WALRUS/May 2020

WALRUS is a monthly online meeting for Wikimedia community organizers in the United States to discuss and collaborate on events and outreach of national interest.

Join the pan-USA Wikimedia local activists' chat on Monday May 11 2020 at 6:00 PM Pacific / 9:00 PM Eastern.

Zoom videoconference information

Chair & secretary for this month

• Meeting host for Zoom: Pharos
  • https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86479215335
• Meeting secretary for minutes: (TBC)

Agenda

• Introductions

1. review agenda - what do people want to discuss?
2. seriously - speak up, propose topics to discuss
3. Events
   1. Recent events
      1. mw:Wikimedia Hackathon 2020/Remote Hackathon
         1. Seems like productive global group online event
      2. Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC/Symposium on Wikipedia and COVID-19
      3. mw:Wikimedia Hackathon 2020/Remote Hackathon
      4. Wikipedia Weekly (https://youtube.com/c/wikipediaweekly)
         1. Who wants to do live broadcast?
   2. Planned events -
      1. An announcement: Open Publishing Festival May 18-29, call for sessions. Adam Hyde, the main organizer, will hopefully join this call briefly.
   3. Possible future events
      1. WikiConference North America online?
         1. Desired, but how should we organize
4. Issues
   1. Wikimedia Foundation project grants just got graded / returned
      1. For context, these are medium sized projects, US$10-100k, anywhere in world
      2. WMF might be taking the position that online events are less valuable than in-person events
      3. Possible counterpoint: online is good, recording is good, wiki community should get recognition for doing this
      4. for example, McMaster Health Sciences Library - the rejection is not the problem, the problem could be WMF communicating that if events are not in person, they cannot be funded
      5. possible response: could we, should we communicate that online events have some value?
         1. If we do, what would we say? Online worth the same as offline, worth something but not as much, worth more, etc?
   2. Issues of recording
      1. should we record, should anyone record, under what circumstances?
   3. Changes to WMF board composition
      1. election postponed from now 2020 to 2021, with current seats extended one year
      2. board size increase, 10 to 16, community elected seats remain 50% of board, other added seats are expert appointments
      3. What response does anyone have to this?
5. Unpleasant conversation ideas we have discussed in past meetings
   1. Wikimedia Summit 2020 - does anyone want to discuss?
   2. Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20 - does anyone want to discuss?
   3. Communications/Wikimedia brands/2030 movement brand project - does anyone want to discuss?

Notes

• Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Walrus_rolling_notes

• Attendees