Hi, folks.
I haven't heard back from you in a while. What are your current thoughts about my proposed visit to Greece?
As a reminder, I was thinking of visiting for the following goals and activities:
1. to meet with as many of you as possible and learn from you about the state of the community, your personal projects and plans, the obstacles you face.
2. to do one or more development workshops for the community in Greece -- i.e. discussion and (two-way!) experience sharing toward growing the Wikimedia community and its reach in Greece. We could discuss whatever problems or challenges you feel would be most valuable to work on. Some examples might be: representation (who gets to speak for Wikipedia in Greece? How?); creating partnerships (how? when? with whom?); how to live with (and without?) community conflict, etc.
(I have extensive program experience in the movement, including as a former board member of a local chapter, as well as experience with volunteer recruitment and management outside the movement, from other projects I've been involved with as a volunteer over the years.)
3. to help your group secure meetings with potential partners, in case an official representative of the Foundation, or just "a visitor from the US", would help get a first meeting with people like university rectors, mayors, etc.
4. if helpful, do public speaking (in English, unfortunately) about Wikipedia in general public occasions or at universities. In general, I think it's better for local volunteers to do public speaking, but again, if an international guest would bring a larger audience or something, I'm happy to help. We can also think about a joint presentation -- one of you speaking in Greek about the Greek community and about Wikipedia particulars, and I giving a broader view of the movement, international activities, and maybe one or two of the sister projects.
All of this is just an outline of what a visit _can_ be. What it _would_ be really depends on planning work we'd need to put into this (i.e. actually securing meetings, lectures, picking dates, etc.), and most of that work would best be done by Greek-speaking locals... So it's really up to you.
Concretely, I am traveling to Milan, Italy for the Wikimedia Conference
2013 in mid-April, and would be able to come to Greece before/after it, _but if so_, we need to start making arrangements for this very soon. If you'd like me to visit but can't spare the time to prepare, or just want it to be later, that's fine, and I can make a separate trip to Greece later in the year.
If, in the meantime, you have come to the conclusion a visit would not be very useful or appropriate now, that's fine too, and please don't hesitate to say so if that's the case.
Cheers,
Asaf