Local Community handovers

Process document

Approved by loco-council with vote on 28 August 2024. Vote details.

The handover of a Local Community leadership can be a request from the current leaders or by prospective leaders willing to take over the LoCo. If the request comes from a current leader of the LoCo, the “LoCo leadership check” can be skipped. However, if the request comes from a prospective leader, the following needs to be done.

Submitting a Handover request

If current leaders or prospective leaders want to request LoCo handover, they need to submit a request by creating a topic on Discourse LoCo Support category with this template.

LoCo leadership check

The LoCo Council will to try to contact the current leadership of the LoCo using all means of communication found on the Launchpad profiles of current leaders, including but not limited to:

  • Email

  • Discourse

  • Chat(IRC, Matrix, etc.)

  • “Contact this user” button on Launchpad profile

  • If all the above do not work, other ways of communication suggested from prospective leaders

The window of 15 days will be given to get a reply in at least one of the means above. If this period is past and no reply was received, then up to 2 more rounds of “trying contact” are made. After this period, the LoCo leadership is considered unreachable by the LoCo Council.

If a response from current LoCo leaders is received, then we need to confirm the following from the current leaders:

  • If they are currently running their LoCo actively or not. If LoCo Council can confirm any of the following, the current leaders will be considered as active:

    • LoCo with current leaders have either done verification or re-verification in the last 2 years from the day LoCo Council received handover request.

    • Current leaders have done several activities in the last 2 years and they also have detailed and solid plans for future activities.

      • For their recent activities, current leaders need to share proof such as photos, reports on Discourse, and it must be easily accessible publicly.

      • For future activity plans, current leaders will need to provide a formal write up and it should sound feasible with consideration of their situation and backgrounds.

  • Whether they agree to the handover process or not.

If current leaders agree to the handover:

  • If current leaders are running their LoCo actively, LoCo Council will ask them to handle it by themselves (besides those tasks that could be facilitated by the LoCo Council).

  • If current leaders are inactive, LoCo Council will take care the next steps of the handover process.

If current leaders disagree:

  • If current leaders are running their LoCo actively, the process will be halted without any handover.

  • If current leaders are inactive, LoCo Council will proceed with next steps and if LoCo Council decides it’s better to handover to prospective leaders, handover will be made only in that case.

If the LoCo is considered inactive and not reachable, we’ll need to check how prospective leaders are currently recognized in their region.

To do this, LoCo Council will need to gather following information first:

  • Information about prospective leaders:

    • Names, biography in 2 or 3 sentences

    • URL of their Ubuntu Discourse and Launchpad Profiles – with their latest and reachable contact information such as email, IRC and Matrix filled in on their profile.

  • Their recent 6 months activity reports with links or attachments (such as blog posts, event reports, photos and more) and future activity plans from prospective leaders.

  • Endorsements from members or people who have been involved with the LoCo.

Based on information gathered, if the LoCo Council can confirm that they have already organized a number of activities and have enough people who agree that prospective leaders should lead the LoCo, LoCo Council can proceed with next steps of handover process.

Identify new leadership

Once the LoCo Council makes a decision to proceed with handover, LoCo council will need to check the list of prospective leaders once again – this time along with their roles for communicating with LoCo Council. Such as LoCo contact, who will be the person the LoCo Council can contact if needed, and also one or two backup contact persons in case the LoCo council were not able to communicate with the LoCo’s main contact person.

Identify resources to be handed over to prospective leaders

If any of the following resources for the LoCo exists, and in case the current leaders can’t handle the resource handover, the LoCo Council will also assist in the handover to prospective leaders. In case such resources do not exist yet, prospective leaders can ask the LoCo Council to facilitate the set up of the resources required.

  • Admin access of real-time chat channels: IRC (libera.chat) and Matrix (ubuntu.com)

  • LoCo mailing list

  • Discourse LoCo category

  • Domain (DNS) access (ubuntu-**.org)

  • LoCo Team on Launchpad

Other resources such as social media accounts, websites and forums that were set up by the LoCo themselves needs to be handed over by LoCo leaders themselves, as those are not accessible by the LoCo Council.