[Foundation-l] announcement: german wikimedia association (verein) founded

[Delirium]

Elisabeth Bauer wrote:

> On sunday 13th of June German wikipedians founded a local wikimedia 
> association in Berlin: the ''Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur 
> Förderung Freien Wissens'' (''Wikimedia Germany - society for the 
> promotion of free knowledge''). We had 34 founding members - among 
> them friends of wikipedia and of course a lot of people of the german 
> wikipedia.
>
> A board of trustees with ten members was elected, among them Kurt 
> Jansson as chairman.

This is more a general issue, not specifically related to the Wikimedia 
Deutschland meeting, but it came up so I figured this was a good time to 
mention it.  I'd personally prefer if important things, like votes for 
foundations, not take place at "in-person" meetings, because not all of 
us have sufficient funds to attend such meetings.  Internet elections 
are much more inclusive.  An exception would be if it were a local-only 
organization, such as a "Wikimedia Amsterdam chapter", in which case 
having a local meeting in Amsterdam would suffice.  But in this case it 
seems to be a Germany-wide organization, which would bias it against 
Germans who live far from Berlin and don't have much money to spend on 
traveling to such meetings.  Or am I misunderstanding the setup?

-Mark