Great breakdown B. <br>I for one hope to spend some time tomorrow or friday sounding out some institutions to see if they want to host a "backstage pass" event. I'll report on progress. Of course, as you say, it is one thing for WM-au to say "this is what we shall do" and quite another for people to actually do it. So, the role of WM-au it, as you rightly put it, to support those people who have the motivation to drive things on.<br>
<br>-Liam<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">On 11/19/08, <b class="gmail_sendername">Brianna Laugher</b> <<a href="mailto:brianna.laugher@gmail.com">brianna.laugher@gmail.com</a>> wrote:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
Hi,<br> <br> I have been thinking about how we will plan and map our activities. I<br> can see basically four strands for activities:<br> 1. Outreach<br> 2. (WMF project) content focussed<br> 3. Community-strengthening<br>
4. Support/admin tasks<br> <br> 1: Outreach<br> Primarily aimed at increasing the awareness of people outside our own<br> community of the Wikimedia projects and free culture concepts. These<br> activities can be targetted at specific audiences (eg educators) or<br>
the general public.<br> Could be public events (Wikipedia Academy, talks, publications) or<br> private (talking to particular groups at their request). Lobbying<br> activities might fit under here too.<br> <br> 2: Content focussed activities<br>
Primarily aimed at improving and expanding content of one or more<br> Wikimedia projects (or MediaWiki development).<br> Could be online only (eg "Australian Collaboration of the Fortnight"<br> on enwp, although this is not a WMAU activity), or in real life events<br>
such as Wikisource scan parties, attending events to write about for<br> Wikinews, photography events for Wikimedia Commons, booksprints for<br> Wikibooks.<br> Could also include partnering with appropriate groups to push their<br>
content into Wikimedia.<br> <br> 3: Community strengthening<br> Primarily aimed at increasing goodwill and sense of community among<br> Australian Wikimedians.<br> eg. Meetups. Lots of content focussed activities can also have a<br>
community-strengthening component (just by working together).<br> <br> 4: Support/admin.<br> Keeping up with legal and WMF requirements, responding to members and<br> potential members, press, merch, fundraising, legal (hopefully not<br>
:)), producing publications.<br> Obviously some of these also cross over, eg press and fundraising can<br> also be outreach.<br> <br> <br> The good thing about content-focussed and community-strengthening<br> events is that they can (and IMO probably should) be mainly driven<br>
just by one or a few people's enthusiasm. WMAU can assist where events<br> need to intersect with "the real world" (eg organising a venue,<br> possibly advertising).<br> So I guess our role there is to try to encourage and empower people to<br>
organise such events, in a bottom-up fashion. As well as reach out to<br> institutions where appropriate.<br> <br> I would also like to see us set up a small grants scheme, for members<br> to get reimbursement for concrete Wikimedia-beneficial activities, eg<br>
printing brochures for a stall, travel costs for speakers.<br> For this I think we can basically copy the approach of Linux Australia<br> <<a href="http://linux.org.au/projects/grants/">http://linux.org.au/projects/grants/</a>> although probably revise down<br>
their $ limits. I imagine this would get looked at after the AGM.<br> <br> So I guess I see a lot of our tasks for the next few months being<br> support/admin tasks, setting up things like accepting donations,<br> ?organising merch, getting all the basic kinds of documents we need<br>
written.<br> <br> There are heaps and heaps of great ideas already at<br> <<a href="http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/Activities">http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Australia/Activities</a>> and I<br>
am sure there are more out there in people's heads. My question is,<br> how can we know where we should begin?<br> <br> My personal preference is for activities where members are willing to<br> contribute time/effort to make them happen. :)<br>
<br> cheers<br> Brianna<br> <br><br> <br> --<br> They've just been waiting in a mountain for the right moment:<br> <a href="http://modernthings.org/">http://modernthings.org/</a><br> <br> _______________________________________________<br>
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</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>Email - <a href="mailto:liamwyatt@gmail.com">liamwyatt@gmail.com</a><br>Phone - +61 (0)434 056 914<br>Skype - Wittylama<br>Wikipedia - [[User:Witty lama]]