[WikiX-l] But America slept through it....

[Pharos]

I do think that a new emphasis on regionalism could help more US
Wikimedians (and those in other decentralized countries) to feel
'empowered' to organize their own events.

This is a related proposal, though organization on this scale does not
necessarily mean formal chapters:

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_United_States_Chapters_Council

Thanks,
Richard
(User:Pharos)

On Wed, Jan 19, 2011 at 5:33 PM, Michael Peel <email at mikepeel.net> wrote:
> I wonder: how many how many events are being organised by chapters, how many by the Wikimedia community, and how many by Wikimedia readers? Where is the bottleneck here - is it a lack of a US chapter, or does the community not feel 'empowered' (or insert a buzzword of your choice here), are we not communicating effectively to the US reader community, or is it a simple geographical issue? Put another way, how do we encourage the US community to be even more active with offline activities?
>
> The same questions apply globally. Everyone's been doing fantastic things over the last month, but how do we turn that into something that is sustainable and can grow over the next [5 years/decade], in time for the [15/20]th birthday celebrations? In the UK (where I've been active), there have been three fantastic events (Bristol, Jimmy's party, and the British Library event - organised by three different people) - but that's a tiny number compared to how many events could have been run across the country if there had been more people engaged in organising them.
>
> Mike
>
> On 19 Jan 2011, at 22:09, Sage Ross wrote:
>
>> On Tue, Jan 18, 2011 at 8:58 PM, Rob Schnautz <schnautzr at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> There were no more than 40 states which attempted to hold events. These
>>> amassed to around 50 events, but most of them (from what I could tell)
>>> were merely callouts to see if anyone was interested in doing something,
>>> usually with no more than five respondents if even that many. The only
>>> ones that appeared successful at all were very large metro cities.
>>> Taking these facts into consideration, most American Wikipedians would
>>> have needed to travel several hours to get to an event that was most
>>> likely no more than a small group get-together, and much further to get
>>> to an actual large celebration.
>>>
>>
>> The Pittsburgh party was pretty successful; although only a small
>> number of people signed up for it on either ten.wikipedia.org or the
>> Pittsburgh meetup page on Wikipedia, many more signed up on Facebook.
>> It was held at a sports bar during a Pittsburgh Steelers (American)
>> football game, which wasn't scheduled until after we had picked the
>> time and place for the party.  There was actually a 15-minute wait to
>> get in at some points.  Nonetheless, dozens of Wikipedians and
>> Wikipedia supporters showed up over the course of the evening.  We
>> only gave shirts to those who had registered (either on Facebook or a
>> wiki) and we gave out all but (I believe) 4 shirts out of the 50 in
>> the box.
>>
>> Some people did, in fact, drive hours to get there... and are planning
>> to do so for some regular meetups now!
>>
>> Here are some pictures and a bit about how the party was, for those
>> interested: http://ragesoss.com/blog/2011/01/17/wikimedians-are-awesome-and-wp10-pittsburgh/
>>
>> But we do, definitely, need better tools for gathering people
>> together... the US, in general, doesn't have nearly as many meetups as
>> it ought to.
>>
>> -Sage
>>
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