Picking up from my earlier message about the board meeting, I still have news about chapter-related items on our agenda. First of all, we approved two new Wikimedia chapters, one in Indonesia and the other in Brazil. Congratulations and welcome to both!

Another quick piece of business is that Frieda was the board's representative on the chapters committee. We decided to replace her with two people instead of just one - both Ting and Kat will be serving on the committee. In a sense, Ting was chosen because of his interest in the activity of existing chapters, making sure they function and are properly supported at the foundation level, and Kat was chosen for her interest in the building of new chapters, including sub-national ones. But of course they are equally full members of the committee, not just there for some specialized question.

What we did decide to do for specialized questions - specifically, the sub-national chapters issue - is create a working group to help with those. The board supports the development of sub-national chapters where this makes sense. To the extent that official encouragement or approval is still needed for this concept, it's there. We'll happily approve sub-national chapters that the chapters committee recommends to us. (In a way, you could say Hong Kong already is one.)

The working group will consist of Kat representing the board, Andrew Whitworth representing the committee, and Erik representing the staff. We anticipate that since this approach to creating chapters may prompt new questions, we'd like the working group to help answer them, and to give advice and support where needed. However, the working group is not a separate or additional approval process. Sub-national chapters can follow the same development process used by the existing chapters.

The staff also outlined a framework that may help deal with issues as they come up. This document has been shared with the committee and the other chapters previously. I'll pass along some of the preliminary answers it offers to potential sub-national chapters questions in a separate message.

--Michael Snow