Dear colleagues, collaborators and friends of free knowledge,
After three eventful years I left the board of Wikimedia Nederland;
yesterday was the General Assembly in Utrecht. This means a 'goodbye'.
In this time, I had the privilege and pleasure to work with many great
people in many different organisations. We saw a lot of small steps
and some bigger ones directed to our common goal, the support of free
knowledge. Certainly, not everything we as a movement or parts of the
movement was achieved, though.
Between many WMNL members and me, there were two grades of separation:
coming from the humanities, my geekiness differs a little from the
average Wikipedianess; having the German Wikipedia as my home wiki, I
was never a very active or 'true' part of the Dutch editing community.
And when I quoted in my speeches from medieval quests or Prussian
literary realism, I received therefore some strange looks from some
members.
But I remain firmly convinced that good governance and respect have no
nationality. Indeed, stroopwafels do have, and so I adopted the Dutch
custom to bring them with me to Wikimedian meetings abroad.
Wikimedia Nederland has experienced and overcome a difficult period of
transition. Office space and employees, more members including more
members without Wikipedia background, more activities, more money,
more responsibility; more need for an association to mature and focus
on what is necessary (and not always easy, cool or fun). We achieved
that as a collective, slower than previously expected, but with the
appropriate pride and good feelings about the future.
Goodbye - and Hello: I am looking forward to see many of you again at
whatever wiki, chat or real life meeting.
Kind regards
Ziko
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Nederland
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Dr. Ziko van Dijk
Vereniging Wikimedia Nederland
Postbus 167
3500 AD Utrecht
http://wikimedia.nl
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