This Tuesday, the Ubuntu Community Council will be holding their usual meeting on IRC. And I’m for Ubuntu membership. What exactly is an Ubuntu member?

A member is someone who’s made a substantial contribution to the Ubuntu community — of any type — and who has explicitly agreed to the code of conduct.

So what does it get you?

Members play an essential role in Ubuntu governance and confirm, by vote, all nominations to the Ubuntu Community Council. They may also be called upon to vote on resolutions put to the members by the Community Council. As a Member you will get an email address @ubuntu.com and the right to carry Ubuntu business cards too, if you want them! (We’ll supply the artwork, you print your own cards.) A list of Ubuntu Members can be found online.

Not to sound shallow, but I would love an @ubuntu.com email address!

I’ve starting beefing up my wiki page. My contributions have been four fold: 1) Ubuntu Weekly Newletter (UWN); 2) Georgia LoCo; 3) LoCo-related wiki pages; and 4) LoCo Hosting Admin team.

I considered doing some packaging and going down the MOTU path. I even started setting up an environment on my desktop to do all that. Frankly, after programming all day for my day job, I wasn’t keen on spending my nights and weekends doing any coding or packaging. So I went looking for something different.

Thats when I stumbled on the UWN. I joined the #ubuntu-marketing channel and asked if I could help out. Two months later, I’m still pounding away at it. I tend to write big chunks of the In The Press and In the Blogosphere sections of the UWN. I enjoy reading what others write about Ubuntu and letting others know about it. Plus I fill out any of the other sections that Corey Burger and Martin Albisetti need me to. Its quite fun. It lets me work the other side of my brain.

The Georgia US LoCo has been coming along. We have the usual online presence set up, including the mailing list, launchpad team, subforum on Ubuntu Forums, wiki page, and irc channel. We’ve had a Feisty release party and an additional face to face gathering recently (see pictures here). We have very constructive weekly meetings on IRC and quite a few members hang out there all the time. There is one project under way at the moment, which will help us spread the Ubuntu gospel! I think once that project is complete, the Georgia LoCo should go up for approval.

When I started looking around how to help out Ubuntu earlier this year, I got involved the LoCo Doc’s Day. Basically, it was a 24 hour project to help create and update a lot of the wiki pages related to what LoCos can do. It was my first major involvement with the Ubuntu coomunity and I learned a lot.

I’ve recently joined the LoCo Hosting Admin team. Basically, the team is responsible for administering LoCo websites and anything related to it. You can read more about it here. I haven’t done much work yet since everything is still getting set up, but hopefully LoCos will get their hosting needs filled much quicker with the creation of this team.

So thats what I’ve been doing to help out the Ubuntu community in recent months. I’m hoping it shows some level of dedication and worthwhile contributions. We’ll see!