[Foundation-l] Chapter-selected Board seats - brainstorming

[Dan Rosenthal]

I think the two are intertwined though. Distance and autonomy are  
interconnected. For instance, California itself may not be ripe for a  
state-wide chapter: it may merit a NoCal and SoCal chapter (north and  
south). Whereas, Pennsylvania really has two major population centers  
connected by a highway,  it's not so hard to get between Philly and  
Pittsburg. Same thing with DC....it's trivial to get between Baltimore  
and DC, but it's an all day trek to get to Boston, and at least a half  
day to New York. For those purposes, regional chapters don't  
necessarily work quite as well as Metro area chapters.

Take Florida for instance. The capital is in north florida, but it's  
over 6 hours away by car from the major south florida metro area  
(miami, ft. lauderdale, palm beach). and slightly less than that from  
Tampa/St. Pete/Clearwater, and 4 from Orlando. So it makes sense to  
have a chapter for Florida located somewhere in the south of the state  
(probably Tampa or Orlando). But the distances tie directly into the  
issue of autonomy, i.e. is the chapter state based, or metro area based?

On the other hand, some areas work quite well for regional chapters:  
the New England area being a prime example of this. Similarly, South  
Carolina and Pennsylvania work well as a state chapter.  DC is so  
closely tied to Maryland and northern virginia that it would work best  
as a metro area chapter.

The point is, I don't think a mandatory structure works well for the  
US. Some areas are better suited to state, others metro area, others  
still regional. But no single structure works for everything, so it's  
better to "mix and match" as necessary to best serve the constituency  
of each chapter.

-Dan


On May 3, 2008, at 1:54 PM, Milos Rancic wrote:

> On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 7:13 PM, Dan Rosenthal <swatjester at gmail.com>  
> wrote:
>> On the contrary, I think that the issue of how chapters are  
>> structured
>> between states and countries is a critical issue.
>>
>> -Dan
>>
>>
>> On May 3, 2008, at 11:30 AM, Sebastian Moleski wrote:
>>
>>> On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 5:20 PM, Milos Rancic <millosh at gmail.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Hm. It is a wrong way for arguing for state-level chapters in USA.
>>>> Free State Bavaria is, for example, much more independent entity  
>>>> than
>>>> any of US states. And there are a number of similar examples in
>>>> Europe.
>>>>
>>>
>>> Could we please remain within the scope of the question here, namely
>>> on what
>>> basis to structure chapters and what factors influence that? The
>>> intricate
>>> (quite political) details of what level of sovereignty a country,
>>> state,
>>> province, or whatever has hold little to no relevance for this
>>> question.
>
> I wanted to say that a level of independence is often less important
> than some other issues. If the goal is to build a functional
> organization, then we should think about aspects which are
> particularly important in some cases. In the case of US (and other big
> countries) there is much more important problem than a level of
> regional autonomy: the distance. Because of that, I may imagine that
> WM New England would be a functional organization, while I am not sure
> that WM California would be.
>
> _______________________________________________
> foundation-l mailing list
> foundation-l at lists.wikimedia.org
> Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l