Hi Ivo et. al.,
Am 13.08.2014 22:28, schrieb Ivo Kruusamägi:
Even thou the movement grows and gets older, it also
needs to renew. It
has to attract new users to continue growing as rapidly it has in the
past and it has to set up new ideas on how it can be pushed forward for
the new ones to even have something to work on. As such, more emphasis
for new users might be a good idea.
[...]
We have the technology to make Wikimania even bigger
and to bring it
closer to people. Why not to use it? Maybe we could test it out in 2016?
I agree with your ideas but have a different perspective:
1) to bring in new community members etc. we need a more sustainable
approach. A Wikimania can only have a local influence on this, not a
global. Newbies need a local community, a group where they can become a
team member of, which carry them through their hurdles.
Therefore I am confident that a local WikiCon is the right and better
place for this. It is smaller, more familiar, the newbies will find
people from their area which will be around later.
2) I think that making Wikimania bigger and bigger is not the right
approach. Concentrate on a few things and do them right. Like local
conferences can focus on their community and their work inside the
projects, Wikimania should focus on strategy and bringing the
international community together.
Since several years attending Wikimania is a very exhaustive endeavor.
I would never recommend a newbie to attend Wikimania in order to become
part of the movement. It is a good way for newbies who have already
started working on our projects (and thus have their local friends
inside the movements) to learn more and look beyond the places they
currently work, though.
So, conclusion is that we shouldn't overload Wikimania and rather have
more local conferences which have different measures of success -
bringing new people into the project and help existing community to do
actual content work. (been there, done that already)
/Manuel
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