Hi everyone -- I tried to send this message last night, but it disappeared into the ether. That means that what was once time-sensitive is now in the urgent category. There's also a lightning talk about this this afternoon in the 5:15 hour at WikiConference North America.
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 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,
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" and respond to this message with what they think is important, I'll gather that info and add it to this talk page 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