On 22 April 2013 22:17, James Forrester <jdforrester(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Dear all,
A small group of long-time Wikimaniacs have been working on the
perrenial plan to produce a "Wikimania Committee" - a community group
who would help steer Wikimania from year to year, advising each local
hosting team and ensuring that the processes are open, transparent and
community-led.
Some comments based on private questions that I think should be
answered publicly:
[Conflicts of Interest]
There would be a relatively strong Conflict of Interest policy that
would mean that people running a current conference (or bidding for
one) would not be able to sit on the committee, and would have to
resign if they were going to start doing so.
[Timing]
The July timing is if anything too slow - from my point of view, we
really should be commissioning Wikimania 2015 by 1 August 2013 to give
the host team two clear years to organise (so the call for bids should
go out as soon as possible). However, life isn't perfect, and I doubt
we'll manage to get the committee up and running (and redrafting its
charter and procedures for the Board to approve) before then. We can,
of course, always change things later when they're not working. :-)
I'm sure we could discuss the initial protocols in-person with high
effectiveness, at a cost to the movement of US$15k or similar, but we
could work from some drafts and discuss in meetings and on-wiki for
'free', and also involve the community much more rather than some
ivory-tower pronouncement of what we think works.
The hope is that the committee will be in a place to start advising HK
right away, though we'll see if that's achievable.
[Things the committee could do]
* Provide a template for bids that focusses them onto the issues that
criteria related, rather than too much opportunity for tourist-like
generic information that takes a great deal of effort from the bidding
team and provide less valuable information for the selection
judgement.
* Meet with bidding teams via video-conference rather than IRC to open
things up more. (Though this makes things harder for people with
non-native English skills - not the entire bidding team will
necessarily be fluent.)
* Run a "stakeholder" meeting for interested parties at Wikimania 2013
-
https://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/The_Growth_and_Future_…
* Possibly also run focussed in-person workshops at Wikimania (or
beforehand?) as well.
[Appetite to be part of a committee]
Recently we have had issues providing enough volunteers for the jury
process. However, just because only a few people offered to be part of
a secretive and unclear process doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to
open up this into the community properly, and be transparent and open
as much as we can.
[Elections to the committee?]
I am (extremely) strongly against making this yet another elected
position - it's hugely expensive in terms of volunteer time and
resources (not just those running the election, and the candidates,
but also in the minds of all 200,000 people that dismiss the "you can
vote!" banners), and the important thing is having expertise on the
committee and being as open as possible, not electioneering.
Yours,
--
James D. Forrester
jdforrester(a)gmail.com
[[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal capacity)