Submissions/Regional cooperation as the ultimate way of Wikimedia community collaboration

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2012.

Submission no.

80

Title of the submission: Regional cooperation as the ultimate way of Wikimedia community collaboration

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation): Presentation

Author of the submission: Tomasz Kozłowski

E-mail address: odder.wiki@gmail.com

Username: odder

Country of origin: Poland

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.): Wikimedia Polska

Personal homepage or blog: https://facebook.com/twkozlowski

Abstract

The Wikimedia movement as a whole is composed of many different local communities that, for most of the time, are very closed to the outside world and work on their own. Yet, the global aspect of the community has been recognised a long time ago, and results in many worldwide meetings held annually, just to mention Wikimania, the Chapters meeting, the Hackathons, and GLAMcamps — with the list getting bigger and bigger every year.

As important, (often) productive, and movement-developing as they are, those meetings do, however, share a few flaws: they are time-consuming, English-centred, limited in terms of participants, and very expensive. A turbulent (yet closed) discussion arose with regards to the January finance meeting held in Paris, and some of the questions were as follows:

Do we need to have so many so-called international—but often only chapters-related—conferences?
How do the frequent travels of chapter representatives to worldwide conferences influence contacts between chapters and their local communities?
Is paying for unnecessary travel a good way to use donors' money?

This presentation aims to bring this topic to the public, but instead of focusing of the past, I will present alternatives that could be used in the future, and analyse some real-life examples, for instance the Iberoconf, the Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe Group, and Wikimedia Asia cooperation. As a participant of many of the above-mentioned conferences, and an organiser of a local Wikipedia conference with almost 200 participants, I will also present some do's and don'ts of organising a conference the Wikimedia way.

A short discussion is intended to follow the presentation, and is aimed at gathering participants' views and ideas on such cooperations as well as at engaging them in organising similar initiatives in their respective regions.

Track: WikiCulture and Community

Length of presentation/talk: 15 minutes + 10 minutes for discussion

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Depends on other factors

Slides or further information (optional): Slides will be provided in PDF or a LibreOffice Impress format

Special request as to time of presentations: None

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Sj (talk) 00:43, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
SarahStierch (talk) 23:10, 24 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Djembayz (talk) 13:34, 19 April 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Dmitri Lytov (talk) 19:38, 6 June 2012 (UTC) - 50/50.[reply]
NaBUru38 (talk) 17:48, 7 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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