Wikimedia Conference 2013/Documentation/Day 1

Inter-Chapter Resources Sharing and Standardization

Presentation of the budget of WM CH by Charles Andres. This helps to check with chapters which costs can be shared mainly in the implementation of tools.

WM ZA presents the slides. The focus in the repository of documents in order to share them with the succesors in the boards. WM ZA analyzed a case study. They use for instance Google drive.

WM CH supports the idea to share the most expensive tool in order to reduce and distribute costs.

The tools are Tine, for office automatization, OTRS etc.

WM UK (Chris Keating) shares the experience of WM UK and the internal discussion to use or not Google drive or googledocs. Manuel Schneider and WM ZA replies that they don't consider Googledrive the best solution but there is not a sufficient alternative.

Manuel Schneider presents the Tine of WM AT and WM CH and how they work to share contacts, documents and calendars.

Afterwards he presents civiCRM in the last version modified with Wikimedia Sweden. A specific demo has been done to display the cashflow of the donations and a graphical description of the income and outcome.

Another demo has been done with the Big Blue Button, a tool for videoconference and virtual meetings.

WM CH displays that in the WCA they proposed to exchange IT support.

WM ZA asks which is the difference between skype and Bibg Blue Button in terms of quality. The difference is not bigger but the servers of Big Blue Button are owned by WM CH so the quality line can be improved a lot.

The sharing of tools helps a lot also for a best governance, so having backups and policy of access may help to reduce costs.

Manuel displays the equipment to create a videoconference or a streaming video.

Small offices

Note: the notes taken on wmflabs.org may have been lost.

For organizations that:

Have an office
Share experience

(About 70% of folks attending have an office)

1. Kick off by briefly sharing set up experience. 2. Get together - small groups to reflect on experiences on starting an office.

WM Hungary:

Set up office a few weeks ago, with first full time employee.

Previously had a part-time administrator.

Key difficulty was complexity of hiring

- 135 applications (using Facebook)

It might be easier to hire a contractor to get started.

Using an agency would introduce significant costs for either staff hire or to find accomodation.

WM NL:

CEO presenting

Key question, do you hire from inside the community or outside? There are advantages to both approached.

Setting up an office takes time. Then stop(!) setting up the office.

Having staff does change the behaviour of the board.

The board should not focus on managing the office - the director is the one to do it, the board is to focus on managing the organization.

Breakout into groups

Group topics: 1. Advantages of having an office 2. Disadvantages! 3. Good practices - logistics, fundraising ... 4. Good practices - human resources

1-day outreach events

1-day outreach (Track 3, Friday 2-3 pm)

Wiki Loves Monuments - photo events It's a nice opportunity to build upon. Itself is not 1-day, but you can attach many small events to it. Several countries did a small photo event around WLM. In the Philippines it was several months in advance, because of the weather. In Poland they combined it with a game aspect, which motivated people more. In New York a point system (harder = more points) to make it into a competition worked well.

Gamification * Wiki Takes Manhattan: people gained more points if they went out of the city * Wiki takes Montreal: there was a Scavenger Hunt. People had to write on little whiteboards the name of the monument before shooting there was a hurricane, and that was part of the game. (have always a plan B!) http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_Takes_Montreal_2011_(WTMTL).ogv

Coventry (UK) had some good experience with also press attention. Montreal tried to duplicate the Manhattan experience, and took 400 targets - HURRICANE. And heck what, lets just do it. 100 people still showed up. Nice video <insert link>. General lesson: have a plan B.

In a number of cases, the number of people that showed up, was much higher than expected. (100 in Montreal, 200 in Manila). But it is not always a good success. In Serbia, they decide to go in the other direction: big cities are well represented, the rural parts and small cities are not. Wikimedia went to remote places, to take some photos. It was not an outreach event. But they want to cover everything. (they cooperate with local institutions, which promote the events (eg during a Festival). Porto: they organized a photo walk with everyone the same route, and they learned that a guide might improve engagement. In Mittelhessen they had a one-day photo event for a whole week! In India they learned that holding an uploading event at the end of the day is helpful. (depends on the locality) Italy, different photowalks, some of them with Instragrammers. We printed some pictures directly in the aftermeeting. Millars (Spain): suggests exclusive access to a monument (kinda the back stage pass concept). External photographers are interested in places that they cannot normally photograph. Something similar was already done in a Dutch and Swedish museum. In Germany, they combine photowalks with conferences.

Lessons:

Have a plan B
Beware: you might be successful!
Gamification might be cool
Go somewhere which is barely covered.
Collaborate with local organizations for promotion.
Have a drink/meetup at the end!
Having a tour guide or route might increase engagement, but also decrease diversity/coverage.
Uploading party (you can do while drinking :-)

GLAM collaborations (1 day events):

Backstage pass is a common concept here. For example, in Germany they combine these sometimes with site visits with Wikimedia events such as conferences. In Italy too (they are called Wikigite): the problem is that we can't often make pictues! (then Josh tells something we cannot write down) They are also trying to change the law. Special access to museums etc seems popular (Denmark, NL, Sweden). In Poland they go in schools and teach wiki skills. In Armenia, they learned that people are more enthusiast and involved if you do not give them 'please edit wikipedia' speech.

EDITATHON Canada: called it 'contribution day'. Get outsider organizations involved, that helps you with the involvement of non-wikimedians. In the US they even just said: "just organize stuff in your local library, and we will send a Wikipedian. Many of the users could just be online (twitter, wiki). In Barcelona they organized a 35 hour (!) editing marathon at the first museum in Spain & Catalonia to collaborate with Wikipedia/Wikimedia: <insert name here>, also in collaboration with <insert university name here>. Not 35 hours straight, but very extensive! More information: contact your local Catalonian or tweet @Kippelboy. They also had the coincidence of reaching the 400'000 milestone in Wikipedia. That was good for press coverage. Editathons are perfect to be topical. For example, you can use it to reach out to specific groups of potential editors, such as women (example Estonia). In Taiwan, there is similary writing camp, holding every second Saturary in the month. In the wriing camp, works like a consulting place for new comers. There's no specific theme. Just let one who run into trouble to ask the senior editor for help, solving the article from delting and the editor get banned.

How to have good quality contributions in Editathons? In Mexico, chapters created a list of topics to be covered, and a list of articles created with historians. Revi explains that they are also a great opportunity to cover the gaps in certain topics. In Indonesia, they did a Translation edithaton, and that solves the quality problem.

SUMMARATION OF CONCLUSIONS <insert Lodewijk's conclusions>

Wikimedia UK Governance Review

WMUK Governance Review (Track 1, Friday 15.40 pm) By Chris Keating This was probably the first case where the governance of a chapter has been under external review. What was its useful outcome?

Background: a number of concerns about a trustee having a business interest, the COI story reached the media and was the cause of anger in the en-WP community.

Wikimedia Foundation and Wikimedia UK jointly commissioned a review of WM UK governance conducted by Compass Partnership.

It covered every aspect of governance. Conflict of interest was covered - but only part of the bigger picture.

Key learnings from those problems: to think about perceptions not just about the reality, even if you think you have to defend a friend from false accusations. But what would I do if I were a journalist? You need to consider how your organisations gets seen.

Listen to external advice and question your own assumptions. Safeguard the community and the Wikimedia name.

The consultants:

attended a board meeting
interviewed all the board, ???
...

On a sheet, the "Characterics of governance for medium-sized organisations" were pointed out in the form of a questionnaire. They are based on a survey of 200 majorr UK charities of middle size. WMUK in nov 2012: 11 red, 27 yellow, 20 green The framework of this assessment is CCbySA, and is on Meta

Chris' questions: How well does it internationalise? Let's find out! Lessons for your chapter? Proposals for the future? They were discussed in groups of up to 6 people.

What progress has WMUK made since? They are actively recruiting trustees, so that the Board is been set up by governance committees. The General Meeting said yes to a larger Board, co-opting trustees with special skills, also outside the movement. The Board will become more diverse and more focused on strategy and governance. Previously, it was composed by volunteers who presented their candidature for a term. There were a lot of candidates, about 20-25 in 2011. The challenge is to still have more volunteers and more activity.

How do they find trustees? Advertise in the community, advertise on the website, target special groups like women, therefore advertise in specialised newspapers (a hebdo for charities).

Q&A:

How do you test them? People can ask them questions, f.ex. to a lawyer

Any advice for smaller organizations? You have to adapt it or pay someone to adapt

What' s the role of the staff? The trustees should be respective of the Chief Exec. they

Are some of the 200 organizations smaller than WMUK, so that we could look up from them? No, they are the same size, we have millions in the UK.

Is there a problem of elected vs. hired people in a voluntary organization? Time matters. The trustees set the strategy and they select the Chief Exec. and his personal strategy.

The whole governance report can be read on Meta, it's not more than 40 pages long. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikimedia/uk/a/ae/Wikimedia_UK_gov_review_rpt_v5.pdf More infos: two books about good governance in NGOs. Mail to: chris.keating@wikimedia.org.uk

Brainstorming and dating

(master etherpad: http://etherpad.wmflabs.org/pad/p/Milan2013 )

Introductions. Collaboration is about respect and reciprocity. You don't have to collaborate. Collaborate only if a collaboration brings add value to your work.

Brainstorming

10 minutes: what's the value? If you have or want to collaborate

Do not repeat other people's mistakes
Tech transfer

Know-how transfer
Ideas transfer
Impact increase If more chapters do the same thing, it's better: e.g. WLM is global's better
Synergy - helping with missing links
Having someone to talk to: brainstorming
Partnering with more experienced chapters: gaining experience.
Sharing resources
Helpful in building your case for recognition by WMF
Scaling
Better understanding
FDC: Different chapters have different budgets and plans, with some overlap. FDC might tell you that another chapter has done it, so why repeat it? Pool resources --> economies of scale, phrased more positively.
Working with people we like! Find "friends" in the movement.
- Collaboration is a "wiki value"
Grantseeking, grantmaking
- Funders outside of WMF (large Grantmaking foundations) tend to favor grants that are collaboration based vs. operating in a silo
Some chapters are already talking with their governments about changing [curricula?]: we can come together to lobby more effectively
Morale: you don't feel so alone.
Linguistic networks like Iberocoop
Communication to an international/broader audiance

What can we offer?

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvQyy_nzLhZEdGtOdzdCQXlmdDVLcGJVYTA5Y1o3V1E#gid=0 -> we try to collect stuff here. Put your chapter experience in the matrix, not all cells have to filled.

It seems that actually quite a few collaborations ongoing.

Regional/cultural partnerships

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

Topics to discuss further:

Lobbying & International organizations
GLAM's
Meetings
Education stuff.

Education stuff

Lobbying

We need a clarification about what chapters and the mouvement can do or can not do related to lobbying according to the Foundation and related to fundings.

Topics

For free licenses. the link between free licenses and Wikipedia/Wikimedia projects facilitate the way we can explain what are free licenses for

EU Policy: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_Policy Monitoring and advocacy in Brussels // Free Knowledge and EU policy: A survey of current situation and scope for action. http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/EU_Policy/survey

Against Laws which do not allows collaboration (internet/privacy)
Against Internet trade laws
For freedom of panorama. it is a relevant international topic because we can also show what you can do when you have it.

Discussion

Different points of view on how inclusive could be free licenses; allowing ND (non derivative) or NC (non commercial).
Internal lobbying. How institutions/organisations should function. best practices.

Who can do it? who provides the legitimacy which allows to talk on behalf of the mouvment? EU policy group?

Things that can be done together!

(Iolanda) After the discussion I asked someone at the coffee break why nobody mentioned "negotiating chapters' interests with the Wikimedia Foundation" among the aims of lobbying, or the added value of the collaborations. "Well, that one is a battle we already lost" – was the reply.

How dramatic. What interest would you have liked to fight for?

Meetings and conferences

Wat are the criteria for a conference: Geography is a classic standard. Osmar: You shouldn't look geography, be focused on if they will be helpful for the conference or not. Filip: It makes sense to include other people, for example, to foster new groups or bring people that has a valuable experience. Manuel: Why do we want conferences? 1. To bring new volunteers and 2. they can know more about movement. We have paid participation of our members so they can open their eyes and expand their horizons. Santi: A meeting is not an objective by itself. There should be concrete goals. Filip: Although socializing is not a goal, there should be something important in a conference. Manuel: There are different types of organization: ones for discussion, others for work, other to expand their horizons.

External links

Small grants programs

(Notes appear to be lost.)

Is Global South a good socio-economic division?

The meeting is moderated.

The facilitators is defining the methodology.

The groups are divided in smalelr groups of three members.

There was a discussion to focus the metholodogy and to define if this metodology may be helpful.

Asaf Bartov said that the discussion should produce content and not to be limited only in the label "Global South".

Asaf explains the exact meaning of the word "Global South". It's nothing created in the USA and identifying a well defined geographical division. It's a division more connected with economy, human rights and development.

He defines clearly that the label is worst but there is no need to use it, we can use any other word but what it's important is to identify a concept.

The moderator defines the groups:

terms of his efficiency for the countries
terms of efficiency for Wikimedia
terms of label (categorization)
Issues in Global South

Another group discuss about the problems and the solutions.

Zanella discuss that the problem is to establish chapters with an European or western models.

One difference is the incorporation.

Infrastructural problems is another point.

Inability to contribute because the people are not interested to do it. For instance there is an oral mean to distribute knowledge and not using the written mean.

Flipcharts:

In terms of the efficacy the Global South division is ...

Good because:

it allows to write a discourse like "We have ... chapters in the Global South" (the rhetoric is: "So you are good")
it allows Wikimedia to access funds for development prospects

Bad because:

it does not focus on opportunities and relevant links
Wikimedia is not a developing agency (its mission is not development)
to treat countries like they are all the same makes us lose the important differences of each community, making our projects not efficient or even useless
it does not look at the digital divide, it assumes it

Others / questions?

Interesting to see if money could create an active new language edition.But how sustain?
Does external money create or kill a community?
Is Mediawiki culturally neutral? Probably not really, it prefers educated men.

In terms of the label (categorization) Global South is ...

Good because:

it gives diversity
common developments indexes
strong link between economic items, free time, political freedom, skills, citizen society, common trust, internet access, charities, etc. and Wikimedia
We can change the term but there won't be concensus about a new term

Bad because:

it is not a static categorization, as some countries are becoming "developed"
it makes more sense to use "emerging communities", because this term is not related to politics and economic paradigms but to a status within the Wikimedia movement
Labels produce the frame we work in
UN is not a model for us
Some developed countries are underrepresented, some Global South do great. It's not a universal problem for Global South countries

Others/questions?

Why not calling them underrepresented? Do we some implicit assumptions about culture?
What about a middle ground? There are more categories than those two, e.g. Ukraine may have a space industry but it does not have resources and culture of the U.S.

Discussion Tree

Global south issues and proposals

Difficulty to comply to a "noth"/"ngo"/"american" model
1. 1.1 Incorporation
  1. Difficoult to create an association
    1. Burraoucratic issues
  2. Resistance (from above) to different models of incorporation
2. 1.2 Much too "north like" indicators of result
  1. need to explain results according to a certain culture and language
  2. Different indicators of success and results
    1. My problem might not be to have more editors but to have more internet
  3. We are trying to find our own metrics
  4. In working for the foundation...
    1. GS countries might have to work towards strategic goals which are not feasable
      1. Not enough participation in saying that such goals are not feasable for them
      2. Especially with WMF guidelines and strategic objectives
3. 1.3 Concepts that do not fit
  1. Ex. the concept of Club
  2. Importance to find your own model
  3. Why don't they create their own models?
  4. Global north idiom
4. 1.4 Cultural issues and diversity
  1. Typically will not find people in those countries to such NGO
    1. Difficoult to se economically sustainable
      1. Communicating to a target which better responds to the issue of Wikipedia
        Expats community could finance
        Could be interesting to track where clicks are coming from
      2. They have feel that they have more urgent issues
  2. Wikimedia
    1. Other projects (not wikipedia) might be a good space for work for new people from south
      1. ex. More fit for nell writing based cultures

Infrastructure problems
1. (Ex. no internet)

Difficoulty in attending conferences
1. 3.1 Lack of money TO the global south
  1. More money FROM the global south is a less relevant issue
2. 3.2 Not a money issue but an access to money issue
  1. Too few people in the global to involve them
  2. Problems in the application process
  3. People don't know who to contact to access money
3. 3.3 Visa reject issue
  1. We need to stage meeting in places where it's easier to get visas
    1. (ex. Geneva)
  2. Visa refused for apparently no reason
    1. Typical young Wikipedian complies to standards of people who generally don't get visa (ex. people who might do illegal work or immigrate)
    2. No proval of suffficient disposal of money in account
    3. Difficoulty in transfering money
    4. Rule of how much money to tranfer in account alwais changes
      1. Wiki VISA project?

Getting volunteers
1. 4.1 More difficult for people to get interested and sign up
  1. People associate NGO with poverty alleviation
    1. Harder to recrtuit volunteers
    2. Harder to collect donations
  2. Poverty and other issues and more urgent
  3. Need for a network of recruiters and social change actors and coaches
    1. We must make it easy for people do it
      1. Giving them the necessary economical and other resouces
2. 4.2 Online
  1. Are we getting new editors in this countries
    1. Before we worry about bringing them to conferences?
  2. Lack of mentoring and support to the new "south" organizations
    1. Mentoring
    2. need for help in figuring out all the various problems
  3. Can we mentor and support these organizations...
    1. ...to the point that they can function?
3. 4.3 Offline
  1. Hard to turn onwiki volunteers Into offline wikipedians
    1. We might try to separate the two categories
      1. They don't have to be active editors
        Specific onboading process?
      2. They need a basic understanding
      3. They need different skills
  2. Hard to directly get Offline volunteers
    1. Need to have familiarity and some experience
    2. Some chapters don't know how to solve this problem
      1. Programs with education are all structured to get more editors, not offline volunteers
      2. There isn't an onboarding process also for offline volunteers

Contributing issues
1. 5.1 Contributors have problems contributing about their own country
  1. Lack of notability - Issue of notability
    1. North made criterias
    2. Ex. talking about musical groups who are not famous online but very famous on "the street"
  2. Lack of written sources
    1. Cultures less based on writing
      1. oral citation program was a good idea
        Community did not pick up on it
        Supposedly people thinks it's too complicated (mostly on english wiki)
        
        Not enough energy from people who did like the idea
        
        Could still be picked up
2. 5.2 Very small communities trying to contribute on a large mature wikipedias (ex .english)
  1. Not interested in contributing in own Specifi languages or topics
    1. Lingua franca overshadows local languages
    2. Subtopic 2
  2. Not capable in contributing in own specific languages ecc..
  3. hard to make noobie contributions stick (ex without reference)
    1. Standards are really high
    2. (ex. Markup, no reference ecc)
    3. T-HOUSE seems to work well
      1. Not huge difference but it helps
      2. Some might not know about it
      3. Many don't know about the T-House
  4. Main articles are already developed
    1. Oppotunities for contribution are harded to find
      1. Improving existing articles requires a lot of experience
      2. Coulde be a false impressions
  5. The onboarding project is beeing developed to address this issue.
3. 5.3 The fact that their own language might not be viable is a reason why they don't contribute
  1. What metrics are you using to determine if a specific language in wikipedia is viable
    1. There needs to be a viable community of contributers (before the work is in the incubator)
    2. Has to be active
    3. The software has to be localized
  2. The incubator process makes it hard

Beyond chapters

Presenter: Bence: leads affiliation committee, which has the job of implementing these recommendations.

Chapters User groups:

Thematic organisations: Not every group is for a country: some are for a language, some are for a culture or topic. So they left the model open. Trademark use will be allowed

Third model: Movement partner - organisations outside WM who are our friends or do something useful to us (e.g. defining a license; providing free software; distributing Wikipedia), so idea was to recognize them as movement partners.

Recognition of movement partners: consultation on list or on meta.

Creating a chapter is a bigger commitment than creating a user group (need regular reports, etc), so a user group can easily work towards becoming a chaper, while still being recognized as such.

Need to use trademarks responsibly, because if it gets weakened, that's a problem.

How do the groups interact with each other? Goal of the affcom is to empower voluneers as much as possible.

Allowing a user group to form in countries which already have chapters: don't want user group to take away from effectiveness of established chapter.

PoV problems: e.g. Homeopathy group vs real doctors. In fact, this has been tried by organisations like Wikiprojects, and this hasn't been a problem on Wikipedia. Wikipedias already have processes in place to deal with this.

Using the word "Wikimedia" in your name: if the user group truly is cross-project (Wikimedia-wide, i.e. not just Wikipedia), and they make it clear in their name that they're a user group, it's OK.

What about political parties? Could create systematic bias (like the fact that Catholic articles are much more developed than other religious articles on Polish WP).

Thematic orgs are like chapters, but with a sharper focus; e.g. getting church documents online, or whatever. Something with a too narrow focus should be a WikiProject, rather.

We don't fight POV by stopping people from editing, but by recruiting new people.

An organisation exists which creates content under a compatible licence on MediaWiki software in Hungary. Might be a possible movement partner.

Bence referred to a video on youtube about how affiliates work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9wPzktncjMw (you might want to watch at home)

OSM is a good example of a potential partner organisation.

Ziko: so what would we expect from our partners? Ziko would like to propose an overhaul of the system:

Ordinary national affiliation (e.g. Wikimedia Vatican), must be neutral and open for all citizens.
Ordinary thematic affiliation (e.g. Wikimedia Medicine)
Cooperating affiliates (e.g. LGBT for free knowledge)
Movement partners would have initiatives with us (e.g. joint initiative between WMNL & Museum),but why does affcom have to deal with this?

Richard (Pharos): Topic hierarchy (e.g. Naval history within Military history) Answer: if it's big enough, OK. Affcom can suggest joining up when there are similar groups.

Requirements to become thematic org might solve this kind of issue. e.g. if we have a group for medicine, but someone wants to start a group for oncology, we might not take it?

Comment: the larger groups should [hopefully not?] block the smaller groups from starting.

FIXME: Most chapters started in multiple places, so maybe it should be made hard to start thematic orgs? Not sure that I understood that correctly...

Question: start off as user group, try to become a chapter? Answer: It takes at least a year to get a chapter up and running, so easier if you can recognize a user group, and let them start working ASAP, and work on chapterhood later. In all the countries where it was easy to get 25 people together, we probably already have chapters.

Don't want to have a lot of inactive user groups, so can we require them to report every year?

Answer: Give recognition for one year at the start, check up every 2 years thereafter. Maybe have a reports page like for chapters on meta.

Question: How to chapters react to the possibility of user groups forming in their countries.

WMZA: no problem.

Developers often don't feel connected to the chapters, so they might want a separate group.

Kartik: Too many groups can duplicate effort. WMIN[sp?] would create special interest groups (SIG), which is existing in their chapter structure already. They are a little afraid that too many user groups could be a bad thing (mediawiki, commons, hindi etc.)

Developers may not be competition for the chapter, so it might not cause problems. Afcom should look out for rogue user groups and not allow them.

Will separate groups be a risk to the chapter's reputation? Answers: Probably only slightly: every time something goes wrong on WP, the press always comes to the chapter anyway.

There are "special groups" in WMIN[?sp] So ??

[I'mconfused - help...]

Reaching groups that we're not reaching already - specialists will want to speak to people who share their knowledge and experience, not just a chapter

Local groups should not be affiliated to WMF, but rather to the national chapter: would be confusing to press etc.

A local user group would make sense, but not a local chapter with separate affiliation. They would also have "wikipedia" in their name, not "wikimedia"

The goal of all these groiups should be to increase participation, and that should take precedence over media confusion.

In Venezuela there is a Bolivarian group of editors. Why should WMVenezuela resist them if they are adding value? Affcom doesn't want to allow all kinds of clashing groups: ask "are their valid reasons not to work through national chapter?"

Closing:

Conversation is not finished, but we'll have another session at Wikimania in Hong Kong.

Affcom will not allow groups that specifically want to allow bias, for example but wewant to empower volunteers to fufil our mission. Will help them to find any ways to get empowered, but will always remember our mission and goal, even if it hurts some groups.

If you have ideas, want to present your vision, please continue to discuss this on meta etc. Don't be afraid of causing controversy, because through discussion we will find the answers.

Frequent small meetings

Understanding

Is there difference in understanding? Or do we mean the same with frequent small meetings? Could be a Board meeting, an informal meeting over coffee or beer, or a meeting to contribute to Wikimedia projects. They have in common that they are meetings of the community. Maciej mentions a promotional meeting to show beginners how to edit. We have to divide between physical and online meetings.

Examples

Organisational/project meetings: Do you have meetings without talking about the projects or is this always the purpose?
Regular meetings in a team to keep ball rolling (e.g. chapter board).
WMSE (Mattias): monthly meeting at a pub with people from the community to talk, edit, doing anything.
Wikiexpeditions aren't actually meetings but also they take place frequently in Poland.

Areas of focus

We try to work out the main aspects based on the list.

One main aspect is the informal kind (just to bond?), regularly in a small timeframe (once a week or once a month).
PL: the best way to trust each other (discussing personal matters too) but also ensure a common understanding on the Wikimedia projects between editors
Formal meetings: less interesting for session participants?
Decision-making?
Offline

How to improve them? Build a sense of collegiality around Wikipedia. The goal is to create a group.

Best practices

Give examples of good experiences and of mistakes, so that others can learn from it. (Mistakes -> warnings/advice.)

+ = Good ! = Important - Bad

Informal team-building meetings

+ Picnics
+ Good environment is important
+ Non-chapter activities
+ Open meetings (invitations to people from outside the chapter)
+ Activities should be changed over time
+ Meeting at someone's home

! More than one-day meetings (they have a bigger impact but require more commitment)
! Drinking a beer
! Balance between newbies and devoted Wikipedians
! Presentations during the meeting

FI: informal board meeting (picnic) last summer with open attendance.
MX: informal but concrete 3-days national meeting last summer, very important for the chapter (people not meeting often).
Way to resolve conflicts between people etc.
[W] Open schedule that people from outside the organisation can be interested in and join: don't make it only about the chapter.
[W] Avoid repetition: must not be always the same or participation will drop. [P] Keep people up to date, show achievements.
[P] Meetings scheduled to happen regularly always at same weekday/time.

Outside meetings (visibility)

+ Reports to read and share experiences
+ Spread the word on social media and local media
+ Cooperate with non-Wikimedia people and organizations

! Divert and/or control the trolls
! Use the same place and same time
! Be clear of the meeting's goal

- Bad infrastructure could compromise the result

[W] People may attend without intention to solve problems but just highlight them.
[P] Stop people who are rude/trolls.
[W] Bad infrastructure can spoil.

Decision making meetings

! Regular meetings: Weekly/fortnightly and online
! Open meetings, but beware of trolls
! having a leader of the meeting and an agenda
! making a summary, that's the most important point
! people that cannot attend the meeting should bear the reason for it
! prepare for the meeting

- very busy communication channels
- long discussions, especially if there no clear conclusions

[P] Define a clear agenda and notify it beforehand.
[W] Stop talking about something a decision/agreement can't be reached upon.
[P] Long discussions beforehand, meeting just to wrap up/close the discussion without repeating.

Online meetings

+ Easy to join, easy to leave
+ Geography doesn't matter
+ Easy to log and document

! Quality technical equipment (microphones, speakers..)
! Software: IRC, Google Hangout, Team Speak

[P] Summaries better than logs, as long as they're understandable.
[P] Always same time/day to avoid forgetting or discussing the schedule too much.
Open to everyone or not? It depends.
[W] Mind the timezones!

Experiences from outside

Evaluation meetings
Peer education: informal education sessions to exchange knowledge and skill among organization members
Cart parade
Meet with experts