On 8 December 2015 at 13:36, Milos Rancic millosh@gmail.com wrote: ...
Our meetings and conferences look like the meetings of a regional branch of German Social Democratic Party at the best. In regular occasions they are more like the meetings of a village cell of a communist party from an East European country during the 80s.
Yes, comparing to the SDP is accurate. My experience in leading meetings and making presentations to Wikimedians over many years, is that if you make jokes and lighten things up by being creative, then you run the risk of frequently being taken the wrong way. Sometimes the harsh criticism every time you try something new, feels so negative or obtuse and far outweighs the odd thanks that you get, that it can really put you off volunteering your time.
From trying to make others happy and tick the boxes of the many
multiplying standards and recommendations for our meetings, I stopped making jokes of any kind, frankly my presentations became dull to my eyes. At the moment I have no plans to make any presentations or even take part in meetings in the year ahead. The prospect of starting up again and freely sharing knowledge or experience from my volunteer and programming through planned presentations and workshops does not excite me any more. Instead it now feels like the sort of painful hard work that needs to be paid for.
We actually expect and plan for volunteer burn-outs. It's a shame that the focus is always on attracting new people, and only a fraction of that effort goes into ensuring that our most high impact unpaid volunteers don't crash and burn after a couple of years of flourishing.
Fae