Hi, and thanks everyone for your interest in a local Wikimedia chapter.
We've had a few false starts before, but this time we've got a wider
range of people involved, some funding to help us meet up in person, the
help of the African Commons Project, and the assistance of someone who's
helped start up the recently-approved Indian Wikimedia chapter, Achal
Prabhala.
Local content is relatively poorly covered on the Wikimedia projects.
Not too many people outside of contributors even know that Wikipedia
exists in all 11 official languages, not just English. One of the main
goals of a local chapter is to promote the Wikimedia projects here so
that more people contribute - local scientists and academics, for
example, are often users, but not contributors.
And all of that is to help realise the vision of a world in which every
human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge.
Kerryn has already given out some proposed dates for our first meetup -
either full day Friday, 6th August and half day Saturday, 7th August
OR alternatively full day Saturday, 7th August and then half day Sunday,
8th August. Please let her know which day suits best.
Please help spread awareness of this initiative. We've already contacted
many local contributors directly, but if you know of anyone else who'd
be interested, please point them to our page on Meta-wiki,
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_South_Africa and to this
mailing list.
Hope to be meeting many of you soon, in person!
--
Ian Gilfillan
www.greenman.co.za