[Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-IN-PUN] [Wikimedia-in-mum] Community-Chapter Relations

[wheredevelsdare at hotmail.com]

Open Response to Members and office bearers of the Executive Committee, Wikimedia Chapter (India),

Thank you for your letter of unconditional support for the Mumbai-Pune hosted WikiConference in November 2011. We highly appreciate and are humbled by this support from the chapter as well as vocal public support from all communities across India for for us hosting this event. 

We now look forward to a new dawn by putting the past behind us and hosting a benchmark conference. We request communities across the country to continue supporting us the way they have and come forward with proposals for the event program/theme etc.

We welcome to Gautam K John and Arun Ramanathan onto our Event Organising Committee.

On behalf of the Mumbai and Pune Community,

Thanks and Regards,
User:AroundTheGlobe

Date: Mon, 13 Jun 2011 09:46:31 +0530
From: arjunaraoc at googlemail.com
To: wikimediaindia-l at lists.wikimedia.org
Subject: Re: [Wikimediaindia-l] [Wikimedia-IN-PUN] [Wikimedia-in-mum] Community-Chapter Relations

Hi Wikimedians
We wholeheartedly supported the Mumbai-Pune bid for organising the 
conference. It has received widespread community support from 
Wikipedians across the country on the mailing list. We also take note of
 the fact that there is no visible active intent to make a bid to host 
the event from other cities.
The previous note from Executive Committee (EC) clearly indicates
 the intent and commitment to run an annual event, year on year, with 
the support of other stakeholders in the movement. To that end we 
request that the organising team of this year's event keep this an 
important objective.
EC had previously made a proposal for such 
an event many in early 2011 but it was then deferred to September due to
 other procedural hurdles in getting all aspects of a formal entity up 
and running - A bank account being a prerequisite to execute the plan.
EC regrets the communication gaps and 
discomfort caused in some quarters due to misunderstandings of intent 
which our earlier email clearly and directly addresses. The Wikimedia 
movement is community driven and we reiterate that involving the 
community is and will be a key priority for your Chapter and Executive 
Committee. 
We request everyone's support for the Mumbai-Pune efforts to organise the 2011 WikiConference.
Please consider this note a full and complete support of the 
India Chapter for the event. We thank the Mumbai and Pune Wikimedians 
again for the passion and leadership in working towards organising the 
first edition of this event.
We will engage and work with the Mumbai team and other 
Wikipedians on the specific aspects of the frame work. As indicated in 
the earlier email, it was meant to be a draft seeking comments from 
other stakeholders.
There were a few other aspects that were highlighted to which we would like to provide the following:
Feedback #1: Treat us like equals and stakeholders. Amongst us, chapter will then be first among equals. 
The Chapter is only a part of the Community and should be 
reflective of it. If the impression was otherwise, we apologise and 
reiterate our commitment to an equitable relationship with the 
Community. That said, please do understand that your Chapter has very 
clearly said that we will organise an event even in instances where 
there are no city bids - this is a fairly large undertaking for the 
Chapter and the Executive Committee as well.
Feedback #2: The second request is always ask our opinion 
before issuing policy, especially for a thing like WikiConference which 
has not been conducted before.
The framework was intended for discussion and for feedback - it 
isn't final and will not be final till there has been discussion and 
feedback on it. If the language indicated otherwise, we sincerely regret
 it.
Feedback #3: Lastly, this present framework will not do. We 
need a framework which gives autonomy to the Organising Committee to 
successfully pull off an event of this scale and nature. While 
organising this Wikiconference, the community is willing to develop a 
sensible, practical framework which can be debated and finalised after 
the event is over. In this manner best practices and lessons learnt will
 be incorporated.
We understand this. The idea behind the framework is to give us a
 road-map of how to prepare, execute and wrap up an event of this 
magnitude - given that this year will be the first, we are open to 
working together on such a framework and to better it as it goes along 
with the host communities. However, we must all agree that a framework 
is important to ensure that the annual event is sustainable and 
successful. The exact nature of the framework is something we can 
jointly define and we must all agree that at the end of the event, that 
we must all jointly draft this framework that can be reused for future 
events and years as a priority. 
Gautam K John and Arun Ramarathnam will represent the Chapter in the organizing committee for the Conference.

Sincerely,Arjuna Rao ChavalaPresident, Wikimedia Chapter





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