On Jan 19, 2011, at 9:16 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
2011/1/19 Steven Walling
<steven.walling(a)gmail.com>
2. Even if Wikimania is not relatively big when
it comes to technology conferences, the problem is growing a strong local team of
volunteers in a new place every year. That's very, very hard. We're not unique in
having that difficulty as a movement, but I don't think it means we should abandon
volunteer-based organization for the event.
This is an important point.
It's hard to grow such a team in a new place every year, but if you
do, then after X years you will have grown X strong local team of
volunteers, ready to take on new challenges and to teach their
experience to other teams. This may be a worthy goal. It would be
interesting to check previous Wikimanias and to see whether the team
that organized them went on as a team.
I believe that hosting and organizing a Wikimania should be a stepping stone toward
professionalization and development for a chapter or group of emerging volunteers. One
would hope that hosting Wikimania in your region would allow a chapter or group to pull
from outside the editing community and to engage local individuals to volunteer who may
not wish to edit wikipedia but might wish to advocate for our projects and organize
events. Both skills sets are vital, and different types of people require different types
of work to keep their interest in the movement. For example I have often said, if I had
come to Wikipedia to edit I do not think I would be a strong volunteer or a volunteer at
all, but if i came to wikipedia to organize conferences, and to advocate for our projects
to local schools and universities that is a way my skills could be utilized as a volunteer
and I would feel richly engaged with the Wikimedia projects.
This being said, I do not know if we have been very good at outreaching and obtaining some
of the vital skills to help grow our community and to fill some of the gaps which our core
contributors might not be interested. This could be a reason why bids are not strong, the
type of individual who is interested to organize and run a conference is not always the
type of individual who is interested in editing an encyclopedia. As a movement we need to
start to welcome the skills of individuals who might not meet our standard
"type" of volunteer and engage them, give them projects let them feel valued.
This all being said I will get back to my point. My point is that I believe Wikimania
should be an opportunity for a chapter or group of volunteers to grow, however because we
do not always engage with the type of volunteer who likes to organize and develop
conferences we find Wikimania becomes a huge energy drain on a local community. Most
locations which have hosted Wikimania (Boston, Gdansk, Alexandria, Taipei) all from my
understanding had a group which was emerging maybe thinking of creating a chapter, they
won a Wikimania bid and worked for a year to organize a conference, and after the
conference the work stopped. The volunteers did not organize more events, they did not
engage with local schools or create chapters, the energy fizzled. I know this is a
generalization and I know Boston and Alexandria might be special cases. It might be useful
to know from Argentina how they felt after hosting the conference, did they see a decline
in volunteers, did the volunteers who were not editors before continue to volunteer? So I
agree with Amir, did former years teams continue their work after obtaining these new
skills, or did the community members leave and the skills and lessons learned were lost.
For me I hope Wikimania is not a chapter killer but a chapter creator, however the jury is
still out. But if wikimania is a chapter killer then what can we do to change that, and
how can we create incentives for chapters and groups to want to host.
Again this is all my thought and opinions and I am just throwing this out as the
conversation is rich and thoughtful today.
James
James Owen
Executive Assistant & Board Liaison
Wikimedia Foundation
Office +1.415.839.6885 x 6604
Mobile +1.415.509.5444
Fax +1.415.882.0495
Email- jowen(a)wikimedia.org
Website-
www.wikimediafoundation.org