Wikimedia Conference 2012/Documentation/Day 1/Chapter-council-development

Chapter Council Development

Brainstorming session

Brainstorm on the role of the chapter council in furthering the development of chapters:

What does it mean for chapters to develop?

• How do we measure development?
• Number of members?
• Function of the Chapters council: Can developing a bureaucratic organisation limit chapter growth?
• Events ?
• Budget growth
• Number of employees
• In unison / cooperatively
• Growth of Wikimedia Projects (active editors)
• Number of edits from the territory
• Activities from the territory
• Level of use of Wikipedia (& other projects) from territory
• Number of hits on Wikimedia project pages
• Positive press hits on Wikipedia (& other projects)
• Effective lobbying, e.g. SOPA - becoming recognized as effective lobbyists (e.g. WMUK always gets asked by goverment)
• Quantity of materials released under free licenses
• Perceived growth in terms of development.
• % of people from territory who use (read and/or contribute) WM projects
• Number of volunteers that chapter can engage
• Statistics on growth of number of volunteers
• Growth over time of all these metrics
• Effective Partnerships with other NGOs and government.
• Formal partnerships, e.g. with government advisory bodies - membership of these bodies.
• Partnerships with and respect from educational establishment.
• Participation in projects from educators (e.g. professors and teachers)
• Amount of literature issued (e.g. periodicals, tutorials, etc.)
• Amount of printed materials issued under CC by SA and other free licenses.

Do they all need to develop in the same way?

• Some common areas but not all: depends on scale of chapter (budgets, accountants, etc) Spending must be locally sensitive - might differ between chapters.
• Some chapters have a lot of members, others have a lot of money :-)
• Chapters need to know what they want - what are your key growth areas? What is short-term and what is long-term?
• Mobile access might be more important for some chapters (e.g. South Africa has very high mobile internet penetration)
• Outreach to rural and remote areas if in chapter territory
  • In-person events if chapter members live close enough to make this practical
  • Developing online collaboration so that remote members can participate with city members
• Some chapters have more cultural institutions and potential for uploading free content
• Some chapters may want to focus more on educational outreach or improving local coverage
• Can we for example have competition between chapters in terms of measurable growth?
• Maybe recongnizing special achievements? In the line of Wikipedia of the Year etc, real barnstars...

===Can't chapters decide for themselves?===

• Useless question! (We are unclear what is being asked here)

What kind of resources can the council provide?

• Council can help chapters talk to each ther and share good practice?
• Repository of good practice, case studies, etc.
• Quick-start guide for chapters
• Repository of bad practice: what has gone wrong in the past?
• Technical support, e.g. managing memberships and money
• Technology group inside chapter council - website, wiki, tools to handle memberships etc.: common technical resources.
• Help on handling donor relations (client relationship management system - CiviCRM)
• Helping chapters develop their programmes
• Training
• localising shop.wikimedia.org for merchandise for the chapter
• Open-source content management system e.g. contact management (A spoke to B with this result?)
• UK chapter setup (e.g. job descriptions) was mostly copied from other chapters (e.g. France, Germany, etc.) - Chapters council can facilitate
• Conferences like this one on a more permanent basis, doesn't have to be WMDE! Not WMDE's core mission, and if chapters council can do it, might be better. Having a dedicated person year round who works on this event. Want to have every chapter present, but this is difficult.
• Assembly of delegates: will this achieve the same thing?
• Getting people from other nations, and having specialized mini-conferences around specific themes. (GLAM-camp etc. doesn't have enough publicity, maybe chap council can help with publicity?)
• Why meet if we can meet on wiki?
  • Much conversation happens on wiki,
  • Long flights! Large time commitment for a one or two day meeting.
  • Doesn't have to be only one WikiWomen camp, for example.
  • Hackathons happen locally mostly.
  • Each different type of meeting has very different, focus, for example hackers don't often care much about politics.
• Linguistic support - translating things from English? Would we like to try simultaneous interpreting if we have volunteers willing to try this?
• Why don't chapters submit reports? One reason is that people don't want to translate. Not really necessary - can submit in local language! Maybe some resources from chapters council to have this done. Has to be done quickly. Setting priorities for documents that other chapters need translated quickly.
• Exchange programs between different chapters (not using the word 'internships')
• Brazil works a lot with partners, one of them has 5k volunteers. To increase interaction, have trips between cities (who organises this?) Brasil is very big: need to have national meetups with workshops etc. to improve communication.
• May consider adding a chance to spend time at local offices when attending a meeting.
• What about improved machine translation facilities? If we use Google Translate, you don't know how it will be accepted and understood. Could we translate chapter documents into major languages?
• Translate maybe just the executive summary of each report.
• Distribute info about events to other chapters (e.g. each event > 10 participants).
• Attendance at non-English meetings of regional groups, e.g. Iberocoop, WikiCon by people who speak English as first language
• Have someone to prioritise mailing list emails: flagging "must read" emails.

Reducing noise by supporting good behaviour!!!!

Which chapters need the most development, and why?

• Even established chapters need refreshing with new ideas!
• Newly established chapters need special attention.
• Resources to 3rd world countries that need basic information to local populations in their own languages on mobile devices. Possible support is from diaspora editors, additions to WikiSource as w
• How can we address burn-out of chapter volunteers?
  • Council can help chapters decide the best model of organisation: do you have to have an NGO with all the red tape or can you just be a movement?
  • Different types of conflict: internal to chapter, between chapter board members between countries, global drama (e.g. fundraising discussion, tone of mailing lists)
  • Try to separate these forms of conflict, so
• General scheduling information and news for chapters.
• Well organized communications site that is quick and easy to access, prevents e-mail overload / burnout.

Annual conference

• Aus doesn't have an annual conference. Just an AGM (required by chapter constitution).
• Annual conference might bring people together across large countries.
• How can we thank people who are doing good work? This could be done at a national conference.
• Brazil ties it to other events.
• WM India had a good conference last year
• WMUK builds it around the AGM. In nice venue with sandwiches and lots of wikilove - creates new volunteers and rewards the older ones wiht a nice day out.
• WM Ukraine has national wikiconference and meeting, inviting people from academia and also wikipedia editors.
• List and schedule of national wikiconferences

Interesting projects

• Brazil is developing a programme with universities, using students who need to do translations as part of their training to do it on wiki to the benefit of the projects.

Measurement

Many options for statistical measurement of outcomes.

• People: Number of members, growth
• Content: Number of hits on WM and Wikipedia pages, extent of local coverage, amount of literature issued
• Free licensing