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(a)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(a)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(a)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(a)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(a)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(a)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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Strategy Liaison
Program Officer Annual Plan Grants
User:Delphine_(WMF) <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Delphine_(WMF)>