Wikimedia Conference 2012/Documentation/Day 3/SmallChapters

BarCamp about Small Chapters

Introducing each other

• Mexico
• DC
• Brasil
• South Africa

• Philippines
  • Works in shared virtual office
• Venezuela
  • Sponosoring Latin American open source installation festival, will give presentations
• Bangladesh
  • 2006 started idea of own chapter
  • Organized many meetups, photo walks
  • Formal chapter later, end of 2010, submitted bylaws April 2011, approval Oct 2011
  • Working for local registration of chapter
  • 1st Wikipedia Unconference in Chittagong
  • Initially thought Foundation funding, but few active members to fill application
  • Found local sponsorship, 300 attendees
  • Young chapter, 4-5 active members
  • Wikiloves monuments planned for Sept
• Finland
  • 30 members, small budget
  • most members inactive, 5-10 active members
  • applying for grants is possible
  • wants to engage existing members and get more members
• Estonia
  • Wants to increase participation and get new members
  • Current members doing many projects
  • Main project this year is getting more people by doing many activities
  • Want to provide new people with fun projects
• Czech Republic
  • Only a few members active in chapter movement
  • many work on wikilovesmonuments, grant project
  • not as many wanting chapter work, serving as chair
  • has no office, wants to know if office is needed for others
• Canada
  • Small because only started last year
  • Board is small and spread out over area as big as Europe
  • Everything we do is onlindine
  • Only event with enough people was Montreal
  • What do you do with only one person per city?
• Kenya
  • 21-22 members are active, plus huge mailing list
  • distributing Wikipedia offline to secondary schools with poor Internet access
  • using UK wikipedia,
  • neighboring countries work, Botswana sponsored by Google to increase content in Setswana
  • Tanzania knowledge sharing trip, talk to librarians
  • focus is on outreach work
  • talks at universites, colleges, promoting student clubs
• Kazakh community, not yet a chapter
  • 10 full time people, 1-2 on Wikimedia projects
  • wants to become chapter soon
  • no membership yet for everyday activities
  • looking to become membership organization
  • promoting Kazakh Wikipedia, most people speak Russian
  • only a small number realize Kazakh Wikipedia exists
  • three different scripts for Kazakh
  • differences in mentality, education level, access to info
  • 3 mil in China, 1 million in Europe, 10 million in Kazakhstan itself
  • minorities would also like Wikipedia, Uighurs
  • would like to learn from chapters that have an activity
• Is problem manpower / volunteers, money is secondary
• large mailing list with only a few replies.
• sometimes a huge campaign, with only a few volunteers
• sometimes after big activity, program another activity (small) within two weeks to keep people involved
• trip to college or university, taking photographs, then do presentation for a bunch of people
• mailing list that discusses bureaucracy instead of activities isn't interesting for volunteers
• hold meeting for volunteers, ask for volunteers
• students or professionals, full-time workers may not have much time
• lunchtime activities, evening activites are possible at colleges
• looking at what's practical for group given number of people available,
• small groups can do things big group cant
• one person can build partnerships with a cultural organization
• wiki takes cities may need more people

Offices

• how many have an office 3
• how many want an office
• how many all online no office 7
• wanted office, but don't want to keep office open all the time, decided to meet in someone's office
• we can't afford full time office, share office, sometimes have use of shared employees
• sign up for virtual office with freelancers
• having a phone answered in virtual office
• so few people, but board meets once a week in a public library
• meeting up with a chapter in nearby country
• big brother small brother in philipines, getting notes, skype sessions with Australia, only 3 hrs difference
• time difference with Netherlands means waking up very early or late at night
• very small number of volunteers to commit time to movement
• activities to attract more people planned, but may be better to build up committed small group first who can keep the chapter activities going
• big event with 300 people was quite a bit of work
• general discussions may not permit focus on interested committed people to take the movement further
• educate and take time to cultivate new members to take time for the movement
• scattered around the country, invite people over coffee to show up - provide coffee and cake - in some countries beer works better
• 3 people working on fresol, all speakers came from social group in person
• also going to media, getting published in largest newspaper in country
• 200K issues, people realized WM chapter existed, 4 calls from NGOs resulted
• TV interview resulted from newspapter story
• coverage was result of a vicepresident who met a journalist socially who got interested
• lots of publicity in Brasil, 4 hours in television, lots of journalists come and take a look around but volunteers we don't have,
• in the beginning, press coverage may not work
• if we group together small chapters would we get a bigger voice?
• need to share with other groups growing up together
• is politics thing needed? some say no
• we are sharing notes, could create a mailing list
• share notes beyond this room
• small group may stay a small group
• keep small group in mailing list of the chapter
• developing chapters network
• problem is getting volunteers, can share experiences, contact each other
• contacting other NGO organizations
• Mexico gets much support from other open source communities, Geek, Ubuntu, Mozilla
• small community network for similar NGOs
• discussing how to grow