Hi, For four years now, since Wikimania 2014 in London, the chairpersons of the recognized chapters have met as a group twice a year, during Wikimania and the Wikimedia Conference (now the Wikimedia Summit), usually for 1 - 2 hours during one of the lunch breaks. I started to arrange these meetings as an opportunity for the chairpersons to meet, and the concept of these meetings at the beginning was to host every time a different person from our movement. Later on, Tim Moritz Hector (WMDE) and Frans Grijzenhout (WMNL) joined to help me arrange and plan these meetings, and as result also from the feedback of the other chairs, we changed the concept to discussions and presentations format in order to speak about issues related to the organizations we represent and our movement in general. We also created a mailing list as a place to get updates but also to raise questions and share information (such as questions related to the organization's policies, ED, board issues and other). About half a year ago, Frans and me thought we had to take these meetings to a higher level, and, for the first time, we proposed to organize a two days meeting, where we can have a dedicated time, without interruptions (and lunch on our tables...) in order to focus on bigger issues. We already have board trainings for new board members, but we don’t have any program which supports the chairpersons as leaders of their boards and their organizations. So we decided to focus on improving the interpersonal skills and leadership competencies of chairpersons and give them other tools to become better and more effective in their roles. In order to achieve this, we decided to contract an experienced external trainer & facilitator. In the beginning, we planned to have this meeting with all the chairpersons, from the big and from the small chapters. But as the WMF’s grants program were temporarily not accepting new grants requests, we weren't able to get support to finance the participation of the small chapters which didn’t have the budget to cover the costs. So in the end, we hold a smaller meeting a week ago (hosted by WMCZ in Prague), with 17 chairpersons which could cover the travel and meeting costs (with a small grant from the WMF to help to support part of the facilitator's fee). During the meeting (or you can also call it a retreat) we had workshops and sessions to know each other better, to speak about effective and accountable boards, team dynamics, failures (and how to continue) and work on interpersonal skills and more. We decided to share with you the results and feedback we received, which may be used by other groups or similar events: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MOBru_m1wQu-IESItb5IWjWp9mVVdRuG/view?usp=… You can read more about the meeting on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November_24_… And also the notes of some of the session: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_Novembe… We felt this information will be valuable to share with the rest of the movement. Yours, Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch (WMCZ) *Itzik Edri* Chairperson itzik(a)wikimedia.org.il +972-54-5878078 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>