[Wikimedia-l] Looking back at the London Conference

[Keegan Peterzell]

On Tue, Feb 19, 2013 at 6:18 PM, Fae <faewik at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 19 February 2013 23:47, James Alexander <jamesofur at gmail.com> wrote:
> ...
> > Groups should grow naturally, they should incorporate only when necessary
> > and get staff only when necessary, trying to push them before they are
> > ready only makes things worse.  We have been having a long standing habit
> > within the meta movement to rush towards organizations and staff long
> > before it's necessary, pissing away money and good will.
> >
> > James
>
> I don't disagree with the sentiment. I recall the WMUK strategy
> weekend when the chapter board and staff all stood in the room to
> indicate how important to the new charity fundraising was. I was the
> Chair at the time, and I think I annoyed almost everyone there by
> being the only one standing in the middle of the room, and saying that
> I could do everything in our mission with a bag of crisps and money
> for a coffee, while almost everyone else was putting fundraising as
> the highest importance.
>
> Money is not in our mission statement or our values. It's a burden and
> a governance nightmare.


Fae, thank you and Ziko for working on clearing this up.  The idea of money
is a bad taste.

I completely understand and sympathize with the necessity of finance to
fund a movement.  I've been there in a situation completely unrelated to
Wikimedia, and in working on Fundraising 2010 part-time as a contractor for
the WMF that rounded out my experience for the necessity of funds.

That being said, with the ear that I have to the ground of Wikimedia
without participation in any chapter or otherwise unaffiliated movement,
when the WCA was first proposed the number one thing that was spoken (or
whispered) was that this was going to require hiring at least one person as
the "Secretary General."

Bureaucracy starts from the ground up, and from that way that the WCA was
presented, whether intentional or not, was just as the nightmare as you
mentioned.  Great, we're starting an organization to organize our
organizational outreach for the broader movement which is affiliated with
another organization but it's not at all.  Now, how can we pay for this?

I'm not saying this was the intent, I know better; this is how I read it as
a Wikimedia observer.  I believe that chapter organization, should chapters
chose to do so, is a good thing.  I believe that structure should be
created, as James Alexander explained, as it happens, just as everything
else on Wikimedia occurs.  Otherwise, doing the sensible  thing wouldn't
work.

By all means continue building the WCA, but please forget that its function
is as a bureaucracy.  With our spirit, it will never live.


-- 
~Keegan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Keegan