ESEAP Hub/ESEAP Interim Hub Committee statement

ESEAP Interim Hub Committee statement, August 8, 2023

To all the affiliates and Wikimedia volunteers in the ESEAP region:

On July 30th, the ESEAP Interim Hub Committee (IHC) had the 9th committee meeting, and the IHC would like to inform the community of the discussions held, about the next steps regarding the voting result for extension of the IHC mandate.

Firstly, there are member changes within the IHC as follows. Starting from July 30th, the IHC consists of 8 members.

Gnangarra and Butch have resigned from the IHC.
Reke replaced Joyce in representing the Wikimedia Taiwan Chapter.
Johnny is nominated by Butch and confirmed by a majority of members in the IHC.

We thank Butch, Gnangarra, and Joyce for their contributions on the IHC, particularly on the Hub Declaration Statement, the Roles and Responsibilities document, and ESEAP’s first year grant plan, respectively. Secondly, based on the voting result of 34th ESEAP community meetings on July 9th and ESEAP Hub Meta-wiki page, there was a strong consensus among the community to nominate a new Board during the ESEAP Summit rather than extending the mandate of the current IHC. Acknowledging the voting result, the IHC will facilitate the community process in selecting this new Board, which will then continue to carry on the next steps of the Hub. Moreover, to ensure the representation of the future Hub, the IHC sees a need for more community consensus on defining who the "voters" are for the new Board. Additionally, discussions on the R&R (Roles and Responsibilities) document have not yielded a clear consensus on who can vote, and the roles of the new Council are yet to be clearly defined as well. Therefore, the R&R document will remain as a draft for further discussion.

Hence, the IHC has concluded that the newly-elected Board members will function as a Preparatory Council, focusing on developing a robust election process through actively engaging with verified ESEAP-specific communities and building consensus in a constructive and practical way. This ensures a community consensus-based transition from the current stage into a fully functional formal board/council, which would run the established ESEAP Hub in the future.

From hereon until the ESEAP Summit in Wikimania, the IHC will promptly draft community processes for the selection of the Preparatory Council, and ensure a smooth transition happening during the ESEAP Summit.

For reference: an information session and discussion regarding IHC mandate extension took place at the 34th ESEAP Community Meeting, where there was also an anonymous poll at the end of the meeting to check community members' sentiment and consensus; 30 people participated in the informal poll. Following that, a Meta vote took place, to ensure everyone, including community members who did not attend the meeting also had a chance to share their views. 30 people participated in the Meta vote; 14 were in favor of extending the IHC mandate to ESEAP conference 2024, where 16 were in favor of starting an election process as soon as possible. Although the differences were not significant, the Meta result was in line with the anonymous poll result in the July community meeting.

Sincerely,

The ESEAP Hub Interim Committee

August 8, 2023