Wikimedia European Affiliates Cooperation

What is this all about?

In May 2020, the Movement Strategy recommendations were published. So we reasoned that it was time to figure out how to implement them. Wikimedia affiliates will play a major role in the implementation phase. They know their needs and wishes as well as the communities' needs and wishes. They know which resources, capacities and skill they can add. The idea is to bring these motivation and opportunities together and to offer meetings, maybe platforms, where we can benefit from cooperation and leave any competition mode behind.

At this stage we concentrate on European affiliates to just make it happen. We want to be flexible, iterative and learning. Starting large would add complexity in a phase where we are still experimenting and trying out. Start small, get bigger when we have a better understanding of what works and what does not - that is what we have in mind.

We plan to have a series of meetings where we come together to figure out ways to start initiative which meet existing needs of affiliates and communities.

What's the difference to Wikimedia Europe?

Our meetings which we have been organising for the past one and a half years. The invitation is open to anyone who has a link with “Europe” and we invite 60+ affiliates. Our topics are things we can work on together, in any area you think would benefit from it.

Wikimedia Europe was started a subgroup of affiliates from the WEAC who are interested in forming a European Hub. The scope is forming a European entity to “formalise” some of the cooperation taking place between different affiliates. Of course this is of great interest to a lot of the WEAC participants and so we will keep you up to date on the progress during the WEAC meetings.

Name Change

In January 2023 we decided (together with Wikimedia Europe) to rename our meetings "Wikimedia Europe and Friends". Every meeting will feature the usual "what are we all working on" and Movement Strategy issues but will also feature updates from Wikimedia Europe. As usual anyone is welcome, whether you are a member of Wikimedia Europe or "just a friend".

Who is driving this?

Wikimedia Österreich, Wikimedia Deutschland, and Wikimedia Nederland started this together with a joint idea: We don't need to wait until all structures and governance changes are completed - since this will take its time. In the meantime we can exit the waiting room and start doing things. Together.

Contact

Events

Initiatives

First initiatives where European chapters worked together to make them happen are

Failfest Prague June 2023
The Grand Tour of Wikimedia
Capacity Exchange (Now happily adopted by Wiki Movimento Brasil)
Language Diversity Hub

Read more about the initiatives an add your own ideas on the European initiatives page.

Hubs Introduction & Concept Board

During out November 2021 meeting we displayed two videos and started a "concept board" showing the world tour of hubs.

We recommend watching the short summary of Anass Sedrati's research on the creation of a Hub for the Arabic-speaking Wikimedia community members. You can find this video here on youtube and the full research can be found here on meta

We created a concept board containing the world tour of hubs, showing the status of different hubs worldwide. You can see the short introduction video here on Youtube and visit the Conceptboard here!