Hi all,
As part of the task force I got the job to look into the technical side of distributed events that have been happening around the world and report by May.
Unfortunately, I haven't had the time to do deep digging and exploration but fortunately Richard was really helpful with tips and contacts, so I can report on a couple of ideas.
There are a couple of examples of distributed events (One Web Day[1], Software Freedom Day[2], etc.). One thing that is surely common in them is that they have websites and their own domain names (and a Facebook fan-page nowadays seems a must...).
It seems that most of them are using a wiki to do the team and events registrations: you create a page with your planned event/organising team and that's it. (There might be some extra steps involved where you have to additionally register your team page you created to receive swag or the site administrator might add your event to a nicer front-end site and put it on a [Google] map.)
I think we can easily replicate or even improve this part of the
organising on the technical side. In terms of sophistication and usability I think we should look to Creative Commons' grant application page[3] as an example - I think it uses the Semantic Forms MediaWiki extension. The Mozilla Drumbeat project also has a very nice website and possibly an event registration form but I didn't have time to pursue it fully as it requires registration, etc. [3,5]
It is less technical but it is important to note that these events had nice "getting started" guides and event kits. One Web Day has morphed into Mozilla's Drumbeat, which has a nice event kit down to promotional flyer templates on their wiki [unfortunately it is still under construction, 4]. Similarly, Software Freedom Day had event guidelines and even a competition between the events[5].
A nice idea that we could replicate from One Web Day is that they had "ambassadors", prominent people supporting the event and a local group who would in the 60 days leading up to the day (one ambassador a day) would post on their blog or publish a video in support of the events.
If the WMF has the resources we could expand the "Jimmy video" idea to a number of prominent people talking [in a 1-2 minute video clip or a short blog post] about Wikipedia and how it has changed their lives in the last 10 years and reminiscing about the past (e.g. we could have the first editors; the tech people telling anecdotes about WP running out of a dorm room and becoming what it is today, current and past WMF board members, people from the advisory board, etc.) and the Jimmy video could crown it on the 15 January.
Having a "blog planet"/Twitter wall kind of page to showcase these videos and other people's stories (possibly some from the stories collected for fundraising purposes) would be a plus.
Best regards,
Bence
[1] http://onewebday.org/
[2] http://softwarefreedomday.org
[3] http://wiki.creativecommons.org/Special:AddData/Grant_Application
[3,5] http://www.drumbeat.org/node/add/drumbeat-event
[4] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Drumbeat/events/kit
[5] http://softwarefreedomday.org/StartGuide; http://softwarefreedomday.org/Competition2009