Thanks Andrew, that was a good summary. When we started discussing Wikimedia Asia back in 2007, the idea behind the project was to have a non-intrusive umbrella group where Asian chapters could come together and collaborate without hindering each other in any manner.
It is essential to have a website at this stage to proclaim our existence and getting the attention of potential contributors and sponsors for the project. A few static pages and a blog would go a long way towards that goal.
The Asian project was also intended to be used as a launch-pad for jurisdictions where Wikimedia does not have chapters. Since a large number of countries in Asia are still third-world, they would stand to benefit from the collective experiences and procedural familiarity of the existing chapters.
Most importantly, WMAsia can potentially play an enormous role in furthering our global commitment towards making the total sum of knowledge available to each and every individual on the planet. Continent-wide knowledge activism can be fostered in a number of ways. This can include lobbying with governments to create environments conducive for individual growth; learning from the experiences of Wikimedia chapters across the globe; assimilating with and adapting to the nature of the legal environments in Asia; studying the unique experiences of other activist organizations; and implementing projects based on ideas developed through acquired know-how and expertise.
But, for now, having a website and a blog is not a premature sentiment.
Yours sincerely,
Anirudh Singh Bhati
B.Com, LL.B. (Hons.), Gujarat National Law University,
Gandhinagar, India.
Handphone: +919328712208
Skype: anirudhsbh
If this email were legal advice, it would be followed by a bill.
On Sun, Jul 25, 2010 at 7:43 AM, Andrew Owens
<orderinchaos78@gmail.com> wrote:
I think it's "closed mailing list (i.e. only members can post), but anyone can become a member" situation.
Wikimedia Asia - especially for sharing ideas, collaborating and organising regional conferences - is a great idea, as long as it doesn't get too far ahead of itself by adopting bureaucratic trappings or taking away from the ability of the chapters in the region to run their own things. Each chapter has its own community / members to serve and needs to satisfy, and of course they need to become sustainable with a consistent membership and local activities to keep the membership interested.
Berlin was very educational for me:
* Firstly, I was amazed at the range of projects going on in different places and ideas being tried, and we can clearly all learn from each other.
* Secondly, what makes a chapter successful? Germany had a good strategic planning model which you can find a summary of on Meta under the Berlin chapters meeting. The result, ultimately, was hundreds of members, many active projects including some high-level ones (Bundesarchiv and the metadata project), and collaboration with neighbouring countries. It took some years to get there though.
* Shortly after the conference, I was speaking with Siska by email, I learned that in order to engage more people and increase interest in the chapter, activities for members and potential members have to be fun and rewarding. (This answered a big question for me coming out of Berlin.)
kindest regards
Andrew (WMAU)On 25 July 2010 00:57, Morgan Chan
<morgand536@wikimedia.hk> wrote:
This list is on open application. Some internal and external Asian members are in the list too.On Sat, Jul 24, 2010 at 10:42 PM, Siska Doviana
<siska.doviana@wikimedia.or.id> wrote:
Well Morgan,
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought Anirudh pointed out that the
list is private.
So is it or is it not?
--
2010/7/23 Morgan Chan <morgand536@wikimedia.hk>:
> Siska:
>
> Well, actually the list is welcome all the Asian, including external and internal members. So you can be still on the list and keep monitoring the progress. :-p
>
> The only Indonesian I familiar is Revi, we met each other since the chapters meeting this year, and he also attended all the Asian meet up so far. I think he is the guy who know everything about the project.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
Best regards,
Morgan Chan
----------------------------------------------------
Morgan Chan
Director and Commissioner of Communications, Wikimedia Hong Kong
Member of Communications committee, Wikimedia Foundation
E-mail：
morgand536@wikimedia.hkTel.：+852 9012-2178
WLM：
morgand536@gmail.com
Skype: ups918
Twitter: morgand536
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