effiejayx’s blog

Ubuntu Chile, one of the first Ubuntu Communities in latin america has a new LoCo Team Contact. Mauricio Peñaloza writes:

Well, after a couple of months as the LoCo Cotact of Ubuntu Chile, i’m very pleased to give the charge in very good hands! Yes, i’m talking about Cristian Barahona (aka cristianvirtual), he’s one of our Council Member, and the most important thing a very good person. I hope he will make a good job with the help of all of us.

The LoCo Council joins Mauricio in welcoming Cristian and wishing Ubuntu-cl the very best.

A while back jono explained in detail who helped him in the Open Source world. I found that a very interesting story. Yesterday I had the chance to catch up with a very old and dear friend, Edmundo Carmona, he is too one of those heroes who very modestly keeps to himself, but his contributions to the Free and Open Source World and to Ubuntu in particular should not go unnoticed. He was the one that showed me almost 10 years ago that there was this thing called Gnu/Linux. Of course I had heard about Linux on the news, and of course I had heard it from other people but to have a familiar face tell you about it is what gave me the comfort to just dive in.

Edmundo and I worked in a bi-national center here in Maracaibo, Venezuela and we would teach English. on saturdays during coffee breaks we would geek out with Freddy Flores, another very pro gnu-linux/FOSS guru from the city. I was completely into the Microsoft developer world, learning VB in 1999 and Edmundo and Freddy were already telling me of how this was only training and that I was not learning at all. This was my first encounter with FOSS.

By 2005, Edmundo had stopped working at the bi-national center and the only chance to meet was crashing at his place and talking. We was a very busy person so his time was gold, and for him to share it with such a noob like me, really made me work hard on getting the basics right. I was not learning linux yet. I was only learning programming skills. and as I was leaving he suggested that I try this thing called Ubuntu, the new version had just been released (5.04 Hoary Hedgehog) and that it was ready for people like me. I did not head his call just right there. It took a couple of weeks later when I received a copy of Ubuntu in its shippit sleeve and all from a student at the bi-national center. That was life changing. The thing had come full circle. This had to mean something.

I installed Ubuntu and went to Edmundo’s and he was very receptive of my change and helped me get settled. What applications to use, and even mount my windows partition when windows stopped working (reason for my final dismissal of that OS). It was his confidence in Ubuntu that made me feel that that my choice could not be wrong. yesterday talking to him on IM, I realized that it’s been a while since I had spoken to the guy who made linux happen for me,since then he had moved to Colombia and got married and found a great job in the neighboring country. I had the chance yesterday to give him a very heart-felt THANK YOU for all he did for me when I was moving to linux. He feels it was not in vain. Edmundo lives in my memory like one of the greats in the FOSS…

Muchisimas gracias Edmundo por todo y estoy siempre a la orden en Maracaibo.

There is a new LoCo Team Contact in the Wisconsin US-team. Anthony Hook is taking over from Trevor Mosey and Uberushaximus. Anthony mentions of his motivations towards the team:

I hope that we will be able to get some regular activity in our LoCo and make it worthwhile for our 87 members (According to our Launchpad Page).

On behalf of the LoCo Council, a warm welcome to Anthony and all the best to ubuntu-us-wi.

The Spanish-speaking Local Community Teams are pleased to present the fruit of a joint effort, a podcast of Ubuntu in Spanish. We are starting this idea and all suggestions are welcomed.

http://people.ubuntu.com/~effie-jayx/ubounpodcaste01t01.ogg

We have much to do yet. need to establish services, proper Wwb syndication and finds ways to make it sustainable in terms of workload. This podcast is expected to go every two weeks and have invited and throughout Latin America. if you want to participate, visit https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LocosHispanos/Podcast

There was an idea, There was a podcast … ubounpodcast!

P.S. Shall provide an mp3 link laters

I would like to announce that there is a loco team contact change. Santiago Zarate has introduced the new co-points of contacts for ubuntu-ve. Nelo Tovar, Nelson Delgado and Jaime Escobar.

They are the new leaders of a team who has a record of being active and critical of its steps in the free and open source movement in Venezuela. The LoCo Council joins Santiago in welcoming them and invites them to lead the team to greater times.

Yesterday, the Ubuntu-ve team made a great effort and had a meet up to celebrate Karmic’s release we had an awesome turn up. The highlight of this meeting was the plan we will be folloeing during the Lucid release cycle to improve as a LoCo team. As a member of the LoCo Council, I follow closely the great achievements of teams and one idea in the past month generated synergy for our team, the One-Year Ohio Team Plan.

After reading the suggestion from Jono to generate a roadmap for a more successful team I believe we have come up with a great scheme to make Ubuntu-ve rock harder than ever. Ubuntu-ve has decided to make a game plan based on our needs, and we basically need to concentrate on getting organized. We have grown a lot and we need to give a breath of fresh air to the team. We have new folks and old folks working together to make the team greater. Ubuntu-ve plans for Lucid is in spanish for now, but we are working towards getting it in English.