Hi Folks,

I am finally finding five minutes to thank you all for the warm welcome and to reiterate that Bence and I, as well as any other member of the chapters committee, are here to help with any questions you might have.

Here is our "wikimedia report" of our workshop.

Best,

Delphine

======== Wikimedia South Africa, kickoff Workshop - 7/8 August 2010

== BACKGROUND == Wikimedia activities in South Africa are not exactly new, in 2007, iCommons and the Wikimedia Foundation organised a Wikipedia Academy in Johannesburg, while a group of Wikimedians started to put together a bid for Wikimania. The South African chapter idea probably finds its roots in those two initiatives, but for lack of momentum at the time, did not pick up. In 2010, Achal Prabhala, member of the advisory board of the Wikimedia Foundation, who helped found the Indian Chapter, put the idea back on track.

Achal, with the help of Kerryn McKay and Daniela Faris of the African Commons Project [1], advertised the idea of a workshop to kick off a South African chapter, and invited various wikipedians and otherwise interested people (FOSS activists, users of Wikipedia, non-profit experienced people) to participate in a workshop destined to kick off a South African chapter.

== WORKSHOP == The Workshop gathered around 25 people [2] from different backgrounds, among which Ian Gilfillan, who had been leading the Wikimania bid and Nhlanhla Mabaso, Head of CNS at The Universtiy of the Witwatersrand, who played a great role in reaching out far and wide for interested (and interesting) people. Bence Damokos and myself attended as members of the chapters committee.

=== Saturday, 7th August === The session started with an introduction to the Wikimedia Universe, focusing on the existing organisations (Foundation and Chapters) and outlining the existing processes to set up a chapter, as well as what chapters do. After a round of introduction of each of the participants, the group then split into smaller working sessions which reflected on the following topics: *Potential activities and initiatives for a South African Chapter *Vision of a Wikimedia Chapter in South Africa *Purpose of a Wikimedia Chapter in South Africa *Challenges that a Wikimedia Chapter in South Africa might face

The results of these sessions can be found on meta here:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_South_Africa&oldid...

Of those results, two have particularly caught our attention as being specific to South Africa, or at least different than one might expect from such a session in other chapter groups, namely:

*Ownership of Wikimedia to South Africans (in the purpose section): this was meant as giving the chapter the task of making sure that Wikimedia projects don't appear too "foreign" or even too "western", but rather would hopefully be recognized as fair in representing South Africa but also the whole African continent.

*Documenting content which is only orally available; finding a workable citation method for languages with oral traditions (in the challenges section): a task which actually questions fundamental pillars of Wikipedia (no original research and "cite your sources") and is much more critical in many of the African languages than maybe in western languages.

A third point that was unique - so far - to South Africa, though maybe less novel than the above two was the role and share of mobile internet access and the associated opportunities and challenges that it will bring. Africa is a continent where internet access through mobile phones is the rule rather than the exception, and efforts to make Wikipedia accessible not only to read, but also to edit, are a real challenge that an African chapter should tackle.

=== Sunday, 8th August === The Sunday session focused rather on presenting and discussing the different legal options for a Chapter in South Africa as well as work on a timeline of next steps and the formation of a team for the creation of the chapter. Results can be found here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_South_Africa&oldid...

== CONCLUSION == The idea of fostering the creation of a chapter by enabling people to meet, specifically reaching out to potentially interested people and bringing them together for a workshop is somewhat of a novel idea in chapter creation. We found it to be extremely interesting and productive. It allows, in countries where getting together, or taking the first (legal) steps might be a real hurdle to chapter creation, to be extremely helpful in ensuring that diversity of the people represented in the first step of the chapter is achieved.

Bence and I would like to thank Achal for starting this process, Kerryn and Daniela for organising the workshop and everyone present for their participation and the lively dicussions. We are confident that such initiatives should be fostered in countries where founding a chapter might encounter difficulties to emerge.

The future of Wikimedia South Africa is discussed on the wikimediaza mailing list: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaza, as well as on meta. Please join the conversation.

[1] http://www.africancommons.org/about/ [2] http://picasaweb.google.com/davidrichfield/Wikimedia#5502986611082048162