Digital Annual General Meeting

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many chapters and affiliates of the Wikimedia Movement had to move their Annual General Meetings (AGMS) online. This page aims to compile and gather best practice, guides and templates for others to use, in order to ensure a proper and well functioning annual meeting. All affiliates who have held digital AGMs and who have feedback and input to share are welcome to edit and expand this page.

This page does not intend to replace any of the information provided by WikiProject remote event participation, which provides good information on the technical and platform related aspects of hosting a virtual meeting or gathering. This page rather intends to give best practice on the content and format related aspects of the annual general meeting (AGM) in itself, when held digitally and online.

Austria

• Draft safe space policy for video conferences

Canada

• All of Wikimedia Canada's Annual General Meetings have been online (with possibility to also join by phone) since the creation of the Chapter. In the recent years, we also have a physical meeting, but online participation is always possible. It is just not possible to gather volunteers from across the country given the size of the territory. Our meetings are also always bilingual in English and French.

Sweden

• Wikimedia Sverige developed a set of general guidelines, instructions and material for their digital AGM in April 2020.
• This landing page gathers the central material, translated into English.
  • Procedural rules were developed, containing rules and working methods. (In English)
  • Investigation of what platform to use (In English)
  • As we chose to use Zoom, we developed instructions material (film and text) on how to use Zoom (In English)
  • We had three meeting officials other than the chair of the meeting, and divided the roles between them. This was developed into a list of roles (available in English).
  • The AGM was live streamed and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:WMSE_Annual_Meeting_2020.webm
  • An evaluation was conducted with findings from both participants and employees. It is found here, in Swedish.

Germany

Wikimedia Deutschland held a virtual general assembly on 21 June 2020. Over 250 members participated. The order of business was limited to information, member feedback, board elections, and a small number of votes and was completed after 6.5 hours (including breaks). We had hired Voting Partner to facilitate member participation. More detailed information on the process and our leassons learned can be found here.