On Thu, Sep 27, 2018 at 3:40 AM Chris Keating chriskeatingwiki@gmail.com wrote:
So it seems that the main rationale for an annual Wikimania brought up in the 2016 meeting was that Wikimania was vital for movement governance and accountability. Which wasn't particularly stressed in the WMF's consultation, but I can see why that kind of issue was very fresh in peoples' minds in 2016.
As the facilitator of the 2016 session discussing Wikimania, I don't recall the "main rationale" of the discussion being about "governance and accountability" and instead remember many more issues that stood out.
For example, the prominent phrases from the first part of the meeting include the following, with most of the notes echoing these themes: - inspiring, and connecting - opportunity for different communities to meet - important to use opportunity to do outreach - empower important volunteers
Now the Wikimedia Conference / Summit looks set to assume this role, what is the continued rationale for having Wikimania every year?
Given the above, I think the basis of the question is not sufficiently established.
In fact, two recent reports or decisions reinforce Wikimania's role even more:
1. From the Community Engagement Insights 2018 Report - "Discovery of new projects and ideas is best at Wikimania: While all conferences had a high proportion of participants that reported discovering new projects or ideas as the most important outcome, Wikimania had the highest proportion of them all." - The Community Engagement Insights 2018 Report [1] [2]
2. The Wikimedia Conference (WMCON) has pivoted to become the Wikimedia Summit. In the process, they announced "learning and capacity-building will not be part of the program." [2] Therefore I'd argue that the onus is even *more* on conferences like Wikimania to facilitate this.
-Andrew
[1] - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Engagement_Insights/2018_Report#Co...
[2] - https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimedia-l/2018-September/091062.html