug (and you probably will!), the bug will either be in software itself or one of the accomplishments. Please file bugs using the following links:

• Bugs in the daemon and app – file bugs here
• Bugs in the Ubuntu Accomplishments set – file bugs here

If you are unsure, just file bugs here.

There is a lot of work going on each day on this, so please be sure to update your branches each day (until we start releasing packages). You can do this with:

cd ubuntu-accomplishments-system
bzr pull

cd ubuntu-community-accomplishments
bzr pull

Thanks!

Writing Accomplishments – Volunteers Needed!

There are only a few accomplishments available in the system right now. The goal here is that accomplishments should be about new experiences. I would like to avoid things such as “50 posts to a bug report” or “500 posts to a forum“; those could be achieved by repeating meaningless content to get the numbers up. I would rather focus on new experiences such as “I have become an Ubuntu Member“, or “I got my first uploaded accepted“.

Writing accomplishments just requires a little knowledge of launchpadlib and Python for Ubuntu Accomplishments, or you can write accomplishments for other projects where you can query a web service.

If you are interested in writing some accomplishments to plug into the system, please see this page and the video tutorial at here.

Thanks!

OK, fun little meme time. Simple question:

Which songs remind you of Ubuntu?

Think about the music…the vibe…the rhythm…what it makes you feel when you listen to the song. Which ones make you think of our goals of bringing Free Software to the world with Ubuntu?

Reply using your blog, Google+, Facebook, Twitter or wherever else (use the #musicofubuntu hashtag) and lets see what music gets our Ubuntu blood flowing.

I have a few I want to present via the wonderful medium of embedded YouTube videos. What are yours?!

Queen: Don’t Stop Me Now

Can’t see it? Watch it here!

Twisted Sister: We’re Not Gonna Take It

Can’t see it? Watch it here!

AC/DC: Shoot To Thrill

Can’t see it? Watch it here!

Airbourne: Runnin’ Wild

Can’t see it? Watch it here!

Rush: Virtuality

Can’t see it? Watch it here!

Grave Digger: Rebellion (The Clans Are Marching)

Can’t see it? Watch it here!

Rage Against the Machine: Renegades of Funk

Can’t see it? Watch it here!

Bomfunk MC’s: Freestyler

Can’t see it? Watch it here!

Recently I have been blogging about a project I have been hacking on called Ubuntu Accomplishments.

This is an accomplishments system that can be used to identify when people have accomplished various things in the Ubuntu project and reward them with trophies. The plan also makes additional skills and accomplishments more discoverable and provides better help for people to get started. While designed for Ubuntu, the system can be used for other projects and also for local applications (e.g. completing Level 1 on a game). Accomplishments in community projects are verified for their integrity so people can’t fake their trophies.

I wanted to present a video demo of the system working so far:

Can’t see it? See the video here!

You can find out more about the project here and the code is available in the following branches:

• lp:ubuntuaccomplishments – contains the main trophy viewer app, the daemon, and the libaccomplishments Python module.
• lp:~jonobacon/ubuntuaccomplishments/ubuntu-community – a collection of Ubuntu accomplishments for different things you can accomplish in the Ubuntu project. There are only two accomplishments right now – can you help write more?.
• lp:~jonobacon/ubuntuaccomplishments/validation-service – the server-side verification service that runs on an Ubuntu One headless machine.

Now, this is really early in the stages of development. If you grab the code you will find various bits that are not yet implemented, but the core idea works.

Things we need to do next:

• Generate the user’s trophy directory and share it with Ubuntu One. I have the code written to do this, I just need to merge it in.
• Add a Getting Started page which asks the user if they want to use verified trophies that use Ubuntu One.
• Fix support for machine-verifiable trophies that are dependent on others.
• Actually sign the trophies.
• Implement the categories filter in the My Trophies view.

I plan on writing a longer blog entry about how the system works later for those who are interested in contributing.

Today I had a call with another team at Canonical who were wanting to ask for guidance on (a) how to write good blog entries that people want to read and (b) how to regularly get into the habit of blogging and get more eyeballs on your posts.

I thought this could be of general interest to the community, so I figured I would write these things down into a blog entry. So meta.

Some tips:

• Keep it concise – your blog should get the point and talk through the topic you are presenting. Now…seasoned readers of my own work will know I tend to ramble from time to time, so I myself always need to try and keep this in check. Few people will want to commit to a huge block of text, so keep it concise.
• Format it – the web has many wonderful things, and this includes formatting such as italic, bold, code, different heading sizes and more. Use them to help add emphasis to your posts.
• Make it visual – pictures say a thousand words, and so do videos. Break up your content with images illustrating what you are discussing, or just amusing images to make a joke (example). If you want to display images, I recommend you upload them to Flickr and then link directly to the images. For videos you can usually embed them directly from YouTube or other video sharing sites, but aggregators such as Planet Ubuntu often strip out the embedded videos, so be sure to provide a direct link underneathe the embedded video (example).
• Link to interesting things – if you are discussing something online, always provide a link to it. This helps the user get access to the information quickly and easy.
• Be professional – always keep your posts professional and thorough. Ensure your writing is clear and that you have spell and grammar checked it.
• Be fun – being professional doesn’t mean you can’t be fun. Writing in a fun and amusing way is a great way to keep your readers interested.
• Invite discussion – if your blog has a comments feature, always end your posts and ask for input and opinions from your readers. This provides a wonderful way to trigger some discussion around your post.

In terms of blogging more and getting more eyeballs on your posts, here are some tips:

• Get into the habit – to become a regular blogger you need to get into the habit of thinking “this is cool, I should blog about this“. This can take a while to get used to. If you are in a team, it is helpful to suggest to others when they should blog about something; this keeps us all regularly posting. If you are struggling with getting into the habit, put a reminder in your calendar to remind you.
• Ensure you are aggregated – if you are an Ubuntu Member, be sure to add your post to Planet Ubuntu. Add your post to other appropriate aggregators (e.g. Canonical staff should add their blogs to voices.canonical.com).
• Use social media – post a link to your post on Twitter, Google+, Facebook and other social media accounts.

I am sure there are plenty of other suggestions from you folks; please add them to the comments!

Ubuntu Global Jam: Call For Events!

From 2nd – 4th March 2012 we will be running the Ubuntu Global Jam. This is a global event in which we ask Ubuntu users and contributors to organize events in their local areas to meet other Ubuntu people and help contribute to Ubuntu.

The Ubuntu Global Jam is a fun event, and a great way to meet other Ubuntu and Free Software folks. It is also really easy to organize an event if there is not one near you.

To explain more, tonight I created a video explaining what the Ubuntu Global Jam is, and how to organize an event:

Can’t see it? Click here!

We are going to be encouraging you good folks to start organizing your events. You can find out more about the events here at loco.ubuntu.com and more information on the wiki.

Please feel free to ask whatever questions you like about how to organize an event in the comments here. Do let me know if you organize an event!

Mike is also working on some website updates on loco.ubuntu.com that will make the event a little more interested both before and when the event is running.

Today (1st Feb 2012) I will be doing my live Ubuntu Q+A session at 12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 8pm UK / 9pm Europe. You can join the videocast here (anyone can view, but if you want to ask a question you should register an account with ustream.tv first).

All questions are welcome!

The Ubuntu Developer Summit (UDS) is the most important event in the Ubuntu calendar. It is where we get together to discuss, design, and plan the next version of Ubuntu; in this case the Ubuntu 12.10 release.

The next UDS takes place at The Oakland Marriott City Center, Oakland, California, USA from the 7th – 11th May 2012. You can find out more about why UDS is interesting from the perspective of a member of the community, an upstream contributor, and a vendor. We also welcome everyone to participate remotely if you can’t attend the event in person. More more details on how to get there, see this page.

At the heart of a great UDS is a diverse group of attendees who can bring their experience and expertise to the discussions. You don’t have to be technical, or be a programmer or packager to attend – UDS is open to everyone (including non-Ubuntu folks) and free to attend. We encourage everyone with an interest in Ubuntu to attend.

Sponsorship

For every UDS Canonical sponsors the hotel and accommodation of a set of community members to ensure they are free to contribute and bring value to the discussions. We have a limited budget so we can’t sponsor everyone, but we are always keen to have a capable and diverse group to sponsor:

• We strive to support community members who are actively involved in Ubuntu and who are providing significant and sustained contributions to the Ubuntu project.
• We always welcome Upstream contributors who are bring value to Ubuntu indirectly via active participation in their upstream project, but who are keen to see quality support for that upstream in Ubuntu.
• Contributors are willing to actively participate not only throughout the full Ubuntu Developer Summit week, but also following with active contributions throughout the release cycle.
• We are always keen to welcome members of the community who have never been to UDS before and are keen to participate and experience the event.
• You don’t have to provide technical contributions to apply – if you have participated in the areas of advocacy, documentation, testing, art, design etc, you are encouraged to apply.
• UDS is an event that encourages diversity – we welcome everyone to apply for sponsorship, irrespective of gender, race, impairment, technical expertise, or other factors.

If you are participating in the Ubuntu community, we would love you to apply for sponsorship. This is how it works:

1. You can apply for sponsorship by following these instructions. Apologies for the different forms you need to fill in – we are going to consolidate these forms at the next UDS. The deadline for submissions is Wed 22nd February 2012 so be sure to get yours in!
2. When the deadline is reached we will assess the applications and finalize who we will be able to sponsor.
3. You will then receive an email outlining whether we can sponsor you or not.

Simple! I look forward to seeing your applications, and seeing many of you in Oakland!

Erica and I just spent a busy few weeks visiting family and friends over in the UK, and it was wonderful to see everyone. My family all get on wonderfully with each other, but my two brothers and I have always lived in different places and this Christmas was the first time we have all been together for Christmas in about 20 years.

It was awesome. I feel privileged to have such a wonderful and caring family. We miss them all, but are happy to be back home in California after such a hectic trip.

So here we are at the beginning of 2012 and many of us are in the frame of mind about new ambitions for the coming year. Some people have been sharing their new year’s resolutions, and I wanted to share a few of mine outside of the obvious passion to put my family first and be the best husband, son, and brother I can be. I am blessed to be surrounded by such wonderful people, and I want to be there for all of them in the best possible way.

In terms of new resolutions, firstly I want to get fitter. I am not particularly out of shape and have a reasonably healthy diet, but I want to amp it up, get healthier, practice a regular exercise routine, and tone up. I will be tracking this with the awesome Fitbit, who assure me that Linux support for syncing data is coming, although their have gone a little dark when I ask when. Come on Fitbit, show us some love.

Me in 2012.

Related to this in part is my second resolution that I want to learn how to cook. I am a terrible cook. I want to learn how to cook some healthier food, but I am particularly interested in continuing to learn how to grill. Grilling is a big cultural part of California, and I started learning how to cook steak, kabobs, veggies, and some other things last autumn, but I want to ramp this up to the next level. I am particularly interested in learning how to smoke some brisket.

This image has not influenced my resolution at all. Honest.

2012 is going to be the year of Ubuntu. 2011 was a year filled with great progress, tough decisions, and renewed focus, but 2012 is going to be where we really shine. Speaking personally of my team at Canonical, we could not be stronger; we have the unstoppable Daniel Holbach, Jorge Castro, and David Planella, and we will be joined by Nicholas Skaggs and Michael Hall to complete the line-up. The team is raring to go, we have a strong strategy in place, and 2012 will all be about growth, efficiency, and continuing to grow and a fun and inspiring community.

Finally, 2012 will see the new Severed Fifth album released, the second edition of The Art of Community and no-doubt plenty of other fun (and some likely slightly bonkers) projects. I have a few charity projects I am interesting in doing in 2012 too that I didn’t have the time for last year. Who knows where the year will take us?

Anyway, enough rambling, let’s roll.

At the Ubuntu Developer Summit in Orlando in November there were some great discussions about LoCo governance. The LoCo Council has a blueprint but these are some of the highlights:

• LoCo Twinning – the goal here is to twin LoCo teams with other LoCo teams to help them get on their feet and moving. Bugs have been created and the LoCo Council are selecting the teams to pair them with. The team chose five teams they felt were large enough to be able to be twinned but not so big that only large teams were going to be able to twin with them. They are then going to chose five un-approved teams and help them during the cycle on how to get their teams up and running, how to organize meetings and events, and get information to other members of the team and explain how the larger Ubuntu community works.

• loco.ubuntu.com renaming the main team page – at UDS a compromise was struck between the LoCo Team Portal developers and the LoCo Council to rename the team display page on the portal (this is because many teams have named themselves incorrectly and don’t want to change now as they have things printed). As such they are only changing the display name on the main page and nothing else.

• Handling large geographic regions – the LoCo Council have discussed geographically breaking up some of the larger countries such as Canada, Australia and Brazil (they’ve semi done this unofficially). The idea behind was to better conserve resources (such as conference packs) so that we can have smaller regions that can be sent content for events (e.g. CDs).

• City LoCos – it was agreed at UDS that City locos would not happen, but as a compromize, a field on teams pages on the LoCo Teams Portal would be created to add a contact for a city.

• Re-approvals – in early January the LoCo Council will be focusing on re-appaovals for teams; there are nine on their list.

Thanks to Laura Czajkowski for content for this blog entry, and the rest of the council (Charles Profitt, Chris Crisafulli, Greg Grossmeier, Leandro Gómez, and Paolo Sammicheli) for their tireless efforts. Thanks also to Chris Johnston and co. for their wonderful work on the LoCo Team Portal.