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

[Henning Schlottmann]

Milos Rancic wrote:

> Bavaria is very well connected with the rest of Germany. This is the
> main reason why they don't need a separate chapter. Bavaria has its
> own Supreme Court, as well as they have a distinct conservative party
> from the rest of Germany (imagine California with something like "New
> Republican Party of California", which makes a coalition with
> Republican Party at the federal level; of course, without any office
> of RP in California).

Milos, pretty much everything you wrote about Bavaria in this thread is 
flat wrong. I am from Bavaria, I studied law here, including of course 
the state law, and Bavarias status is identical to every other German 
state and has much less of sovereignty then US states. But as this is 
not the place to discuss the status of sovereignty for subnational 
entities in Germany, let's keep it by this statement.

But, and that is a large but: All of you seem to assume that the ability 
to meet face to face easily is a precondition to establish a chapter. I 
don't think so. In most jurisdictions you need a certain number of 
people to attend one meeting for the founding of an association and 
sometimes there is an obligatory annual or biannual meeting to review 
reports from the board and hold elections for the board. In some 
jurisdictions these meetings are legally allowed to take place online.

A chapter does not need regular meetings beyond that and regular 
meetings don't need a chapter. We have monthly meetups in Munich, 
Bavaria, Germany since December 2003, long before the German chapter was 
founded, and without a Bavarian or local chapter. Same for Berlin, 
Frankfurt, Hamburg and so on, where they have monthly meetups as well.

So if you want to organize meetups, just put it on a subpage of 
[[:en:WP:Meetup]] (or your own equivalent page) and notice everyone you 
know. No chapter needed.

Chapters can handle donations, press contacts, organize larger events 
and so on. Some of that needs a core team at a certain place, most of 
the jobs are not connected with the geographic placements of active 
members. If there were a Wikimedia Canada chapter, registered at Ottawa 
or Toronto, that would not preclude someone from Edmonton, Calgary or 
Vancouver to handle press contacts or act as treasurer and handle 
donations. Same in Russia or Australia.

Ciao Henning [[user:H-stt]] (home project: de-WP)