[Foundation-l] Wikimedia Pennsylvania

[Robert Horning]

GerardM wrote:
> Hoi,
> Let me be clear/understood I am all in favour of having people organise
> themselves. What I do not think is a good idea is set up many organisations
> all with their chairman, treasury and secretary all with statutes and
> by-laws .. really it is a great if you can prevent the waste of time that
> comes with it.
> Thanks,
>      GerardM
>
>   
Why not?  I agree that formal incorporation filings for each state 
chapter may not be something completely necessary when you can use a 
single national law to take care of dealings with government bodies, but 
there still are advantages of having a local person that has 
demonstrated a level of trust (aka "chairman" of a local chapter) for a 
media contact person or to put together a great many activities that are 
better done on a local level and can't just be done "on-line".

And as has been pointed out, trying to get a national chapter for the 
whole of the USA at once simply isn't happening... at least without 
already existing local chapters to make it function.  There may 
eventually be a strong reason to set up a national chapter for the whole 
of the USA anyway, in terms of simplification of the management of the 
whole thing if we have dozens of different local chapters within the 
USA, and have that one national chapter report directly to the WMF on 
behalf of the USA chapters.  But we need to get that first local chapter 
going if we are going to make any kind of progress in this direction.

IMHO, we need to make this a genuine grass-roots effort if this is going 
to succeed.  And we would like this to be something a little more 
permanent than just a single one-time event for a single get-together.  
This proposal for a Wikimedia - Pennsylvania/Philadelphia chapter is one 
very good way to get this ball moving in the correct direction and to 
get a group of guys that do want to get this whole thing going to have a 
framework to get these kind of activities going.

Even though I live in Utah, I'm willing to help out here for the PA 
chapter and get this ball moving.... with hopes that maybe I can get 
something else going with people on the Wasatch Front (if you are from 
Utah, you know what I'm talking about here) organized as well.  And this 
proposal is one way to try and crack the really tough challenge of 
trying to get Wikimedia users organized in the USA like they are in 
other parts of the world.

-- Robert Horning