Affiliate Chairpersons meeting August 12 2017

Notes of the Affiliate Chairpersons meeting August 12, 2017

Attendees: Itzik, Rosie, Filip, Benoit, Hogne, Kiril, Magdalena, Envel, Doug, Michal, Liang, Katherine, Christophe, María, Romaine, Richard, Frans, Catherine, Sven-Erik, Jan G., Shih-Han Lin, Lorenzo.

Opening

Frans will moderate the meeting.
The notes on etherpad are edited by Tim and the other attendees. Notes will be transferred to meta after the meeting (Frans).
Lorenzo suggests to put WMFR on the agenda.

Notes of the previous meeting April 1, 2017

Frans asks if the notes are correct.
The chairpersons mailinglist is updated and has now two admins (Itzik, Frans).
The proposed discussion on the recognition process was not prepared for this meeting.

Movement Strategy: Wikimedia 2030

Frans welcomes Christophe and Katherine (WMF) for this point of the agenda.

During the last meeting in Berlin we made a clear statement that we would support the Wikimedia movement strategy process. What have we done since April? Chapters' voices:

Doug (UK): A few meetups in the UK with Wikimedians to discuss strategy took place and our ED Lucy prepared some official meetups. Time table changes provoked some challenges.
Itzik (IL): Two meetups with members, board meetings, hosted a meetup with external "leaders in Israel". Turned out to be very interesting also for WMIL itself.
Romaine (BE): Lack of resources in terms of volunteer time and lots of discussions in the NL. So no own deliberations about the movement strategy in BE.
Liang (TW): Not enough resources for all of the cycles, only cycle one, but deliberations with the board and the community. Discussion about how to deal with the situation of authoritative regimes.
Filip (RS): Participation only in the first cycle, because community is not very interested. They want to write articles, there is no interest in the broader thing. It seems that for them there is no need to change.
Kirill (MK): Same problem, community has its own strategy and no interest in participating in the global, seems to them to be a waste of time.

Discussion about the Strategic Direction document

Question: What is still missing? Answers:

Position of thematic communities
More emphasis on the value of community work and focus on vibrant, self-organized communities.
Represention of information technology. Response by Katherine: Go to where people are, do not think of Wikimedia of a website, but as a source of knowledge.
What is our strategy to help closing the knowledge gap and also the gaps in Wikimedia communities?

Tim Moritz (DE): The discussions at local chapters could be structured around three questions:

What should be kept in the draft because it is valuable?
What should be skipped?
What should be reformulated?

He suggests to adapt this structure to work on the strategy at home during the next two months. The feedback should be collected before the end of September. Reports are not necessarily very lengthy. Katherine: “An email with your most important findings is ok as well.”

Getting to know each other

The composition of these meetings vary a lot. A small intermezzo to get to know each other a little better was moderated by Itzik.

Value and purpose of the chairpersons meetings

The proposal Value and purpose of the Affiliate Chairpersons meetings was discussed. Several suggestion were made:

Michal (PL): More focus.
Kirill (MK): Add the derecognition of wikimedia affiliates or user-groups
Doug (UK): There is an opportunity to find common positions time after time.
Lorenzo (IT): Discussing the situation of WMFR could be seen as "encouraging" and so it fits, but the definition of interference is not clear.
Hogne (NO): We can have statements only when the individual chair persons endorse the statements.
Itzik: What do we want to do in this meeting? Do we just want to meet celebrities? Do we want to give something back to the chairpersons (e.g. leadership, how to work with your board, discuss specifics kills)? We are not here to replace the Wikimedia Conference or the Board Training discussion. We have a specific role.
Kirill (MK): Main thing to do is to expand board member support.
Itzik (IL): In addition to just board member training, we should also …
Michal (PL): This is the closed meeting of the chairpersons-meeting. Board member training might not be so confidential, not necessary to discuss here. We should focus on the things that are confidential. So this is also the perfect place to discuss an issue such as WMFR. But if discussing individual chapters, we need to have a helpful attitude.

Two changes to the statement were finally adopted:

Include help during and immediately after the recognition process.
Interference in local chapter affairs: we can provide help, but only after a request.

Frans will adapt the statement.

Chapter development

Frans/Tim: By now we have the board member trainings and we start with the preparations for the training during the Wikimedia Conference 2018. Anyone willing to help?
- Doug volunteers.
Could we develop criteria for board members of Wikimedia organisations? This is very difficult, but we can have a "bank of best practices" (there already is something like this on the meta page Board Member Support.
Romaine (BE): Share all your material
Magdalena (AT): We could work on a material pool (see hackathon in Vienna).
Frans (NL): There is also the redesigned Wikimedia Resource Center.
Liang (TW):There is a trend of more content support (e. g. library user group, education user group), our meeting could be helpful for this as well.

Situation WMFR

Lorenzo (IT): we have a lot of experience in managing failure of organisations, we may be of help here and provide an external point of view.
Tim Moritz (DE): of course we are willing to help, but there are opposing parties (and staff), so it is unclear whom we can help. WMFR has to reach out to the other organisations.
Envel (FR): We are indeed in the middle of a crisis, but it is too early to talk about this crisis during this meeting. There are now two general assemblies planned. One regular GA and another one on request of an ‘opposing’ group of members. Board member elections are planned. So please wait another month to see how things develop.
Frans thanks Envel for his willingness to share his thoughts during this meeting.

Closing

No other issues on the agenda. Frans closes the meeting.

Note: The original agenda and an overview of attendees by chapter are available on the talkpage.