Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Wikimedia TN/first meeting 2017

Hi Touzrimounir. It's great to hear the user group is organizing a strategic planning meeting for the coming year. We have a couple of questions before we can move forward with approval:

Dear you find my answers below in Bold

1. Has the user group discussed this meeting on wiki anywhere? If yes, can you include a link to the page? It would be helpful to know if there are specific topics, issues, projects, or challenges you know you want to address together.
   we have discussed the meeting in this page Wikimedia Tunisie/First meeting 2017, also we have discussed a lot of points in this page in the mailing list of the user group (I will send to you the mail of the discussion), and I called members by phones to prepare the program
   
2. You said the meeting will help the "user group grow up". What are some specific capacities you would like to see the group develop? Can you take advantage of the group being together to do any specific trainings? For example, on technical skills, project management, volunteer recruitment, etc.
   the meeting will help the "user group grow up" as part of this meeting we will discussion how to Change the status of the user group to chapter, and we will discussion the organisation of big event like Wikiindaba / Wikiarabia 2018,
3. How many people have expressed interest in the meeting? Do you think the proposed 20 people is fairly accurate or is it an estimation? Having 20 people create individual projects after the meeting seems quite ambitious.
   20 people is an estimation, we will have 3 or 5 others members, 50% of members are new for that we will try to traine them about projects and grants, and we will try to prepar a ambitious program for the next year, where all members will take part of them
   

Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 05:31, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

Comments on approval

Hi Touzrimounir. Thank you for all the responses. It's great to hear there has already been a lot of preparatory discussion. It's always good to get your program ready beforehand so that you can utilize the rare face-to-face time for making decisions and prioritizing next steps. It's exciting to hear that Tunisia is planning to host WikiIndaba next year! This is definitely a good opportunity to get the organizing team in place and decide on roles and responsibilities. Also, I am not sure focusing so much discussion on transitioning to a chapter is the best use of time. I am not sure what the status of the freeze on new chapters is, but being a chapter is not always as beneficial as affiliates expect. I would also make sure to reserve time to talk about other capacities the community could develop to mature the organization, like some of the skills I listed above. If you'd like to talk about this in more detail, please let me know. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 05:04, 28 January 2017 (UTC)

Dear Alex Wang thanks for your Comments and suggestions , can you please explain more about the skills I listed above --Touzrimounir (talk) 21:10, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi, Touzrimounir. I believe Alex is referring to capacity-building opportunities for your group. Some examples she offered above were "technical skills, project management, volunteer recruitment, etc." As you are working to grow your organization, we want to help you think about what skills are most needed. Taking some time to talk about this and prioritize what you want to do is the first step in this process. We can provide you with some more guidance about how to proceed with defining these priorities. :) Cheers, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 23:02, 7 February 2017 (UTC)