Hello everyone,
Thanks to everyone who was able to attend our meeting yesterday. If you weren't able, we hope to see you next month at our November meeting.
Yesterday we discussed where things stand with the movement strategy process, and I didn't do a great job of explaining it. I just attended an info session with Xeno from the Wikimedia Foundation to learn more about this. The long and the short of it is this:
- Members of the global Wikimedia movement have been collectively crafting a movement strategy for years. (You can learn more about that here https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2018-20/Recommendations if you're curious.) - The next big step is drafting the movement charter, a process that will be done by a committee. But first! The movement charter committee must be elected. - The affiliates from each region will put forward one selector, and those selectors will vote on the charter committee members. The regions are big -- our region is North America (which, for the purposes of this process is defined as the US and Canada). So all of the US and Canada will choose just one selector, and that selector will work with the selectors from all the other regions to vote on the members of the movement charter committee.
Did you get all that? It's a pretty elaborate process, and I've found it confusing until just now, meeting with Xeno. You can think of the selectors as the electoral college. We, the North Carolina Wikipedians, have to work with all the other affiliate groups across the US and Canada to choose *one* person to send to this electoral college. And the deadline is Monday. Oh, and nobody yet has self-nominated to be that selector!
So! Here's what I'd like to know:
- First, would anyone from our group like to nominate themselves to be a selector? I believe this would be a 5-10 hour commitment. The selector would read the bios of all 70 candidates https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee/Candidates, and then vote for the 13 they think would do the best job according to the priorities of the North American affiliate groups. Because nobody has self-nominated, there's a good chance that anyone self-nominating would end up as the selector representing all of the US and Canada. (But no pressure. 😉 ) - Second, whoever the selector ends up being, it would be great to tell them what our values are as a user group. If anyone has the time and the inclination to look at this list of "compass statements" https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Movement_Charter/Drafting_Committee/Election_Compass_Statements and respond to this message with what they think is important, I'll gather that info and add it to this talk page https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Movement_Charter/Affiliates_by_Region/North_America on behalf of our group.
If you're inclined to do either of the above, please do so sometime this weekend -- the window closes soon!
And let me know if anyone has questions!
Emily