On Mon, Apr 22, 2013 at 10:17 PM, James Forrester jdforrester@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.
Here are our drafts of what we think we'd want the committee to be like, a charter, and the resolution which we're submitting to the WMF Board:
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Committee
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Committee/Charter
- https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_resolutions/Wikimania_Committee
Comments are very welcome; we're trying to get this done fairly quickly, and of course we will iterate these plans as we get feedback and hopefully more forward on the oft-stalled next steps.
J.
James D. Forrester jdforrester@gmail.com [[Wikipedia:User:Jdforrester|James F.]] (speaking purely in a personal capacity)
I've been working on these documents as well, and am glad that we're once again moving forward on this idea. It's been discussed for a long time -- for at least the last five Wikimanias!
And from the conversations I've been in over the years, I think there's been pretty broad consensus that having a community-driven oversight committee for Wikimania, as proposed here, is a good idea. The idea is that the committee would ensure continuity and planning from year to year as well as help provide oversight of annual conference planning; and it would be a more formal and representative mechanism than we've had in the past. After long discussions, I think we are finally (!) in a good position to make the committee happen now. Please add your feedback and questions, and help make this proposal better.
I'm also happy to propose James as the initial chair of the committee, and also very happy that he's willing to do it :) He's been working hard at keeping the Wikimania process generally on track this year and for the past several years, has helped shepherd many ideas into this proposal, and is in my opinion the best person to get the committee off the ground.
best, Phoebe