On Jan 21, 2008 7:22 AM, Ray Saintonge <saintonge@telus.net> wrote:

Andrew Leung wrote:
> I have talked to Alan and we agreed to have an informal meeting with
> everyone interested in Wikimedia Canada (WMCA) on coming Wednesday
> (Jan. 23) at 8pm EST on Google Talk (unless we can get a private IRC
> channel). The purpose of this informal meeting is to let everyone know
> what's going on at the moment as well as things that we should read to
> prepare for Jan. 30's official meeting.
What makes the meeting official?

The way I read it, the Jan 30th meeting is intended to bring together people to set out a timeline for getting WM Canada formed, and is being widely advertised. The meeting this week is more informal, to get some feedback and do some prepatory planning.

Les traductions sont belles, mais s'il n'y a personne pour les faire il
ne faut pas que cet détail empèche notre progrès. La loi permet qu'on
se sert d'une seul langue. Bien entendu, il est préférable d'avoir les
deux. S'il faut la deuxième peut-être ajoutée plus tard

While I agree that it shouldn't impede our legal formation, we need to make sure everyone feels included in WM Canada, paticularly any French-only speakers. Since we have a few volunteers for this stuff, I don't think translation should be too much of a hurdle on wiki. What might be more difficult is IRC meets, but we can cross that bridge when the time comes.

Let's not fill these positions prematurely. One big difficulty is
bringing people in Canada together over a huge geographical area. You
did not have that problem in Hong Kong.

In due course, we'll have proper elections once the legal body is formed. Let's not put the cart before the horse, however, and discourage people from becoming involved.

The steering committee will be an ad-hoc body, and it's goal is the founding of WM Canada. Anyone who is willing and able to help in this goal should be welcomed

Thanks,
Gerald.