ARTICLE

Scaling Up

by | Mon 14 Nov 2011

Since I got back a week ago from [UDS](https://uds.ubuntu.com) in Orlando I took a few days off work and will be off Monday and Tuesday this week too (I will still be around, I am just taking a few days to work on [The Art of Community 2nd Edition](https://www.artofcommunityonline.org/)).

I have a big list of blog entries that I want to write to follow up on much of the work that happened at UDS. As such, please bear with me as I get this content online over the next few weeks. Some of this is specific to certain projects and some of it is more general to the community, our culture, and how we can make Ubuntu a fun, exciting, and rewarding place to be. I will also be presenting the focus and roadmap for the *Canonical Community Team* soon to ensure everyone can see where the team will be focusing.

I want to frame these blog entries around a set of core themes that we as a community highlighted in our sessions at UDS as areas that we all feel are valuable areas of focus. This set of areas were finalized on the Friday in the *Community Roundtable* session after a busy week of discussions throughout various sessions, round-tables, and the Leadership Mini Summit:

* **Success** – create an approachable and nurturing environment to help our community to contribute and be successful.
* **Constructive** – create an environment of constructive criticism, and protect it against anti-social and un-constructive behavior.
* **Appreciate** – create an environment of gratitude and appreciation.
* **Leaders** – support and motivate our leaders and governors to be successful to deliver leadership that furthers Ubuntu and the community.
* **Everyone** – create and share opportunities for all skills and skill levels to help everyone make Ubuntu successful.

I am not a big fan of *initialism*, but the above does rather neatly map to ‘SCALE’ which is what much of our community is focusing on; growing our contributor-base as we work to get Ubuntu to *200 million users*. The above outcomes are a combination of what people find motivating about participating in Ubuntu (e.g. a feeling of success, enjoying being thanked for your work, helping others), what many feel we need more of (e.g. empowering our leaders, providing opportunity for everyone to participate), and dealing with what people find de-motivating (un-constructive criticism and bickering).

I will follow up over the next week with these further posts summarizing much of the ideas and work discussed at UDS about how we can accomplish these outcomes more and more in the 12.04 cycle. In the meantime, I would love to hear your thoughts and ideas, projects, and approaches about how we can accomplish some SCALE. 🙂

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