Affiliations Committee/Candidates/2024/notafish

Delphine Ménard (notafish) (notafish)

notafish (talk • meta edits • global user summary • CA)

Preferred name	Delphine Ménard (notafish)
What languages do you speak, and at what fluency level? (Please include your English proficiency.)	fr-n, en-5, de-4; es-3, it-2
What region(s) of the world do you have experience with, and what kind of experience do you have? (“Experience” can mean you have lived or worked there or are currently living or working there; you’re familiar with the culture and language; etc.)	My name is Delphine Ménard. I live in Germany, I am French. I have a long experience with Europe in General (Western and Eastern Europe), having lived in France, Austria and Germany and having worked the past two years extensively with the CEE Hub as an advisor. I have slightly more remote experience with the rest of the world: I work for a Global Organization where I am the People and Culture Manager for 60 people in 25 countries, with a high majority (80%) of people from the Global Majority (Asia, Africa, Latin America). I have also learned a lot about affiliates all over the world, experience which I have acquired through my long volunteer engagement in Wikimedia and staff work at the Foundation as a Grants Program Officer, working with affiliates from everywhere. I have also worked closely with colleagues from francophone Africa, thanks to my involvement in Wikifranca. I lived in the US for 2 years, and my command of Spanish has allowed me to create a lot of relationships around Latin America.
What Wikimedia project(s) do you actively edit? And in what language(s)?	I don't edit much, it has never been the nature of my engagement, which is governance. I always was an organizer and organized among other things the 1st, 2nd and 4th Wikimania. My favorite wiki project is Commons, and I guess I have most of my edits by now on Meta. I edit once in a blue moon on the French Wikipedia.
What affiliate(s) are you actively involved with? In what capacity are you involved? Do you serve in a leadership role or have you in the past?	I have been involved with many affiliates but my involvement since 2022 has been with entities that are not affiliates. I have been an advisor to the CEE Hub since its inception and I have been on the board of Wikifranca for a year and now work with them as an advisor as well. I have held a lot of different roles in the last 20 years in Wikimedia. I was Chapters Coordinator before the Affcom existed, was on the Board of Wikimedia France, on the board of Wikimedia Deutschland and on the board of Wikifranca as treasurer. I am an active member of Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Österreich, and Wikimédia France. I have been appointed to the good governance committee of Wikimedia Österreich as a representative for staff.
Have you served on any committees (movement-related or otherwise)? And what was your role on the committee(s)?	Well, I have served on Affcom a very long time, since I am technically one of the founders :). I was Chapters Coordinator as a volunteer before it became a staff position. I was a voting member for some time, then an advisor, also when I worked for the Wikimedia Foundation. I was one of the first elected members of the FDC where I served a few years before becoming staff support for the Annual Plan Grants. I have been an advisor to the Affcom for about a year.
Please describe any experience you have with conflict resolution and/or consensus building.	My work as Program Officer at the Foundation has brought me in contact with a lot of affiliates challenges and conflicts, which I have accompanied, working on mediation, fact checking and information gathering. I have also observed in the last year some of the conflicts the Affcom takes on. My work in Human Resources comes with challenges and conflicts which I have been handling in a professional capacity. My work in and with the FDC has given me a thorough experience of collective decision making and consensus building although I have learned to appreciate "agreement building" rather than "consensus building". Working in Human Resources also brings a lot of need for stakeholder feedback loops that allow for better buy-in for solutions that affect whole organizations.
In your ideal world, what does the affiliate model and ecosystem look like?	Wow, I think this question needs a whole wiki for it to be answered properly. Let's try the short version... In my ideal world, the affiliate model remembers its roots: "everyone wants to participate, so let's make it easy for them to participate". The affiliate governance allows for better representation of underrepresented communities, even if we have to force them on, because they often constitute the world's Global Majority. The affiliate ecosystem loses a bit of its whiteness and very European/North American centrism in that it explores different and better governance models that might not be as "democratic as we in the Global North want it" or as "representative of a ruling majority", but allow for a real sharing of power, or even better, for a calculated and intentional loss of power for people from the Global North. Hopefully the ecosystem stops trying to solve all problems at the same time and looses a bit of formality and rigidity to allow for novel and different ways to engage from volunteers (and also not-volunteers) across the board (and across the globe).
In your ideal world, what are AffCom’s roles and responsibilities in relation to the movement and affiliates?	Affcom probably needs to lose some of that power/rigidity it has been acquiring with time. I am not sure what the future holds, but I am convinced that Affcom needs to come to terms with recognizing its power (or lack thereof) and privilege and that as members and advisors we need to really think through how Affcom can support a tight-knit, but also adaptive, agile and representative network of affiliates.
What role within AffCom are you most interested in: advisory or voting member?	Voting member.