Hi all,

I think I would have agreed with Fae, were it not for the fact that there is no charge to attend this event. In fact I have contacted Stevie as regards attending on behalf of WMUK (even though I doubt I have the sort of charisma that Ed has suggested would be useful). As I now have an over 60s free travel card, there are no implications as regards travel costs.

So bearing in mind the zero impact on the Charities finances, I hope no one regards my attendance as problematic?

all the best

Fabian User:Leutha

Message: 1 Date: Tue, 18 Mar 2014 12:05:34 +0000 From: Fæ faewik@gmail.com To: UK Wikimedia mailing list wikimediauk-l@lists.wikimedia.org Subject: Re: [Wikimediauk-l] Fwd: Invite - Recognising Value and the Sharing Economy Message-ID: CAH7nnD13p5wP5Yds_ioQXgjMKfi-gPHz82DCAN2_44g9=RHi5A@mail.gmail.com Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

On 18/03/2014, Stevie Benton stevie.benton@wikimedia.org.uk wrote:

...

Hello folks.

If anyone is interested in the sharing economy, and would like to attend this event, please let me know. We can try and arrange something.

Thank you,

Stevie

I am unsure as to why Wikimedia UK would want to promote a collaborative commerce conversation (as the LLDC and Echo describe the event), rather than ensuring our members and volunteers take part in open knowledge conferences and events. This appears to be a business/charity networking social of the 'big society' format. Lots of people are interested in the issues of the sharing economy (I am an active support of freecycling); but this seems a long way from Wikimedia projects, if the intention was to pay expenses for someone to attend and write a blog post about it.

If anyone has spare time we have a lot of past GLAM (and University) contacts from editathons that could do with practical follow up, or support finishing creating articles and making use of media uploads. The issue for the backlog of properly completing past projects is attracting active and productive volunteers (globally), which seems a pressing issue compared to the benefits to the charity of creating a bigger list of potential commercial, political and NFP partner organizations.

Fae

faewik@gmail.com https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Fae