Hi,
For four years now, since Wikimania 2014 in London, the chairpersons of the recognized chapters have met as a group twice a year, during Wikimania and the Wikimedia Conference (now the Wikimedia Summit), usually for 1 - 2 hours during one of the lunch breaks.
I started to arrange these meetings as an opportunity for the chairpersons to meet, and the concept of these meetings at the beginning was to host every time a different person from our movement.
Later on, Tim Moritz Hector (WMDE) and Frans Grijzenhout (WMNL) joined to help me arrange and plan these meetings, and as result also from the feedback of the other chairs, we changed the concept to discussions and presentations format in order to speak about issues related to the organizations we represent and our movement in general. We also created a mailing list as a place to get updates but also to raise questions and share information (such as questions related to the organization's policies, ED, board issues and other).
About half a year ago, Frans and me thought we had to take these meetings to a higher level, and, for the first time, we proposed to organize a two days meeting, where we can have a dedicated time, without interruptions (and lunch on our tables...) in order to focus on bigger issues.
We already have board trainings for new board members, but we don’t have any program which supports the chairpersons as leaders of their boards and their organizations. So we decided to focus on improving the interpersonal skills and leadership competencies of chairpersons and give them other tools to become better and more effective in their roles.
In order to achieve this, we decided to contract an experienced external trainer & facilitator.
In the beginning, we planned to have this meeting with all the chairpersons, from the big and from the small chapters. But as the WMF’s grants program were temporarily not accepting new grants requests, we weren't able to get support to finance the participation of the small chapters which didn’t have the budget to cover the costs.
So in the end, we hold a smaller meeting a week ago (hosted by WMCZ in Prague), with 17 chairpersons which could cover the travel and meeting costs (with a small grant from the WMF to help to support part of the facilitator's fee).
During the meeting (or you can also call it a retreat) we had workshops and sessions to know each other better, to speak about effective and accountable boards, team dynamics, failures (and how to continue) and work on interpersonal skills and more.
We decided to share with you the results and feedback we received, which may be used by other groups or similar events: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MOBru_m1wQu-IESItb5IWjWp9mVVdRuG/view?usp=s...
You can read more about the meeting on Meta: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November_24_-...
And also the notes of some of the session: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November...
We felt this information will be valuable to share with the rest of the movement.
Yours, Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch (WMCZ)
*Itzik Edri* Chairperson itzik@wikimedia.org.il +972-54-5878078
Hi Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch,
I am very behind on email but I wanted to say thanks for sharing this report from the chairpersons' meeting.
I am wondering whether, for the purposes of (1) increasing the cost effectiveness of travel expenses, (2) reducing the negative environmental effects from travel, and (3) increasing the number of chairpersons who participate, if future meetings could be scheduled immediately before or after Wikimania or the Wikimedia (WMF + Affiliates) Summit. Alternatively, future meetings could be held online so that travel is not necessary. What do you think?
Thanks again for sharing this report. I get the impression that the chairpersons found the meeting to be valuable, and I hope that similar meetings will happen in the future. My guess is that being a chair of a Wikimedia affiliate can require significant time and involve difficult conversations. I'm grateful for those who volunteer their time to serve.
Regards,
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 8:31 PM Itzik - Wikimedia Israel < itzik@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
Hi,
For four years now, since Wikimania 2014 in London, the chairpersons of the recognized chapters have met as a group twice a year, during Wikimania and the Wikimedia Conference (now the Wikimedia Summit), usually for 1 - 2 hours during one of the lunch breaks.
I started to arrange these meetings as an opportunity for the chairpersons to meet, and the concept of these meetings at the beginning was to host every time a different person from our movement.
Later on, Tim Moritz Hector (WMDE) and Frans Grijzenhout (WMNL) joined to help me arrange and plan these meetings, and as result also from the feedback of the other chairs, we changed the concept to discussions and presentations format in order to speak about issues related to the organizations we represent and our movement in general. We also created a mailing list as a place to get updates but also to raise questions and share information (such as questions related to the organization's policies, ED, board issues and other).
About half a year ago, Frans and me thought we had to take these meetings to a higher level, and, for the first time, we proposed to organize a two days meeting, where we can have a dedicated time, without interruptions (and lunch on our tables...) in order to focus on bigger issues.
We already have board trainings for new board members, but we don’t have any program which supports the chairpersons as leaders of their boards and their organizations. So we decided to focus on improving the interpersonal skills and leadership competencies of chairpersons and give them other tools to become better and more effective in their roles.
In order to achieve this, we decided to contract an experienced external trainer & facilitator.
In the beginning, we planned to have this meeting with all the chairpersons, from the big and from the small chapters. But as the WMF’s grants program were temporarily not accepting new grants requests, we weren't able to get support to finance the participation of the small chapters which didn’t have the budget to cover the costs.
So in the end, we hold a smaller meeting a week ago (hosted by WMCZ in Prague), with 17 chairpersons which could cover the travel and meeting costs (with a small grant from the WMF to help to support part of the facilitator's fee).
During the meeting (or you can also call it a retreat) we had workshops and sessions to know each other better, to speak about effective and accountable boards, team dynamics, failures (and how to continue) and work on interpersonal skills and more.
We decided to share with you the results and feedback we received, which may be used by other groups or similar events:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MOBru_m1wQu-IESItb5IWjWp9mVVdRuG/view?usp=s...
You can read more about the meeting on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November_24_-...
And also the notes of some of the session:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November...
We felt this information will be valuable to share with the rest of the movement.
Yours, Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch (WMCZ)
*Itzik Edri* Chairperson itzik@wikimedia.org.il +972-54-5878078 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Pine,
So far the chairperson meetings took place during Wikimedia Summit or Wikimania, and some other were online. So yes, undoubtedly there are ways to prevent more travels, and this is what we did for the past four years.
You mentioned three factors about international meetings, but you forgot one important one. The chairpersons are volunteers, so the element of vacation days is also a factor which we need to consider when we evaluate such volunteers meetings. Adding another two days meeting to Wikimania for example (which was this year in a distant destination) - can mean almost a week off to the ones that would have participated. Also, we worked to arrange this meeting for a quite long time, additional to other work-related and our affiliate's obligations. And even if we wanted, we couldn't be ready enough with this meeting enough time before Wikimania, in a way that will also give enough notice time to the chairs (some of them didn't attend Wikimania this year).
As far as we were concerned, it was a pilot, so it was very important for us to be assisted by an external facilitator and to be immediately attentive to feedback to assess the value of the meeting.
Thank you for the warm words in your email summary.
*Itzik Edri* Chairperson itzik@wikimedia.org.il +972-54-5878078
On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 5:39 AM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch,
I am very behind on email but I wanted to say thanks for sharing this report from the chairpersons' meeting.
I am wondering whether, for the purposes of (1) increasing the cost effectiveness of travel expenses, (2) reducing the negative environmental effects from travel, and (3) increasing the number of chairpersons who participate, if future meetings could be scheduled immediately before or after Wikimania or the Wikimedia (WMF + Affiliates) Summit. Alternatively, future meetings could be held online so that travel is not necessary. What do you think?
Thanks again for sharing this report. I get the impression that the chairpersons found the meeting to be valuable, and I hope that similar meetings will happen in the future. My guess is that being a chair of a Wikimedia affiliate can require significant time and involve difficult conversations. I'm grateful for those who volunteer their time to serve.
Regards,
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 8:31 PM Itzik - Wikimedia Israel < itzik@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
Hi,
For four years now, since Wikimania 2014 in London, the chairpersons of
the
recognized chapters have met as a group twice a year, during Wikimania
and
the Wikimedia Conference (now the Wikimedia Summit), usually for 1 - 2 hours during one of the lunch breaks.
I started to arrange these meetings as an opportunity for the
chairpersons
to meet, and the concept of these meetings at the beginning was to host every time a different person from our movement.
Later on, Tim Moritz Hector (WMDE) and Frans Grijzenhout (WMNL) joined to help me arrange and plan these meetings, and as result also from the feedback of the other chairs, we changed the concept to discussions and presentations format in order to speak about issues related to the organizations we represent and our movement in general. We also created a mailing list as a place to get updates but also to raise questions and share information (such as questions related to the organization's policies, ED, board issues and other).
About half a year ago, Frans and me thought we had to take these meetings to a higher level, and, for the first time, we proposed to organize a two days meeting, where we can have a dedicated time, without interruptions (and lunch on our tables...) in order to focus on bigger issues.
We already have board trainings for new board members, but we don’t have any program which supports the chairpersons as leaders of their boards
and
their organizations. So we decided to focus on improving the
interpersonal
skills and leadership competencies of chairpersons and give them other tools to become better and more effective in their roles.
In order to achieve this, we decided to contract an experienced external trainer & facilitator.
In the beginning, we planned to have this meeting with all the chairpersons, from the big and from the small chapters. But as the WMF’s grants program were temporarily not accepting new grants requests, we weren't able to get support to finance the participation of the small chapters which didn’t have the budget to cover the costs.
So in the end, we hold a smaller meeting a week ago (hosted by WMCZ in Prague), with 17 chairpersons which could cover the travel and meeting costs (with a small grant from the WMF to help to support part of the facilitator's fee).
During the meeting (or you can also call it a retreat) we had workshops
and
sessions to know each other better, to speak about effective and accountable boards, team dynamics, failures (and how to continue) and
work
on interpersonal skills and more.
We decided to share with you the results and feedback we received, which may be used by other groups or similar events:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MOBru_m1wQu-IESItb5IWjWp9mVVdRuG/view?usp=s...
You can read more about the meeting on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November_24_-...
And also the notes of some of the session:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November...
We felt this information will be valuable to share with the rest of the movement.
Yours, Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch (WMCZ)
*Itzik Edri* Chairperson itzik@wikimedia.org.il +972-54-5878078 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Hi Itzik,
I understand your good point regarding the difficulty of scheduling due to chairpersons' availability for volunteer activities. Would having online meetings make scheduling be easier?
I think that I understand your choice to use an external facilitator. I am willing to support spending money when I think that the benefits make the costs worthwhile. Also, I support spending money on pilot projects when I think that the risks are reasonable. I want people to feel okay about taking some risks with pilot projects. If a pilot project fails completely, sometimes that is okay after a well-considered decision was made to take the risk and the people who attempted the pilot project did a reasonably good job in the circumstances. I wouldn't want a failed pilot project to have unanticipated costs of hundreds of hours of volunteers' time or many thousands of donated dollars to clean up, so not every failure of a pilot project is okay, but I can support some failures and reasonable expenses. I have failed myself on more than one occasion, and with experience I am getting better at understanding how failures happen and recovering faster, and having a more positive attitude about some types of failures. So, I support other people making pilot projects, taking some risks, and spending some time and money, even if some projects fail. The chairs' meetings seem to be successful, and I hope that the meetings will continue. Thanks for your work on these meetings.
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Tue, Jan 1, 2019 at 10:58 AM Itzik - Wikimedia Israel < itzik@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
Hi Pine,
So far the chairperson meetings took place during Wikimedia Summit or Wikimania, and some other were online. So yes, undoubtedly there are ways to prevent more travels, and this is what we did for the past four years.
You mentioned three factors about international meetings, but you forgot one important one. The chairpersons are volunteers, so the element of vacation days is also a factor which we need to consider when we evaluate such volunteers meetings. Adding another two days meeting to Wikimania for example (which was this year in a distant destination) - can mean almost a week off to the ones that would have participated. Also, we worked to arrange this meeting for a quite long time, additional to other work-related and our affiliate's obligations. And even if we wanted, we couldn't be ready enough with this meeting enough time before Wikimania, in a way that will also give enough notice time to the chairs (some of them didn't attend Wikimania this year).
As far as we were concerned, it was a pilot, so it was very important for us to be assisted by an external facilitator and to be immediately attentive to feedback to assess the value of the meeting.
Thank you for the warm words in your email summary.
*Itzik Edri* Chairperson itzik@wikimedia.org.il +972-54-5878078
On Sun, Dec 30, 2018 at 5:39 AM Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
Hi Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch,
I am very behind on email but I wanted to say thanks for sharing this report from the chairpersons' meeting.
I am wondering whether, for the purposes of (1) increasing the cost effectiveness of travel expenses, (2) reducing the negative environmental effects from travel, and (3) increasing the number of chairpersons who participate, if future meetings could be scheduled immediately before or after Wikimania or the Wikimedia (WMF + Affiliates) Summit.
Alternatively,
future meetings could be held online so that travel is not necessary.
What
do you think?
Thanks again for sharing this report. I get the impression that the chairpersons found the meeting to be valuable, and I hope that similar meetings will happen in the future. My guess is that being a chair of a Wikimedia affiliate can require significant time and involve difficult conversations. I'm grateful for those who volunteer their time to serve.
Regards,
Pine ( https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Pine )
On Mon, Dec 3, 2018 at 8:31 PM Itzik - Wikimedia Israel < itzik@wikimedia.org.il> wrote:
Hi,
For four years now, since Wikimania 2014 in London, the chairpersons of
the
recognized chapters have met as a group twice a year, during Wikimania
and
the Wikimedia Conference (now the Wikimedia Summit), usually for 1 - 2 hours during one of the lunch breaks.
I started to arrange these meetings as an opportunity for the
chairpersons
to meet, and the concept of these meetings at the beginning was to host every time a different person from our movement.
Later on, Tim Moritz Hector (WMDE) and Frans Grijzenhout (WMNL) joined
to
help me arrange and plan these meetings, and as result also from the feedback of the other chairs, we changed the concept to discussions and presentations format in order to speak about issues related to the organizations we represent and our movement in general. We also
created a
mailing list as a place to get updates but also to raise questions and share information (such as questions related to the organization's policies, ED, board issues and other).
About half a year ago, Frans and me thought we had to take these
meetings
to a higher level, and, for the first time, we proposed to organize a
two
days meeting, where we can have a dedicated time, without interruptions (and lunch on our tables...) in order to focus on bigger issues.
We already have board trainings for new board members, but we don’t
have
any program which supports the chairpersons as leaders of their boards
and
their organizations. So we decided to focus on improving the
interpersonal
skills and leadership competencies of chairpersons and give them other tools to become better and more effective in their roles.
In order to achieve this, we decided to contract an experienced
external
trainer & facilitator.
In the beginning, we planned to have this meeting with all the chairpersons, from the big and from the small chapters. But as the
WMF’s
grants program were temporarily not accepting new grants requests, we weren't able to get support to finance the participation of the small chapters which didn’t have the budget to cover the costs.
So in the end, we hold a smaller meeting a week ago (hosted by WMCZ in Prague), with 17 chairpersons which could cover the travel and meeting costs (with a small grant from the WMF to help to support part of the facilitator's fee).
During the meeting (or you can also call it a retreat) we had workshops
and
sessions to know each other better, to speak about effective and accountable boards, team dynamics, failures (and how to continue) and
work
on interpersonal skills and more.
We decided to share with you the results and feedback we received,
which
may be used by other groups or similar events:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1MOBru_m1wQu-IESItb5IWjWp9mVVdRuG/view?usp=s...
You can read more about the meeting on Meta:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November_24_-...
And also the notes of some of the session:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Affiliate_Chairpersons_meeting_November...
We felt this information will be valuable to share with the rest of the movement.
Yours, Itzik, Frans, and Vojtěch (WMCZ)
*Itzik Edri* Chairperson itzik@wikimedia.org.il +972-54-5878078 _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines and https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia-l New messages to: Wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe
On Sun, 30 Dec 2018 at 03:39, Pine W wiki.pine@gmail.com wrote:
I am wondering whether, for the purposes of (1) increasing the cost effectiveness of travel expenses, (2) reducing the negative environmental effects from travel, and (3) increasing the number of chairpersons who participate, if future meetings could be scheduled immediately before or after Wikimania or the Wikimedia (WMF + Affiliates) Summit.
This is already being done to a large extent. For example, lots of team offsites are scheduled to run either before or after the annual all staff meeting, hackathons, Wikimania, etc, which wasn't really the case a few years back. The effects of this policy can be seen in the annual financial statements—in FY2013/14 and FY2017/8 the amount spent on travel and conferences was almost exactly the same [1] in spite of the Foundation having grown by around 100 staff [2].
As to whether more bundling of meetings with other meetings should be done, I find it to be a mixed bag. On the one hand, travel spending is reduced, and it's more likely that people can attend meetings due to bundling things together. On the other hand, the effectiveness of the meetings is reduced; conferences like Wikimania are exhausting enough without having to do important meetings that require a lot of concentration either before or afterwards. Whether that trade-off is worth it or not depends on the situation. It's certainly not as clear cut as you make it out to be here.
With regards to environmental impact, I always recommend the "green stuff" thread https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2009-May/051656.html.
Dan
[1]: Source: Wikimedia Foundation financial reports https://wikimediafoundation.org/about/financial-reports/. In FY2013/14 there was a total of $1,965,854 spent on travel and conferences, and in FY2017/18 the same spending was $1,954,772. Travel spending fluctuated up by around 17% in the years between these, but it went back down afterwards. Travel spending has remained basically the same despite significant growth of the organisation, demonstrating the effectiveness of policy changes on decreasing travel spending.
[2]: Source: my memory. An exact figure could probably be figured out by looking at the history of the staff and contractors page on foundation.wikimedia.org.
wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org