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Wikimedia Conference 2012/Documentation/Day 3/SmallChapters

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BarCamp about Small Chapters

Introducing each other

[edit]
  • 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

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  • 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