Talk:WikiPods

Sarah's Notes on Ubuntu's Local Community Teams (09/22)

• https://wiki.ubuntu.com/LoCoTeams

Team Formation

• discouraged from forming a new team if one already exists
• can have sub-meetings on more localized level (so for ex. The UK only has one team but that have smaller group meetings in different areas)
• Code of Conduct for Leader exists for all community members, but strongly applied to leaders, leaders are considered to be given a privilege

Relationship with Canonical

• says they have a close relationship with Locos, provide support, but do not run them

Organizing aspect

• upfront how to states that it can be difficult, and “Running a LoCo team not only requires a skill in motivating people to join your team, but it also requires an ability to inspire the team where to move forward, be organised and resolve conflict where required.”
• emphasis on not being a ruling force of the group, but rather a helpful guide
• encouraged to collaborate with LUGs
• there are team leaders, then approved marketing team members (mostly brainstorming now via IRC)
• team council exists to approve groups and monitor leaders

Communication

• suggest mailing list and IRC channel
• setting up homepage on wiki.ubuntu
• forums
• provide feedback/summary of events/activities
• some downloaded fliers available

Advocacy

• fairly thin doc with just ideas, and not really how tos
• encouraged to advocate by attending conferences
• hosting release parties
• converting friends
• outreach to press

Sarah's Notes on Spread Firefox (09/22)

• http://www.spreadfirefox.com/campusreps

Team Formation

• offer 3 ways to participate:
• join (sign up for an account, access webpages)
• contribute (can join advocacy projects, almost looks like help wanted board allowing folks to post their needs
• spread (this takes you to the “affiliates” tab, where by which the more people you get to sign up, the more points you get, which translate into rewards such as ipods, etc; can access online schwag such as “download here” buttons )

Organizing aspect

• provide marketing guide with
• talking points (on both firefox and mozilla), specific text on why IE users should switch
• brochures, t-shirts
• bios on notable mozilla folks
• Library with created presentations
• blog, place to share success story

Communication

• looks a lot more like a corporate/social media oriented site than ubuntu's more wiki style doc (ie connected to twitter, facebook
• give present project idea (“convert your dorm to firefox”)
• guides on how to plan, but very basic, not as robust at Ubuntu guide

A question

First of all, I love this idea! It's great to see some strategic thinking in this area.

I want to make sure I understand this right: WikiPods are basically intended to be local/real-life things, right? As in, people organizing offline activities in the real world? While I can imagine there might be the occasional exception (something having to do with Second Life, or an IRC party or whatever), I think it would really help the reader if this were stated a little more explicitly. For instance, "Any two Wikimedians who live in the same area can form a WikiPod." For a first-time reader, I think it takes a lot of reading and interpreting, in the present form, to understand that this is primarily oriented at organizing events and other in-person activities. Of course, we don't want to exclude somebody who wants to do something radical in a geographically-dispersed way, but I'm not sure that means we have to write the document to explicitly include that kind of project. It seems like clarity in the intro might be a more important concern.

What do you guys think? -Peteforsyth 00:45, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Hi Pete, thank you so much for your feedback! Your're perfectly right: we should clarify this point. Can you please help me and improve the current version? Thanks --Frank Schulenburg 01:51, 1 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Frank, I've made a few changes and added a new paragraph (on soliciting interviews from local bloggers or journalists). I would also suggest that this page should start to have links to more detailed pages on the individual ideas; among other things, it would be useful to have a section for people to add their names and contact info, so they can exchange ideas. Using my addition as an example, you could list yourself as somebody who has done interviews, or as somebody who's interested; that way Wikimedians could contact one another to develop ideas. -Peteforsyth 16:07, 2 October 2009 (UTC)

meetups

what about coordinating with existing meetup groups, many of whom are interested in doing this sort of thing anyway? -- phoebe 00:09, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

WikiPods

The concept of a WikiPod is a very strong and interesting idea. Congratulations Frank!

Pete, would you say that the WikiProject Oregon (USA) does also works like a WikiPod?

In Brazil we have been exploring similar concepts for the past year and it seems to be working to attract, engage and empower all sorts of people willing to promote free knowledge and collaboration through Wikimedia projects.

My only concern at the moment is that some already established legal local chapters would maybe limit the full potential of WikiPods to emerge. I don't mean that some chapters would try to stop WikiPods, quite the opposite, all chapters would probably promote the concept of WikiPods. But the power structure of a legal local chapter could disempower WikiPods that want to work in similar areas as the chapters. IMHO that could make a lot of harm to the development of WikiPods anywhere.

The concept of WikiPods will probably get to its best results in countries where there is not (yet?) a legal local chapter. The number of WikiPods that will flourish will naturally evolve to a national movement that could become a chapter or something else. You can count on me to further explore this great outreach initiative!

TSB 12:12, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Mutirões

Hi Frank! Great idea, and well formulated too! We at WMBR were happy to learn about it from Nevinho. WikiPods are very close to what we have been calling Mutirões at Wikimedia Brasil. Thus the idea has our full support and, in fact, you can use our activities as an example of successful WikiPods anytime you want. Our chapter is essentially a "metawikipod", or a wikipod aggregator, with a few twists so we can also perform specific tasks expected from a chapter. As Thomas stated, we understand that for our socio-cultural-political context this is clearly the best thing a chapter can be. We'll keep in touch, --Solstag 19:56, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Great concept, problematic name

"WikiPod" is very, very similar to "iPod". Perhaps we could call these WikiSeeds or WikiTeams or something else?--Pharos 23:06, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Question about the comparison table

Why are booths at computer fairs marked as a no? If WikiPods are capable of talking to the press and manning a helpdesk for students, why couldn't they set up a table at a local conference or fair? Steven Walling (talk) 19:58, 28 January 2010 (UTC)