Dear all,
below a rough translation of an email to be sent to the Dutch community / the members. It includes some good ideas, and I hope everybody will post more of them! I will try very hard to implement some of these in Wikimedia Nederland if there is animo. Please give some feedback! I forward this to foundation-l as well after the request to do so by some people.
BR, Lodewijk
---- Dear all,
A while ago, there was a chapters meetup in Nijmegen, initiated by Wikimedia Nederland, as a conclusion of the meetup in january with a group of our members. During this meeting, there were many subjects for discussion, amongst which an evaluation of the current organisation, a talk about the selection of the chapter selected seats in the Board of Trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, improvement of business development, improvement of the online fundraising and an improvement of the communicatio between the several chapters and the Foundation. I experienced these talks, both on the program and off the program as extremely positive and constructive, and I am glad we took this initative. Soon more (English) information will be published about the exact topics and discussions, but I would like to give a head start. Besides the formal program, a lot of other topics were informally discussed, such as how other chapters organise certain actvities, which is to me personally very interesting. I will give a summary below of some activities initiated by other chapters, which I found the most relevant and interesting to our chapter. This also means that there is already some experience out there on these areas, which can be used positively. Of course every extra activity also means that more work has to be done by volunteers, so without extra votunteers nothing will get done! I sincerely hope that volunteers who feel good about these ideas, will also initiate, and help out!
Grant system – Both Wikimedia PL as Wikimedia IT have a system where small reimbursements can be given for all kinds of small expenses which improve the quality of the community of the content on the Wikimedia projects. Think about train tickets, photo cameras and access tickets for instance. The nice thing about this project is that all kinds of small projects can be covered by this, and the inventivity of the projects can be used fully.
Proactive Press Approach – In France, Wikimedia receives a lot of bad press attention. Wikipedia is mainly bad approached, which lead to the attitude to correct the press constantly when errors are being made. Also in Israel the press is approached actively for interviews and news articles. Here the press contact plays an important role, as he approached the journalists both by phone and writing. This has lead to successes several times, including television appearences. Wikimedia has warm connections with the press in Germany, which is partially caused by the fact that Wikimedia Deutschland has some staff available (1,5 FTE). The main reason seems to be though that Wikimedia DE is just calling the press (and mainly tv press) with the question what they might find attractive and useful to know about with respect to news items. This way the wishes and interests of the press are used to their full potential.
OTRS Seminar – The German chapter is of the opinion that contacts with the outer world are important. Not only because it is good PR and brings goodwill, but also because a good and effective point of contact, can prevent/dissolve many legal issues. This can save costs for lawyers etc for both parties. This is the reason that Wikimedia DE organized an OTRS seminar, where the on OTRS active Wikipedians were being instructed and trained how to handle certain issues. Of course this is also very usable to exchange experience and knowledge.
In Sweden it has been attempted to cooperate with like minded organisations, and tried to let the members of those also to become member in Wikimedia Sweden. This was very effective, taking their high membership number into account (118) in such a short time of existence. Even though there is certainly a cultural difference, on average one new member per day is very much.
Librarian Project – In this project in Sweden the librarians are instructed and taught on how to help their members/visitors with the use of Wikipedia, and how to edit Wikipedia. This results hopefully in a higher activity amongst librarians (which does not seem bad to me, taking their knowledge and thoroughness into consideration), but it also results in the fact that the librarian will advise on the use of Wikipedia, which means that it will be used more often in a correct way.
Wikipedia Academy – I talked about this mainly with Jan (Sweden) and Frank (DE, WMF). The Foundation is willing to cooperate on this area, and help out a bit if required. Both with experience as with for instance contacts. Seems very interesting to me to get in touch with for instance the older academics, or to persuade the scientists to edit Wikipedia. It is attempted in Sweden currently to copy this originally German system, which has successfully be done before in South Africa as well. Ideally I would like to try to get this running as well in the Nederlands (not so much me myself, but I would love to see it happening!) because Wikipedia Academy is targeted to scientists and there is always a need on many expertises for this. Thus it could result in an improvement of the quality of free content, and the acceptance of it.
Association Retreat I – In Poland there is twice a year some type of three day Wikicamp being organised. This includes lectures and activities, helping the community to cooperate more closely, which will undoubtly have a positive impact on the projects. It is doubted that this will fit well in the Dutch attitude and way of life.
Association Retreat II – In Switzerland there is also an attempt to get the members actively involved, but somewhat less "extreme" as in Poland. There are plans for a two day meeting on the strategy for the coming years of Wikimedia CH. The exact details are still under construction.
Political activities – Both in Sweden as in France there are active attempts to influence the political situation for matters with relevance to the Wikimedia projects, such as copyright, free licenses, the by the government used license, the possibilities the musea have to forbid photo's, limitations of citizen journalism etc. I think that there is a need for this as well in the Netherlands, especially since there are ongoing activities and attemps in this direction. It might be interesting to contact the involved board members of these chapters for advice.
I sincerely hope that this includes some interesting talking points for members. I realize that these are mainly large projects, which require a lot of time and enthusiasm, but none the less I hope this gives inspiration, maybe for a thoroughly revised version. Not everything will be workable, and not everything will be in line of what we want and can do. I am looking forward to positive responses! (on the mainling list or on the wiki: http://nl.wikimedia.org/wiki/Overleg:Activiteiten )
With kind regards,
Lodewijk