Talk:Chapters Dialogue/Further Information/Archive

Please leave your questions, comments or concerns here; and also feel free to edit the proposal itself. --Nicole Ebber (WMDE) (talk) 15:32, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for initiating this! Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 08:21, 11 April 2013 (UTC)

Internal and peer development

What sorts of development do large chapters focus on? When you think about building your own flexibility, capacity, and strengths: what are your priorities, how do you evaluate your own work, and how do you learn from other entities? –SJ talk  04:06, 6 April 2013 (UTC)

Hi Sam. I'm not sure what you expect with these questions. Should I answer them? Are they general questions you'd like all of us to tackle in the frame of this project? Are you addressing WMDE in particular? All "large chapters" (in which case, where does "large" start and finish)? Could you make this clearer? ;) Thanks. notafish }<';> 09:45, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

"Large" here means "running many projects at different scales." This is a question to members of all chapters that organize, say, more than a dozen projects a year.

The questions are meant informally, as an example of questions I hope to see addressed in this project -- and questions I want us all to ask ourselves regularly. It may be helpful to see the answers of more than one member of the WMF and WMDE - since the more things an org works on, the more distinct perspectives there may be. For example, in my responses below, I am simply sharing my personal view as a participant in WMF internal development and planning; there are surely other things that the WMF thinks about, and other ways we learn from other entities, of which I am unaware. –SJ talk  22:15, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

Example - some of the things the WMF thinks about+

• Regional concerns, politics, risks and opportunities - learned from chapters (mainly relying on them to handle such things entirely).
• Capacity to work with large and small grantors - improved by distributing grantor relationships to chapters and regional bodies.
• Thematic brainstorming and knowledge-sharing: for instance around translation, survey messaging, funds dissemination, and legal changes, via RfCs and wiki discussion
• Supporting new community ideas: via wiki-tools and funding channels for new small projects
• Supporting new code projects: via better server infrastructure
• Participating in capacity-building run by chapters (like the 2012 Fundraising Summit, which was extremely useful)

On the other hand, the WMF has a hard time learning from others about governance, administration, communication, swag production, or planning - though some chapters have set good examples in those areas. And has limited capacity for sharing and publicly discussing mistakes. –SJ talk 

A source of possible input

We at FDC are quite new at our tasks, but we are building-up a lot of knowledge of chapter business (and have personal experince ourselves). In October we read through and discussed in detail proposed budgets for 12 chapters (and WMF) and are now doing it for four more (and follow up on teh progress of the 12+WMF). We are learning what type of general intitiaves give good results, and what more special intitives gives great hopes. We are learning very clearly of the chapter maturement cycle, the challanges going from an operaive board with no staff, to one with paid staff and a represnative board, and the pitfall and best praictices in this process. We are in an early phase to learn what is the optimal set-up of a chapter, both in governance and in size etc. I also belive we in a year or so (when we accumulated more experience) we could generate some guidelines on of how to become an successful chapter. So I see your thoughts being in the same realm and that a sharing of build up know-how could probably be beneficial for us both.Anders Wennersten (talk) 19:45, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

And of course we intend to work closely with all chapter (and other wikimedia organisation)-minded committees or groups in Wikimedia. As a matter of fact, your input and review will be extremely important to put together a survey for example. notafish }<';> 20:52, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

Timeline

Are you guys still on track, or does the timeline require some revising? Abbasjnr (talk) 09:46, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Updated today. :) --Nicole Ebber (WMDE) (talk) 20:13, 21 May 2013 (UTC)

A link

If you don't mind, since it looks relevant to your project, Wikimedia_Conference_2013/Schedule/Friday#Brainstorming_and_dating. --Elitre (talk) 16:05, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

Yay! I have actually also attended this session, thanks for the reminder. Cheers, --Nicole Ebber (WMDE) (talk) 18:07, 22 May 2013 (UTC)

A nice session idea, thank you. –SJ talk  15:42, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

Other gaps in the movement

There are some high level questions about what sort of global networks we want to build, which are broader in scope than most chapters consider. But important to this dialogue. For instance:

• Do we want a chapter in every country? As soon as possible, developed organically, developed with some external metric (of population, readership, language diversity, other?)
• Who handles chapter-like engagement for regions that have no chapter? (Similar question for major topics with global infrastructure outside of Wikimedia, which have no thematic org)

–SJ talk  17:58, 8 July 2013 (UTC)

Draft research questions for the Chapters Dialogue

Moved to Questionnaire.

Your input and feedback

This looks great and I look forward to taking part! One question though; when you are interviewing a "chapter", who will you interview? There are of course lots of perspectives within chapters depending on background, length of service, interaction with the community, being staff or Board - and the same is more than true of the Foundation. Chris Keating (The Land) (talk) 18:52, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Chris! We are aware of the different point of views (e.g. staff, board and community/members) within a chapter. Therefore we aim to interview one member of each group. We won't pick the people ourselves, but let the chapters choose and suggest a reasonable "mixture" of interviewees. I hope this answers your question. --Kira Kraemer (WMDE) (talk) 17:09, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Hello, reports and entries in the Journal/Glossary are always welcome. :-) Ziko (talk) 17:11, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the hint! Of course, the Journal will be one of the communication and documentation channels for the project. --Kira Kraemer (WMDE) (talk) 17:21, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

This is most interesting and a great service to the movement. One question - will each interview be reported back as is? Or will there be edited versions reported back? Or how is this going to be reported back to everyone? And is there going to be an analytical report, summarizing this? Bishdatta (talk) 09:08, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

There will be edited versions that we will report back to the movement. We will synthesize the large amount of material and highlight the key stories, insights and surprising facts.Interviewees will get a summarized transcript of their interviews, though. They may use those transcripts for their own work or they might share them, if they wish. And there will be a final report that summarizes the research, too. --Kira Kraemer (WMDE) (talk) 08:38, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Why WMDE?

Why is Chapters Dialogue organised by Wikimedia Deutschland, and not by the Wikimedia Chapters Association? – Thx.--Aschmidt (talk) 20:58, 24 July 2013 (UTC)

Answer has been on the project page, but we cleaned-up recently. It is of high interest for Wikimedia Deutschland to strengthen the movement and to promote collaboration among Wikimedia entities. We have reserved a budget for chapter support and programmatic work in our annual plan. We find it quite important to gain an overview about the different chapters roles, needs, goals and stories, and also to find out how to enhance our collaboration. This is why we decided to start this project in 2013 – to "quickly" provide a solid basis for the future work of movement stakeholders, including the WCA. Of course, we will be working together with the WCA (they are one of the project's stakeholders; a first interview has already been conducted) and coordinate our work with their research group. (Extra: Find a German version of our motivation to kick-off this project on our blog.) --Nicole Ebber (WMDE) (talk) 15:39, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, Nicole, for answering my question. I just thought it would have been a logic conclusion to have the WCA conduct such a survey because it's not a chapter itself which means that it would not take sides within the movement.--Aschmidt (talk) 00:20, 26 July 2013 (UTC)

I went there in the Wikimania 2013, it looks like WCA is not working as it should for now. However, this project is very meaningful, and I think no matter who is doing this initiative, it's better to get started right away and modify in the process of having a dialogue. --Shangkuanlc (talk)