[Foundation-l] Why should Wikimedians meet?

[Tomasz Ganicz]

2010/7/31 Thomas Dalton <thomas.dalton at gmail.com>:
> On 31 July 2010 16:27, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> On 31 July 2010 16:21, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni at mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
>>
>>> But all of the above are nice dreams about the future. Is there any
>>> proven experience from the past that demonstrates why personal
>>> meetings between Wikimedians are not just fun for them, but actually
>>> beneficial to the Wikimedia community, the Internet, the Humanity? Can
>>> anyone here give me solid examples of successful projects that were
>>> born thanks to past Wikimanias?
>>
>>
>> Most of the chapters.
>
> Are you sure? Don't chapters come out of local meetups more than
> Wikimanias? Three chapters pre-date the first Wikimania and one was
> founded a week after (so I don't think Wikimania can take credit for
> that). Can you give some examples of chapters you know were founded as
> a result of a Wikimania? I can imagine some people being inspired to
> form chapters after meeting people from other chapters, but I don't
> know any definite examples of it actually happening.

In 2006 Wikimania in Boston there was a brief, informal meetup of
chapter committee, existing chapters boards members and people thinikg
to establish their own chapters. I don't know if it was the results of
only this meeting but several weeks/months after this meeting
Wikimedia Israel, Wikimedia Taiwan and Wikimedia Netherlands were
established mainly by people who attended this meeting.

See us 4 years younger:

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_chapters_meetup_Wikimania_2006

-- 
Tomek "Polimerek" Ganicz
http://pl.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Polimerek
http://www.ganicz.pl/poli/
http://www.ptchem.lodz.pl/en/TomaszGanicz.html