[Wikimediaau-l] Membership, regional participation and other things

[Sarah Ewart]

On Mon, Dec 14, 2009 at 2:45 AM, Andrew <orderinchaos78 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Before I reply, I'll note that I actually agree with Sarah here re
> Melbourne - it's also evidenced by Victoria's membership following the
> national trend rather than NSW/ACT's.
>

In fact, melbourne's situation may actually be even worse that elsewhere as
far as the typical uptake of memberships goes. Of the 8 Victorian members, 3
are current committee members and  two are former committee members (and one
of those two now actually lives in regional NSW but was counted as a
Victorian for the purposes of my stats of last years memberships), so only 3
members from Victoria are "typical" (for want of a better word) members and
at least one of those is from regional Victoria and not from Melbourne. So
if you're considering the regular uptake of memberships, Melbourne really
only has two members that don't have some kind of atypical connection with
the chapter.


>
> 2009/12/13 Liam Wyatt <liamwyatt at gmail.com>
>
> So, if there is a concern that the chapter is focusing too much on Sydney
>> (and/or Melbourne), I wouldn't want this to be the perception, off the back
>> of local Wikimedians being particularly interested in hosting meetups.
>
>
Liam, I agree that meetups organised outside the chapter shouldn't be
attributed as chapter activity. But I also agree with Andrew that it's
really not the meetups that give the impression that Sydney is the central
focus, but more an unintentional attitude thing. It's very difficult because
as I said last night, I don't see an easy or simple solution to these
issues. I've been telling Andrew for some time now, and Craig referred to
this as well in his earlier email, people in other states who want to see
the chapter active locally need to become active themselves and make things
happen in their local regions because the reality is that we're all
volunteers and we just don't have the resources to swoop in and organise
things for people around the nation. So it's really important that members
around the country become active, create and build connections with their
local organisations and organise functions, events etc but in turn the
committee needs to be able to come on board and provide support, both in the
form of emotional/mental support, facilitating connections, and potentially
also financial support of some degree. I think everyone on the committee is
on board with this and I've never sensed any kind of resistance to providing
support to local members pursuing local activities, but from my perspective,
it's really vitally important that local members who want the chapter to be
active in their local regions take on some responsibility for that as it's
really not going to happen otherwise.

At the same time, I think we also need to be careful of unintentionally or
inadvertently penalising the more vibrant regions because they've only
become active due to the efforts of local members. For example, Glam was
only organised because Liam had an idea and followed through with it to the
fullest extent. Same with the Backstage program.They weren't projects the
committee or  even the chapter came up with or organised or pursued, but
rather an individual member had a vision and pursued it and the committee
played more of a support and facilitation role. and we can do that kind of
thing for other members in other states if they keep the committee informed
of what they're doing but they need to be prepared to basically do what Liam
did - come up with an idea, pursue it and work to implement it.
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