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UCW: Working With Other Groups In Your Community

On Wednesday for Ubuntu Community Week, a week long series of sessions in IRC (Internet Relay Chat), I did a presentation titled “Working With Other Groups In Your Community” where I explored some of the projects that LoCo (Local Community) teams I’m involved with have worked on over the years.

I was inspired to do this talk primarily because I frequently encounter folks who are afraid to do LoCo events in their area because they don’t want to be seen as competing or replacing some long-established Linux User Group (LUG) in their area. I wanted to highlight the fact that LoCos and LUGs can easily co-exist and that LoCos can help the existing LUGs in a lot of ways.

I highlighted just some ways LoCos I’ve worked with have helped LUGs I was a part of:

  • You can providing presenters specializing in Ubuntu-related topics for meetings and events
  • Your LoCo team may bring new members into the LUG: a lot of newcomers to Linux find Ubuntu LoCos before they even know what LUGs are
  • You may be providing a supply of Ubuntu CDs to their attendees (whether they be burned or pressed ones that approved teams get)
  • Often times you can offer their members a more diverse set of planned events to attend beyond the standard LUG meetings, many LUGs in my area ask me to cross post our Ubuntu events to their mailing lists!

But there are groups beyond LUGs, so I talked about getting involved with other tech groups, hackerspaces, computer recycling programs, adult learning centers, universities and public school programs. Larry Cafiero mentioned the Farmer’s Markets that FeltonLUG has a table at and that gave me the perfect opportunity to mention Charlene Tessier’s presentation earlier in the week, Marketing Ubuntu at Your Local Farmer’s Market and to mention other local festivals that LoCo teams I’m familiar with have been involved with.

Full logs from my presentation can be found here: http://irclogs.ubuntu.com/2011/07/20/%23ubuntu-classroom.html#t19:00

I answered a few questions during the presentation but if you were unable to attend and have questions about anything I covered I’d be happy to answer them here in comments or via email (you can reach me at lyz@ubuntu.com).