Talk:UK Wikimeet survey 2015

General comments

Can I start the comments by thanking Mike and Richard for producing the survey, the results are interesting. My concept of a wikimeet is limited by my experience in Manchester and then London. These are wikimeets with distinct characters. Expanding the concept to include workshops and editathons does rather change the question. That is very stimulating. I suspect that would warp the results, as a longer journey would be justified if there was a specific project offered. It does point to the concept that editors should think of themselves as part of a community and having ownership of the community.

I went to the Raspberry Pi 4th birthday bash in Cambridge last Sunday meeting up with User:Leutha and w:User:Nopolymath. The Pi folk have a strong sense of belonging to a community, and that embraces the age group 8 to 80+. Their meetup was a sizeable affair: they ran 5 parallel lecture/speaker programs with 2 parallel themed workshops. Also there was a sharing gallery where individuals showed off their projects, and a sales gallery where one could get bits and books. (Yes, there was a Wikipedia table with the pop up banner and we got some useful ideas that we are following up.) There is a great similarity between the two communities but great differences in how they manage themselves. I can see that copying some of their ideas would be profitable. I think we will be informally discussing it in the Penderels Oak, Meetup/London/103 on Sunday.--ClemRutter (talk) 22:03, 11 March 2016 (UTC)

Thanks, Mike, for organizing this. Lots of food for thought. Johnbod (talk) 13:43, 13 March 2016 (UTC)

Thank you Mike for seeing this through from start to finish. It's a very useful piece of work and I'll be dropping into this talk page to take part in any discussion resulting from the survey. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 15:15, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Location, location, location

Let me add my thanks to Mike and Richard for their work.

One query, on Q12 (Where would you prefer to meet?) was any statistical work done to support the conclusion that "The clear favourite option here is to hold wikimeets in museums/cultural institutions, followed by cafes, then pubs." My own feeling is that I am not sure that there is a statistically significant difference amongst these three options. That said, my own view is that we should value diversity, thus with the long running London meetups being in a pub, I was careful to organise the relatively recent East London Meetups in a cafe. As for the more arduous work involved in organising a meet up in a museums/cultural institution, I look forward to attending when someone has got this together. Leutha (talk) 17:33, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

Hi Leutha. The numbers here were 90 people preferring to meet in a cultural institute, vs. 77 for meeting in a cafe, and 72 for meeting in a pub. The difference between pub and cafe isn't that different (5 people), so can be debated - but the difference between cultural institute and pub or cafe is quite significant (circa 10% of survey respondees). Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:42, 15 March 2016 (UTC)

In terms of logistics, meeting in a pub or cafe works as people can arrive in their own time, whereas a museum trip would involve people showing up for a set time. If you show up late, you might miss the trip round the museum, especially if you don't have anyone's hone number. Perhaps a blend of the two could work: meet in a nearby cafe, giving people half an hour to show up there, go to the museum entrance and wait a while (15 minutes?) for anyone else to show up, then with the option to do something after the trip round? A mobile meet up does involve more planning than a stationary one, but might be worth exploring. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:36, 21 March 2016 (UTC)

Or museums often have their own cafe's, so people could meet there before going around the museum as a group if they wanted, or individuals/small groups could go around the museum if they wanted while others carry on talking, or it could turn out to be solely talking in a cafe that is in a museum. Ditto libraries and other cultural institutes. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 08:27, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

Absolutely (I may have been overcomplicating things). I think it's feasible. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:50, 22 March 2016 (UTC)

I was looking at Q14, and overwhelmingly it is the personal contact that is valued by the 'gnarled wikipedians' but is this true for the newbie, or even a newbie who wasn't presented with the survey? It does rather effect the venue. Q14 implies workshops and training and help clinics are more popular than a museum tour. These can be prepared in house, so once resourced have little staff cost, while a flip round the collection does require a lot of liaison and seems to be off focus. A simple change would to be reorganise our meetup notification templates and publicity to be more targeted on those 'who are not in the know'. Tacking on a workshop theme- such as 'Learn to love tables', 'Demystifying the template' or 'Ways to upload photos- with time off for good behaviour' may be worth trying.

I am worried that we may start to seek simple solutions rather that tackle the issue head on. Do we have a scattergram of the respondents locations. After work sessions are the standard method for mainstream political parties and they tend to veer towards meeting room then off to the bar. London centric environmental organisations tend to go for a short weekend march with the kids, and a rally finishing at pub near the stations. From Kent, I do weekday evening activities locally but for the weekend I would go to London, I would expect a different format too. I see that servicing the South East may involve this dual approach

I think we can also but separately investigate expanding Back-Stage-Passes, that could finish in a Meetup nearby.--ClemRutter (talk) 17:16, 22 March 2016 (UTC)