[Foundation-l] Floating a notion: permanent Wikimania committee?

[Casey Brown]

On Thu, Jun 17, 2010 at 3:06 PM, Sue Gardner <sgardner at wikimedia.org> wrote:
> The role of the committee would be to provide coaching
> and guidance for the local planning team (“here is how we've done it
> in past years, here's what usually works, here are some problems you
> should watch out for”) … and also to provide oversight to the local
> team, and help them course-correct if they're having problems.
> Essentially, the committee would be responsible for helping to ensure,
> in partnership with the local team, that every Wikimania is a success.

We actually have tried to do a lot of this informally for a while, but
the informality has caused it to sorta fall apart recently. :-)

Some things we've done are:
* try to make sure that most planning discussion happens on
wikimania-planning-l so that past and present organizers can
communicate effectively

* have work occur on the official public (wikimania20XX.wikimedia.org)
and private (wikimaniateam.wikimedia.org) wikis so everyone can help
and see what's been done in the past

* get some help docs/pages together, here's two on the private
planning wiki: http://wikimaniateam.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Ideal_Team
/ http://wikimaniateam.wikimedia.org/wiki/The_Ideal_Timeline

A formal committee and a real, detailed set of tips (or "Wikimania
Book" as Sj called it) would definitely be an improvement, but it's
important to stress that other people would definitely still be
welcome to provide feedback on different topics.

> I'm interested in everyone's views on this, and I'd be particularly
> interested in hearing from the people who've been involved in past
> Wikimanias, and also from the Haifa people, to hear if this'd be
> useful for them for 2011.

I know that the Haifa team is definitely interested in this.  Last I
heard, they were actively reaching out to previous organizers so that
they could meet them in Gdansk and get feedback/tips.  (They've also
been setting up planning information on the existing
wikimaniateamwiki.)

-- 
Casey Brown
Cbrown1023