Previous mailing list wasn't used, because it was only operational for about three to four days.
 
A chapter can:
-Recruit editors and volunteers to work on specialized projects that the Foundation doesn't have resources or time to pursue.
-Provide volunteers as a force multiplier to the Foundation, to accelerate critical Foundation projects
-Perform a state specific public relations campaign for Wikimedia in general or for specific segments
-Outreach to state educational institutions and
-Organize state or local conferences and Wikimedia events
-Develop sources of revenue for Wikimedia projects
 

 

From: Jon Davis <wiki@konsoletek.com>
To: James Salsman <jsalsman@gmail.com>; wikimedia-california@lists.wikimedia.org
Sent: Wed, May 5, 2010 11:32:14 AM
Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-california] Software, hardware, Maker Faire, West Coast Wikipedia Day, Officers (was Re: ... created!)

Just so we're clear, I'm not trying to rain on the parade of starting a chapter.  Call me the devils advocate, for lack of a better term.  A lot of this information is new to me, and I suspect new to others.  Personally I know that chapters are non-profits that support the foundation in specific localities, but that's about it.  I guess what I'm trying to do is pry out all the useful information from those in the know, and share it with the rest of us.

GSOC - Good to know that there are more mentors available.  On top of that there is the possibility of getting a grant to support more. 

Money - Foundation gives chapters money - awesome.  That certainly explains where we can possibly get the seed funding for getting this off the ground.  Also that certainly makes it a lot more clear as to why there is a rush order being put on some of this work.

I'd suspect that there is important information to this process that was discussed on the previous mailing list, might I suggest that someone summarize anything outstanding from that list and send it along here. Something to facilitate those of us who weren't on the old list getting up to speed, and to help prevent the asking of questions that were already answered.

-Jon

PS.  A lot of my questions are also an attempt to establish a solid need for a chapter.  So that when people ask, we can see "The chapter will be able to provide X, Y & Z which we currently cannot".  As of this moment, simply saying "The chapter can help our local events" really isn't too useful because it can be countered with "Well we did the events without a chapter before".

On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 11:07, James Salsman <jsalsman@gmail.com> wrote:

Jon,

There are still several volunteer mentors who didn't get slots, either.  If you go by Google's compensation amounts for Summer of Code, mentoring is supposed to take no more than 1/10 full time, but it may be better to hire multiple mentors to work on patches for Mediawiki's bugzilla queue while they each mentor 3 to 5 students.

I should mention that Sara Crouse encouraged me to support the California Chapter when I was trying to encourage (1) specific developments, before I realised the GSoC was coming up so soon, and (2) a National Science Foundation grant which could probably suppport at least six full-time chapter staff and more than ten contract programmers, including students:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_%28miscellaneous%29/Archive_23&oldid=338511405

The Foundation was too busy to apply for that, but if the Chapter were to succeed in obtaining it, we could probably do everything that's been discussed, including annual Wikipedia Day conference hosting and Maker Faire presense, without costing the Foundation anything. And as you can see, it's completely congruent with the initial Chapter goals that Geoff set forth years ago.

In any case, whether we are able to secure external funding or not, chapters are expected to submit grant proposals per:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants

There are only 10 days remaining for the nominal proposal deadline, so I would like to have all of the possibilities we have been discussing in seperate chapter grant applications, and a proposed set of Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws ready by this time next week.

I will try to to that, because the only other outstanding action item I have is the 1-page instruction sheet handout for the MakerFairePedia notecards.

That reminds me, Jon, please don't forget the Maker Faire sign-up wikitable; that is almost a month late.

Regards,
James

On May 5, 2010 10:04 AM, "Jon Davis" <wiki@konsoletek.com> wrote:

For GSOC - So we start a chapter, then we can apply for extra slots - ok, fine.  But who's going to mentor them?  We need coders, preferably ones experienced in MediaWiki, to actually do the mentoring. 

I'm always happy to usurp more power given to me.  So... yay.

-Jon



On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 00:43, James Salsman <jsalsman@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here are the names of ...
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Jon
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