Talk:Wikimedia Chapters Association/Establishment of the Chapter Council Steering Committee

One important thing missing?

I'm thinking about one important thing that might be missing, and that's money. Not so much money for this phase, but money for the next phase, when we hire a Secretary General. We need to think about dues and how much money this is going to bring us, if nothing else to have a decent salary to present to anyone who might be interested in working as Secretary General. notafish }<';> 19:36, 4 April 2012 (UTC)

Money makes the world go round. We are also working on the financial model as well as other things (mentioned in the paragraph below) but we didn't include it in the infrastructure part. I also hope we can publish a work plan for the four months soon. Tomer A. Talk 09:20, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

More comments

1. Selecting the country to register - I think this is something that should be done by council resolution in Washington, with the preparation you suggested (i.e. figuring out criteria, identifying candidates, getting a recommendation). If there is an external consultancy available for and, foremost, capable of this sort of work, it would be good to use them.
2. Suggesting an SG - I agree that the committee should (rather soon) start working on and seeking consensus on a job description. This may be harder than it appears at first. I would also think it would be great if the committee could solicit candidacies, do some public Q&A (maybe similar to the CSBS process) and perhaps do some initial direct interviews. It might even go as far as making a recommendation, although I'm not sure that's really within the scope of the committee. Either way, serious candidates should obviously be in Washington to meet council members in person and in order for the council to make a well-informed decision.
3. Open/transparent decision-making process - I'm looking forward to seeing that. Perhaps there are some existing practices within the Wikimedia universe that can help with that? (Copied from an email sent be user:sebmol)

1. I agree that the secretariat should only recommend and that the final decision should be made by the council. However, since most of the council work is going to be made online anyway I think we should not wait until Wikimania with this. Once we have the decision making procedure (the standing orders) we should use them to decide that. Of course we're open for other opinions though.
2. I don't think its legit or good use of money to send candidates to Washington. The page Wikimedia Chapters Association/Secretary-General has a section about the Process of Selection. Once we'll finish tuning our ideas we'll publish it for comments and try to achieve community consensus. Tomer A. Talk 09:35, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Tasks not mentioned in email sent by the secretariat

1. facilitating creation of a program plan and budget for 2012/2013: While this doesn't have to be complete before Washington, there needs to be some discussion on the specific activities the WCA will engage in during the first year and what that will cost. If we don't have that, I'm not sure the council will be able to make a decision at the meeting, which would push everything further down timewise. It'd also be difficult for SG candidates if they have no idea what actual activities have the support the members and what budget size would actually be acceptable. It's also difficult to talk about compensation when the full volume of activities (and therefore responsibility) isn't known. Was there any discussion in the committee on this point?
2. following up with chapters who signed the Berlin agreement:What we have now is a commitment from about two dozen chapters that they want to join the association. What's needed next is to follow up on this commitment so that each chapter actually decides to join (by whichever means is appropriate for them) and to select a representative for the first term. Have you started thinking about how to do that?

In my POV both issues are not structure hence were not in the email we sent. We already started talking about both. Tomer A. Talk 09:35, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Any news?

Hi, one of the committee's first statements was about an open and transparent decision making process. This was posted on the front side, then there were some discussions about the order and necessity of tasks and then recently there haven't been any visible action. Would it be possible to provide some kind of mini status report for those like me, who don't have a position in a chapter but who are nonetheless not only curious but really interested in the progress of the association's founding? Would be great. --lyzzy (talk) 18:12, 16 May 2012 (UTC)