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

[Brian Salter-Duke]

On Sun, 04 May 2008 09:24:49 +0200, Henning Schlottmann <h.schlottmann at gmx.net> wrote:
> 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.

Spot on for Australia. We are incorporating in Victoria. We have had
Meetups in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth at least. I
may have missed some. All these started long before Wikimedia Australia
Inc. The chapter committee can have members from all over. The meeting
to approve incorporation had groups in Adelaide, Brisbane, Perth anf
Hobart linked by VOIP. There is not need these days for face to face
meetings. We had a committee meeting by IRC only 2 hours ago.

Brian.

> Ciao Henning [[user:H-stt]] (home project: de-WP)
>
>
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-- 
          Brian Salter-Duke            b_duke at bigpond.net.au  
               [[User:Bduke]]  mainly on en:Wikipedia.
           Also on fr: Wikipedia, Meta-Wiki and Wikiversity