Sarah - No problem with making it broader. Oakland seems to have a wiki presence (which I can't speak to) with a few hacker spaces downtown [2], so I'd like to have some meetings in Berkeley. But if we can figure out a way to combine our efforts, that would be great. I truly don't think that we should "wiki" only within our city boundaries!

I actually was thinking that we could pick some topics, and then meet in a place related to that topic. So, for the history of Berkeley it would make sense to meet at the Berkeley library, which has the historical archives. For history relating to the campus (like the Free Speech Movement) we might want to meet on campus.

Oakland has its own Oakland wiki [1]. I attended the Alameda county data hackathon in Berkeley recently, at Berkeley High School, and it would be interesting to try to incorporate some of the county data in Wikipedia - meeting in downtown Oakland would seem appropriate for that.

Somehow I think that being "on the spot" is inspirational. But I'm open to any ideas that get people together and help them work on Wikipedia.

kc [1] http://oaklandwiki.org/ [2] like https://sudoroom.org/

On 7/28/13 2:19 PM, Sarah Stierch wrote:

Hi,

Weird request and I understand if it gets shot down for locality:

If a Berkeley meetup group is being formed, think we can create it as an East Bay group instead?

I live in Oakland, and I think ideally it would be unifying (since our groups are so small) to make it an encompassing group so folks throughout the region feel welcome. But, I also understand if folks want to keep it Berkeley-centric for Berkeley locals. (And those who feel bold enough to "act" like like one/invade :) )

Thanks for taking the lead on this, it is very appreciated!

Sarah

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 28, 2013, at 7:17 AM, Karen Coyle kcoyle@kcoyle.net wrote:

...

Hello, all.

I've taken up the organizer role for the Berkeley Wikipedia meet-up group. I'll do some figuring out on how to use Meetup. Would the person who volunteered to find a space on UC campus please contact me?

I presume that we are aiming at a September first meeting, given how summer seems to disrupt schedules.

If we can't find other meet-up places, my home has wifi, various computers and screens, networked printing, and a fridge. We can try a meeting here, if it's not a large one.

kc

Karen Coyle kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet

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We had a similar discussion back in January: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Talk:Groups/San_Francisco#New.2C_related_group...

I hope folks get together and edit lots of pages. For my part, I don't want to be part of a group or chapter, I would rather just have an easy way to follow get togethers, and pick which ones I show up at. This is the only Wikipedia list I will subscribe to, so if folks do end up making new groups, please include a page of events I can watch somewhere (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Groups?) or make a calendar available.

Part of accessibility is being flexible and considerate of folks who work all kinds of hours and also have childcare needs, among others. The very act of creating a group signals to some that they have to be more involved than you would propose, so I advocate for an informal group that uses the existing channels to broadcast their meetings, at least until they've hit that critical mass that they need to create their own bureaucracy. ^_^

More pointed, I would be interested in attending and acting as roving support; I don't have a lot of knowledge about any local areas, but I geek out on MediaWiki, and have experience as an editor in the sense of checking others' work. I hope you folks success in getting a space somewhere.

maiki

On 07/29/2013 05:53 PM, Sabahat Ashraf ("iFaqeer") wrote:

I want to chime in and support this proposal. If the group gets too big and we have a lot of people from Oakland or Fremont (my personal home), we can "spin out", but for now, please consider this. If not in the name, at least in terms of how the chapter is defined and described.

Sabahat.

Sabahat I Ashraf ("iFaqeer") Communicator. Citizen. Fakir. iFaqeer @ Gmail/Gtalk, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, .com darwaish @ yahoo 415 881 7834

On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 2:19 PM, Sarah Stierch sstierch@wikimedia.org wrote:

...

Hi,

Weird request and I understand if it gets shot down for locality:

If a Berkeley meetup group is being formed, think we can create it as an East Bay group instead?

I live in Oakland, and I think ideally it would be unifying (since our groups are so small) to make it an encompassing group so folks throughout the region feel welcome. But, I also understand if folks want to keep it Berkeley-centric for Berkeley locals. (And those who feel bold enough to "act" like like one/invade :) )

Thanks for taking the lead on this, it is very appreciated!

Sarah

Sent from my iPhone

On Jul 28, 2013, at 7:17 AM, Karen Coyle kcoyle@kcoyle.net wrote:

...

Hello, all.

I've taken up the organizer role for the Berkeley Wikipedia meet-up group. I'll do some figuring out on how to use Meetup. Would the person who volunteered to find a space on UC campus please contact me?

I presume that we are aiming at a September first meeting, given how summer seems to disrupt schedules.

If we can't find other meet-up places, my home has wifi, various computers and screens, networked printing, and a fridge. We can try a meeting here, if it's not a large one.

kc

Karen Coyle kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet

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Michael, I think this is a good idea, especially if we have folks working on specific pages or areas. I do think a few f2f meetings will be needed, and folks can do both or either. What I have found in the WP editing sessions that I have attended is that often people are working on their own pages, but the draw is the banter and company, plus having someone immediately available to answer questions. In fact, there was a lot of cross-helping in the groups, since everyone has something to contribute.

kc

On 7/29/13 11:57 AM, Michael Kelly wrote:

I wonder to what extent we could have meetings online? I started a meetup groups a while back and the biggest problem, as here, was always where and when to meet. That uses up a lot of our energy that could possibly be put to better use. Plus problems with the meeting place and time and just getting there added to the general inefficiency. There are two online ways to meet that come to mind: we could use something like gotomeeting where everyone signs on to a site and has the ability to talk or type, and become the presenter, showing anything they want on the screen (examples, articles, etc.) then turn the presenter role over to someone else.

An interesting way to meet on a topic, and that is more visual, is to try to use Prezi. Its like a big sheet of paper on a table in front of us and we all type stuff, load vids, picts, pdfs, and then draw arrows between them that can be typed on too. If we are also on a conference call, we have voice channel too.

Finally, there is a tool that stresses getting the meaning documented on what we are discussing and is a personal favorite of mine: CMAP from the Florida Institute for Man Machine Interface, or something like that. (easy to find with Google). Its free and goes sooo well with Wikimedia thinking. After all, we are all about documenting meaning.

Any interest in trying these a couple of times? I could help set up a trial. Most of these are limited to 12 or 15 people at a time, so there is that. But all are free.

Mike Kelly

GigaMarketing/GigaCommunication

*From:*wikimedia-sf-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org [mailto:wikimedia-sf-bounces@lists.wikimedia.org] *On Behalf Of *Shreyas Patankar *Sent:* Monday, July 29, 2013 11:03 AM *To:* Karen Coyle; San Francisco Bay Area Wikimedians *Subject:* Re: [Wikimedia-SF] Berkeley Wikipedians

Hi Karen,

Sorry I did not get back to you earlier. I can think of a couple of options so far:

1. Campus libraries: It seems it is easy for registered campus

organizations to get access to meeting rooms. The problem is, although Berkeley Wikipedia club is a registered group, room reservation can only be done by a "signatory" for the group. The group mailing list itself is inactive - I wonder if anyone on this list (Kevin Gorman?) is a signatory.

2. The Berkeley Public Library: They seem to have a public room for

community events (free, with free wifi) if you book it well in advance. http://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/community/book_a_meeting_room.php

3. I've written to my friend who works with the Compass Project, a

student support group in the physical sciences, to see if they have any space that we can use - but I've yet to hear back from them.

Among these, the Berkeley Public Library looks like the safest bet. I'll let you know if I can think of anything else..

-Shreyas

On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 7:17 AM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:

Hello, all.

I've taken up the organizer role for the Berkeley Wikipedia meet-up group. I'll do some figuring out on how to use Meetup. Would the person who volunteered to find a space on UC campus please contact me?

I presume that we are aiming at a September first meeting, given how summer seems to disrupt schedules.

If we can't find other meet-up places, my home has wifi, various computers and screens, networked printing, and a fridge. We can try a meeting here, if it's not a large one.

kc

Karen Coyle kcoyle@kcoyle.net mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://kcoyle.net ph: 1-510-540-7596 tel:1-510-540-7596 m: 1-510-435-8234 tel:1-510-435-8234 skype: kcoylenet

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Jeremy,

I'm not sure what kind of discussion relating to Wikipedia would be appropriate for an online meetup, but maybe others have an idea. As I said, what I've found about WP meetups is that people each work on a different page, but make use of nearby folks for advice, ideas, and company.

I feel strongly about encouraging non-nerd humanists to participate in WP, as well as people of all ages and levels of computer experience. I believe that this was also the motivation for the development of the WYSIWYG editor: for some people, wiki markup alone is a deterrent. I would say the same about IRC, which is a nerd-heavy communications channel.

Unfortunately, Google, being now a key player in the military-industrial-surveillance community is something I would not recommend for anyone to join, although current members may wish to meet on a hangout. It works well for small numbers, but I have never tried to push it beyond 3-4 participants.

I do agree that any kind of meeting has more chance of success if it has a theme or project. For Berkeley, the Berkeley-specific pages are in need of work, so we can easily start there. It would be fun, if we could do it, to meet with the public library librarian in charge of the history archives.

kc

On 7/29/13 1:50 PM, Jeremy Baron wrote:

Hi,

On Mon, Jul 29, 2013 at 6:57 PM, Michael Kelly mkelly@techtel.com wrote:

...

There are two online ways to meet that come to mind: we could use something like gotomeeting where everyone signs on to a site and has the ability to talk or type, and become the presenter, showing anything they want on the screen (examples, articles, etc.) then turn the presenter role over to someone else.

I suggest either using

• MeetBot on freenode (#wikimedia-us for now, #wikimedia-westcoast if

you can get people to regularly show up there) ** I'm running a MeetBot instance on a Wikimedia DC server and it's lurking now in both #wikimedia-us and #wikimedia-westcoast waiting for a meeting to start. https://wiki.debian.org/MeetBot#Howto ** in this case it's useful to make an agenda so you talk about one topic and when you finish then you move on and don't mix topics too much. to make the MeetBot output more useful for people that are not able to read the whole log or so they can get some idea about the discussion before they have a chance to read it in full. arbitrary example of the power of MeetBot chosen from a directory listing: http://meetbot.debian.net/debconf-team/2013/debconf-team.2013-02-11-18.02.ht...

or

• a Google hangout on air (which means broadcast live to a nearly

unlimited number of anonymous viewers and allows active participation by more than a few people at a time. (I don't know exactly what the limit is there)) ** (we should use a [[free software]] alternative at some point (so that when Google decides to modify, limit or discontinue hangouts we're not screwed among other reasons) but I'm not able to work on that right now and I think it's more important to offer a tool that can be used immediately. so for now I say hangouts but other people are welcome to find/make something even better.)

Or a combination of both.

FWIW, I personally am opposed to using any sort of solution that would not allow 50 (or even 100) people simultaneous viewers. (and though Google does limit the number of active participants (speakers) I believe they can be rotated so that by the end of the broadcast you could have had a total number of speakers in excess of the limit of simultaneous participants) But, OTOH, I've never set foot within 350 miles of the area covered by this list and haven't been to the west coast since I was <= 10 years old. So, just my 2 cents and I'll let you make your own decisions. (but let me know if you want help with either of those options above)

-Jeremy

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On 7/29/13 8:12 PM, Jeremy Baron wrote:

I think IRC's not too scary if there's an appointed meeting time with people that are guaranteed to be friendly and helpful and there's only one channel to have to pay attention to. It's easy to make a webchat link with the fields all pre-filled (e.g. with the channel name. or even IRC nick)

IRC is not scary for you, but it is a significant barrier to anyone who doesn't already know it. So, no, I personally will not be organizing any "meetings" on IRC. YMMV.

kc

...

Unfortunately, Google, being now a key player in the military-industrial-surveillance community is something I would not recommend for anyone to join, although current members may wish to meet on a hangout. It works well for small numbers, but I have never tried to push it beyond 3-4 participants.

I guess you mean recent NSA shenanigans? I'm still expecting/eager to hear more details (e.g. the details Google and others have requested that they be allowed to release) but I think that news doesn't change much. You should have (IMHO) already been nearly as concerned about Google 3 months ago as you are today.

I've seen hangouts with dozens of people first hand (and I think at least 8 active speakers?). I personally think being open to a substantial number of passive viewers is more important than not using Google for anything. (but I'm not even sure what the subject is... if it's really just an editathon/workshop that's different than a meeting to plan or organize something)

...

I'm not sure what kind of discussion relating to Wikipedia would be appropriate for an online meetup, but maybe others have an idea.

I'm not sure either and I like in-person meetings. I was just responding to the earlier suggestion for online meetings. But not my region so I'll try to stick mostly to the sidelines.

-Jeremy

P.S. I don't ever hangout (and already wasn't 3 months ago) from the same Google account I use for anything else. and sometimes I even make a brand new Google account from scratch for a particular hangout and then never uses that account again. I think I've only been an active participant in ~3-4 hangouts ever but I've passively viewed the livestream of a hangout on air for other hangouts.

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I definitely think in-person meetings make sense. As someone who has attended a lot of them, there's definitely a significant difference between what types of people and what is accomplished during in-person meetups vs online ones. The Berkeley campus group was never really active (it was more-or-less Matt Senate and Derrick Coetzee's idea, I just signed to hit the minimum requirement.)

I could probably get a room on UCB's campus (although I won't be a student for more than another couple weeks I'd probably be able to anyway,) but the wifi is a pain to set up which makes it a less than ideal choice for a meet-up location. I suspect the library would be willing to host us given how much libraries tend to like Wikipedia (potentially helped by the fact that we are right next to the WMF.) I would like to host an editathon in the non-student cooperative in northern oakland I live in at some point, but that will probably be a little bit away and not necessarily a frequent event.

I'll definitely show up wherever there is a meetup though :)

--- Kevin Gorman

On Tue, Jul 30, 2013 at 9:17 AM, Wjhonson wjhonson@aol.com wrote:

The issue I've always had with IRC is that if you are not a gear-head, you really have never used it. The logs are *mostly* either not indexed at Google, or not even kept at all, so you cannot link to a discussion of what this one or that one said, and you cannot read those discussions.

Yes I'm aware that *some* chats are being logged.

If the community wants to *reach out* to all the non technologists, IRC is not the way to reach.

-----Original Message----- From: Karen Coyle kcoyle@kcoyle.net To: wikimedia-sf wikimedia-sf@lists.wikimedia.org Sent: Tue, Jul 30, 2013 6:27 am Subject: Re: [Wikimedia-SF] Berkeley Wikipedians

On 7/29/13 8:12 PM, Jeremy Baron wrote:

...

I think IRC's not too scary if there's an appointed meeting time with people that are guaranteed to be friendly and helpful and there's only one channel to have to pay attention to. It's easy to make a webchat link with the fields all pre-filled (e.g. with the channel name. or even IRC nick)

IRC is not scary for you, but it is a significant barrier to anyone who doesn't already know it. So, no, I personally will not be organizing any "meetings" on IRC. YMMV.

kc

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Thanks. I stopped by the Historical Society last week but the reception was not warm. They said they cannot have meetings in their space, and they do not have wifi available. So it looks like BPL and campus are our best bets.

kc

On 8/5/13 9:56 AM, Shreyas Patankar wrote:

Hi Karen,

I just checked with the Berkeley Public Library (central) about availability of their meeting room, this is what they said:

---

From: *Community Meeting Room*<BerkeleyPublicLibraryMeetingRoom@ci.berkeley.ca.us mailto:BerkeleyPublicLibraryMeetingRoom@ci.berkeley.ca.us> Date: Mon, Aug 5, 2013 at 9:03 AM Subject: RE: Library meeting room To: Shreyas Patankar <spatya@gmail.com mailto:spatya@gmail.com>

We have some availability in September.

Currently we have the following open times.____

__ Sat., Sep. 7 10:00 AM – 5:30 PM

Sun., Sep. 8 1:00 PM – 4:30 PM____

Sun., Sep. 15 1:00 PM – 4:30 PM____

Sat., Sep. 21 12:30 PM – 5:30 PM____

Sun., Sep. 22 1:00 PM – 4:30 PM____

Sun., Sep. 29 1:00 PM – 4:30 PM____

---

If one of these will work for you please complete and submit the attached application.____

__ /~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~/

*/Eve Franklin/*/, Administrative Secretary____/

/City of Berkeley, Berkeley Public Library / Administration____/

/2090 Kittredge Street Berkeley, CA 94704____/

*/Website:/*/www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org http://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/______/

*/Email/*/: BerkeleyPublicLibraryMeetingRoom@ci.berkeley.ca.us mailto:BerkeleyPublicLibraryMeetingRoom@ci.berkeley.ca.us____/

/__ -----__/

They also told me that we should not have trouble with eligibility as long as the person doing the registration is a Berkeley resident. Does this look like a good option? I think either the 9/7 or 9/21 Saturdays could work fine.

Best, Shreyas

Hi, Shreyas. Thanks.

The problem with the campus is that its wifi is not open - each user has to have a separate login. There are folks who can give us logins, but it's a bit of a pain.

The BPL has open wifi, but their public room rules say:

"Permission to use the Library’s Community Rooms or Electronic Classroom will be granted to Berkeley-based civic, cultural, educational organizations or businesses, or to locally-operating government agencies, departments or commissions. Organizations not located in Berkeley may be required to provide proof of regular operation or programs within Berkeley such as brochures, newsletters or website printouts."

However, Asaf got a room there once, so I'm going to consider that a possibility.

kc

On 7/29/13 11:02 AM, Shreyas Patankar wrote:

Hi Karen,

Sorry I did not get back to you earlier. I can think of a couple of options so far:

1. Campus libraries: It seems it is easy for registered campus

organizations to get access to meeting rooms. The problem is, although Berkeley Wikipedia club is a registered group, room reservation can only be done by a "signatory" for the group. The group mailing list itself is inactive - I wonder if anyone on this list (Kevin Gorman?) is a signatory.

2. The Berkeley Public Library: They seem to have a public room for

community events (free, with free wifi) if you book it well in advance. http://www.berkeleypubliclibrary.org/community/book_a_meeting_room.php

3. I've written to my friend who works with the Compass Project, a

student support group in the physical sciences, to see if they have any space that we can use - but I've yet to hear back from them.

Among these, the Berkeley Public Library looks like the safest bet. I'll let you know if I can think of anything else..

-Shreyas

On Sun, Jul 28, 2013 at 7:17 AM, Karen Coyle <kcoyle@kcoyle.net mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net> wrote:

Hello, all.

I've taken up the organizer role for the Berkeley Wikipedia meet-up
group. I'll do some figuring out on how to use Meetup. Would the
person who volunteered to find a space on UC campus please contact me?

I presume that we are aiming at a September first meeting, given how
summer seems to disrupt schedules.

If we can't find other meet-up places, my home has wifi, various
computers and screens, networked printing, and a fridge. We can try
a meeting here, if it's not a large one.

kc
--
Karen Coyle
kcoyle@kcoyle.net <mailto:kcoyle@kcoyle.net> http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596 <tel:1-510-540-7596>
m: 1-510-435-8234 <tel:1-510-435-8234>
skype: kcoylenet

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