Hello,
I participated in the pre-conference in Brussels this year, to which I was invited to give a workshop about grants. I decided not to stay the whole 4 days because of personal commitments too.
Mais si tu as des questions sur les grants, je suis là :)
Best,
Delphine
On Tue, Sep 17, 2019 at 7:04 AM Natacha Rault via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Thank you Katherine, We will be happy to see you in Tunis! Along with other reps of the WMF I hope, with the possibility of booking appointments with :
- T&S
- outreach
- grant rep
- tech rep
Kind regards,
Nattes à chat
Le 16 sept. 2019 à 23:54, Katherine Maher kmaher@wikimedia.org a
écrit :
Hi all,
Just a quick note that I was invited to Wikiconvention on Friday 9 August by Wikimedia France. On Monday 12 August (delayed by travel to
Wikimania!)
I sent a note expressing my regrets, as I had a family wedding to attend during that same weekend as the Convention. I also asked at the same time to be notified as soon as the 2020 Tunis dates were confirmed, so that I
or
other members of the Foundation's leadership team are able to plan to attend (and I have already put those dates in my calendar).
Unfortunately, as all volunteers know, sometimes personal/family commitments do preclude travel. I similarly cannot attend the CEE Conference due to a personal commitment this year. Sometimes there are
also
scheduling conflicts: This year the German-speaking WikiCon gathering is the same weekend as WikiArabia, and WikiCon North America is the same weekend as WikiIndaba. This means there's always going to be a sense of missing something important!
I would also agree with what Leila shared. I was very appreciative to be invited to Wikiconvention, WikiArabia, and WikiIndaba this year. But I
want
to respect that not every community feels that it is the place of the Foundation's ED to participate or speak at their events, and that's
totally
fine. I don't think people always need to hear from me, but I am always very happy to support any event in which I am invited!
Katherine
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 2:25 PM Natacha Rault via Wikimedia-l < wikimedia-l@lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
Thanks for sharing this Leila! This is of course a useful angle. Nattes
Le 16 sept. 2019 à 21:51, Leila Zia leila@wikimedia.org a écrit :
Hi,
A different angle for looking at the question of WMF staff attending community events which may help this conversation:
As a staff member (and acknowledging that my position is none of the ones Thierry called out in their first email on this thread), with the exception of a few community events, I very much hesitate to attend a local community-run event unless the specific community, or at least one person from that community, has specifically invited me or told me I should consider attending. There is definitely some feeling of fear/self-consciousness on my end about entering in a place where I may not be welcome, where I impose my presence to others, or entering conversations where my expertise may not be valued/considered because I'm carrying a history which may or may not even be really mine.
I'm sharing my feelings and the way I think about whether to attend a local event or not here not to ask for empathy in my specific case (which is btw, always welcomed:) but to say that there may be other staff members like me, especially those who have joined WMF more recently, who may be in the same boat. My recommendation would be for the local communities to signal to the specific people which they want in their meetings that they're welcome to attend. At least this way you will know the person has felt invited/welcomed and will have a higher chance to decide to attend.
To be clear: I'm not saying WMF not attending this specific event would have been addressed by the above. I don't know. I'm just explaining one of the reasons this may have happened, and providing a suggestion to address this specific reason.
Best, Leila -- Leila Zia Principal Research Scientist, Head of Research Wikimedia Foundation
On Mon, Sep 16, 2019 at 4:20 AM Philip Kopetzky philip.kopetzky@gmail.com wrote:
Gereon, you clearly forget the whole Mediaviewer saga and attendance
of
WMF
staff at the following WikiCon in Cologne ;-) But that was a long time
ago
:-)
On Mon, 16 Sep 2019 at 01:53, Gereon Kalkuhl gkalkuhl@freenet.de
wrote:
Since 2010 we have the WikiCon for the German language communities
with
more than 300 attendants. I don't remember that the WMF has sent
anyone
to these conventions. And why should they? It's all in German, the communities are established and have strong chapters. I suppose the
same
applies to the French language communites. The WMF visits emerging communities, to learn about them and to help them by transfering knowlege. They visit the CEE meetings, they visit Wiki Indabas. I
don't
think that the WMF is neglecting big communities, it rather makes
sense
that when sending employes across half the planet they check before, what benefits the conferences have from their attendance and what benefits their attendance bring to the particpants of the conference. Cheers, Gereon
> Am 15.09.2019 um 20:02 schrieb Thierry Coudray: > "*The Foundation does not care so much of the French-speaking contributors*". > This harsh sentence is the translation of a statement in French,
I've
just > said in a conversation a week ago at the Francophone Wikiconvention
held
> last weekend in Brussels. The statement may seem excessive, because
the
> Foundation does things for the Francophone community as well as for
other
> communities (and its website is fairly well translated into French).
But
it > reflected my feeling, shared by my three interlocutors, all
non-French,
> facing that no Foundation high-level members were present to this > Wikiconvention: no executive director, nor members of the Board, nor
any
> level-C staff. In an another conversation, where the subject came up
over
> again, someone said this absence was offensive. I do not know if it > reflects the majority of attendees feelings but with varying
degrees,
I
> would said it was widely shared. > > In 2017, for the Francophone Wikiconvention in Strasbourg we had a
very
> quick visit of Katherine Maher, in 2018, a simple video message and
in
2019 > ... nothing. At the same time, the Francophone Wikiconvention has
stepped
> up with ever more participants, always more countries represented.
This
> year, it brought together more than 220 Francophones, Algerian,
Belgian,
> Beninese, Cameroonian, Canadian, French, Guinean, Ivorian, Swiss and > Tunisian contributors, and I may forget some, with varied and
enriching
> conferences and meetings. A huge success, very well organized by employees > but also by several volunteers, who dedicated time and energy. This > Wikiconvention and the projects and achievements submitted have
shown
the
> French-speaking Wikimedia community vitality, which will continue to grow. > FYI, French is foreseen, thanks to Africa, to be the most rapidly
growing
> languages in the next twenty years and will be the mother tongue or
the
> language used for communication for more than 8% of the world's population > in thirty years' time. But my reaction would have been the same if I
had
> attended an Arabic, Chinese, Spanish, Swahili-speaking or any other > important languages Wikiconvention. > > So yes, this Wikiconvention is not in English. Fortunately, not all > Wikimedia meetings are in English. In a previous discussion on this mailing > list about the question of whether or not it is appropriate to
continue
> Wimania, one of the participants argued that unlike other Wikimedia > meetings, anyone could attend Wikmania. It may be obvious for those
who
> have English as a mother tongue or for Northern Europeans for whom English > is almost a second mother tongue but this is false: English is
spoken
only > by a small minority in the world, less than one human in six. So
only
one
> human in six or seven could attend Wikimania or any other english-speaking > conferences or meetings (the case of the vast majority of global Wikimedia > conferences). I do not deny a common working language usefulness
but a
> Wikiconvention in French, as I hope other languages ones will be
more
to
> come soon, allows all non-English speaking Francophones to
participate in
> the Wikimedia movement and above all, help them to meet our common
goal
of > spread freeknowledge.The movement talks a lot about its efforts to overcome > differents gaps (gender, LGBT,...) and it's rightly pointed, these
topics
> are important. But it simply forget the language gap and the almost > exclusive use of English excludes a very large majority. > > So why no high level Foundation members in Brussels ? > I was told that Valerie D'Costa, the new Chief of Community
Engagement,
> should initially be there but finally told she will not. But then,
no
other > member could then replace her and why only one Foundation
representant
> given the part of French language in the WM projects ? Perhaps no Foundation > Board or high level member speaks French or feels she/he speaks good enough. > But with more than 220 attendants at the FWC, it would have been
easy
to
> find volonteers with a good level of English to provide simultaneous > translation in discussions with other non-English speaking
participants
or to > translate conferences.A higher-level representation would have
helped
the
> Foundation top level to gain more insight into Wikimedian
French-speaking
> community and enabled this community to have a direct access to the > Foundation, like in Wikimania. That would have helped bridging the
gap
> between these "two worlds". Because this gap is real. In the 2011
Finance
> Meeting in Paris, during workshops where a Board member was in each > group (Jan-Bart > de Vreede for mine), me and another non english-speaking chapter
head
(she/he > will recognize her/himself) had made the comment that we had the impression > in our relation with the Foundation of "*colliding with an
Anglo-Saxon
wall*". > I notice that despite more Foundation staff diversity in recent
years,
> French speaking organizations would probably still have the same
feeling
> and clearly many French-speaking wikimedians feel that gap. > > It is sad that the Foundation, which is very demanding with
Francophone
> chapters, does not apply itself to these demands with the
Francophone
> community. FYI the next French-speaking Wikconvention will be held
on
WE
31 > october/1 November 2019 in Tunis. Save the date. > > Regards >
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Executive Director
Wikimedia Foundation https://wikimediafoundation.org/ _______________________________________________ Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at:
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