[Wikimania-l] What to do about 2012, and the future

Wed Jan 19 18:23:36 UTC 2011

Excellent point James. I agree with Harel about possible reason
the enthusiasm fizzles away. Its a very common thing usually witnessed in
stressful fields, the organizers tend to have a high burnout rate.

So the next logical question becomes How do we attract and retain that kind
of talent?

Joseph seddon made efforts last year to get a Wikimania committee off the
ground but the effort didn't go anywhere, maybe we should reconsider it
again. Also, one thing I wondered about, how about a designated staff
personnel to handle Wikimania bidding and event planning, its the biggest
thing we have in the entire year, it would make sense if there was a
dedicated personnel who could help the hosts through the bidding process and
then support the event with the team and the committee.

Theo
Salmaan Haroon

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 11:47 PM, Harel Cain <harel.cain at gmail.com> wrote:

> James, even if Wikimania is a chapter builder (or improves and grows
> existing chapters), I think those who have been "on the ground" planning and
> doing (just to set up the registration site is a lot of work, and that's one
> of a few dozen tasks to accomplish) almost inevitably get into a lot of
> infighting and quarreling, volunteers want their opinion heard as that's the
> only reward they get from their participation. Running such a team of
> opinionated volunteers is super hard, and the smallest issue can cause
> someone to leave or lose his motivation.
>
> In a sense, it's like throwing together the volunteers into some pressure
> pot and letting them cook there for a year - they might get to know each
> other really well, but at the same time they might also be at each other's
> throats when the conference is done and never want to talk to each other
> ever again.
>
> Add to that the anti-climax effect which I'm sure local teams experience
> when Wikimania is over. Having delivered such a huge achievement, maybe such
> prosaic tasks as lecturing at schools and meeting with libraries doesn't
> seem as exciting anymore. Teams are bound to ask themselves "Well, now
> what?".
>
>
> Harel
>
>
>
> On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 8:05 PM, James Owen <jowen at wikimedia.org> wrote:
>
>>
>> On Jan 19, 2011, at 9:16 AM, Amir E. Aharoni wrote:
>>
>> 2011/1/19 Steven Walling <steven.walling at gmail.com>
>>
>> 2. Even if Wikimania is not relatively big when it comes to technology
>> conferences, the problem is growing a strong local team of volunteers in a
>> new place every year. That's very, very hard. We're not unique in having
>> that difficulty as a movement, but I don't think it means we should abandon
>> volunteer-based organization for the event.
>>
>>
>> This is an important point.
>>
>> It's hard to grow such a team in a new place every year, but if you
>> do, then after X years you will have grown X strong local team of
>> volunteers, ready to take on new challenges and to teach their
>> experience to other teams. This may be a worthy goal. It would be
>> interesting to check previous Wikimanias and to see whether the team
>> that organized them went on as a team.
>>
>>
>> I believe that hosting and organizing a Wikimania should be a stepping
>> stone toward professionalization and development for a chapter or group of
>> emerging volunteers. One would hope that hosting Wikimania in your region
>> would allow a chapter or group to pull from outside the editing community
>> and to engage local individuals to volunteer who may not wish to edit
>> wikipedia but might wish to advocate for our projects and organize events.
>> Both skills sets are vital, and different types of people require different
>> types of work to keep their interest in the movement.  For example I have
>> often said, if I had come to Wikipedia to edit I do not think I would be a
>> strong volunteer or a volunteer at all, but if i came to wikipedia to
>> organize conferences, and to advocate for our projects to local schools and
>> universities that is a way my skills could be utilized as a volunteer and I
>> would feel richly engaged with the Wikimedia projects.
>>
>> This being said, I do not know if we have been very good at outreaching
>> and obtaining some of the vital skills to help grow our community and to
>> fill some of the gaps which our core contributors might not be interested.
>> This could be a reason why bids are not strong, the type of individual who
>> is interested to organize and run a conference is not always the type of
>> individual who is interested in editing an encyclopedia. As a movement we
>> need to start to welcome the skills of individuals who might not meet our
>> standard "type" of volunteer and engage them, give them projects let them
>> feel valued.
>>
>> This all being said I will get back to my point. My point is that I
>> believe Wikimania should be an opportunity for a chapter or group of
>> volunteers to grow, however because we do not always engage with the type of
>> volunteer who likes to organize and develop conferences we find Wikimania
>> becomes a huge energy drain on a local community. Most locations which have
>> hosted Wikimania (Boston, Gdansk, Alexandria, Taipei) all from my
>> understanding had a group which was emerging maybe thinking of creating a
>> chapter, they won a Wikimania bid and worked for a year to organize a
>> conference, and after the conference the work stopped. The volunteers did
>> not organize more events, they did not engage with local schools or create
>> chapters, the energy fizzled. I know this is a generalization and I know
>> Boston and Alexandria might be special cases. It might be useful to know
>> from Argentina how they felt after hosting the conference, did they see a
>> decline in volunteers, did the volunteers who were not editors before
>> continue to volunteer?  So I agree with Amir, did former years teams
>> continue their work after obtaining these new skills, or did the community
>> members leave and the skills and lessons learned were lost. For me I hope
>> Wikimania is not a chapter killer but a chapter creator, however the jury is
>> still out. But if wikimania is a chapter killer then what can we do to
>> change that, and how can we create incentives for chapters and groups to
>> want to host.
>>
>> Again this is all my thought and opinions and I am just throwing this out
>> as the conversation is rich and thoughtful today.
>>
>> James
>>
>>    *
>> James Owen
>> Executive Assistant & Board Liaison
>> Wikimedia Foundation
>> Office +1.415.839.6885 x 6604
>> Mobile +1.415.509.5444
>> Fax +1.415.882.0495
>> Email- jowen at wikimedia.org
>> Website- www.wikimediafoundation.org
>> *
>>
>>
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>
>
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