New England Wikimedia General Meeting
Below is the report of the New England meetup that happened on 22 April 2012.
Below is the agenda prepared by User:Dominic, exactly as it appeared on the Etherpad at the conclusion of the meeting. The meeting did not follow the order listed, however, and the below minutes accurately reflect the order of discussion.
- Introductions
- What are people interested in?
- What are our goals? - encourage local meetings / networks in other cities in the region?
- How to stay in touch - modify the Boston mailing list to include all of New England?
- Meetups and other events
- Vary locations, times? - quiet places! alternate bos/camb each month
- Volunteer organizers? - Erik (emw) for events
- WP:WALRUS and coordinated events
- Wiknic - July 7 in NYC
- Wiki Loves Monuments - Month of September only. Requires finding official lists of monuments / historical sites.
- Wikipedia Loves Libraries - Later in the fall; November?
- Library editathons: BPL and Harvard Libraries have both offered to host edit-a-thons with a librarian / special collection of our choice
- Wikipedia Day - Jan 15
- Wikimania
- What is it? / why we should all go
- Volunteers? - needed for:
- Can we do anything for New England?
- GLAM
- What is it? Current projects
- Ideas / volunteers
- Education program
- Summary of program and recent events (Richard?)
- Volunteers?
- Chapters!
- Anything else?
Events and Programs - WP:GLAM
- Dominic explained the goals and ideas behind the GLAM project, and explained that WP:GLAM/US has a list of cultural institutions to volunteer at. Dominic made himself available for advice concerning contacting cultural institutions.
- Darouet suggested that we should use cultural institutions and Wikipedia to make institutions more accessible, especially for children. Copyright status of sources and images at Cultural Institutions was discussed; Atlant suggested we try to figure out the WMF policy on the matter. Sven Manguard mentioned a collection of very old (public domain) texts at Harvard, called Early English Books Online (EEBO). Access to the EEBO can be found through universities with access to the database. harej suggested that we try to find contacts between us and curators at various cultural institutes, Caroline suggested the idea of trying to find Wikipedians by email address; it was mentioned, by Sven Manguard, that it is not general WMF practice to reveal Users' email addresses.
Potential Wikipedia Loves Libraries event/program
- Pharos suggested using Library resources to build content, pointing to the successes the Ambassador program has had in the past using librarians as a jumping-off point. Sven Manguard suggestion that librarians could be used to show the value of Wikimedia programs in Academia. Ann mentioned that WP:GLAM has reports that demonstrate the value of the GLAM Program to the culutral institutions. Dominic pointed out that New England has been a barren area, compared to NYC or DC, in coordinating GLAM Activities.
Chapter organization
- Sven Manguard suggested the incorporation of a local chapter of the Wikimedia Foundation. Dominic and Pharos suggested we form a "community" before taking legal action. Pharos explained what Chapters do, and how they are organized through WMF. Sven Manguard, harej, Dominic, and Atland suggested that there are some benefits to legal incorporation. Caroline and Achowat pointed out the difficulty in incorporation. It was decided that we would wait until a "stable community" was in place before considering legal status. Emw initiated the discussion of what could be pointed at as indication of a "stable community". Achowat suggested, and it was generally agreed that active participation in the events planned throughout the summer and fall would go a great way towards indicating that "stable community".
- SJ let us know that there are three potentially useful organizational structures: Informal named groups, where an individual opens a bank account with the DBA of "New England Friends of Wikimedia" or something of the sort; Have another non-profit serve as our Fiscal Agent while building the community, which has the benefit of allowing contributions to be tax-deductable (harej has offered WMDC to serve as such; though will have to bring it to their board to finalize that); and opening a Limited Liability Corporation that will protect the leadership of a potential Wikimedia New England from personal liability but would not allow us to claim tax exempt status (though it was floated that this may serve as a stepping-stone towards non-profit status).
- harej mentioned that Wikimedia DC existed as an informal group until there was a relevant impetus for incorporation (in their case, WikiMania)
Meetups
- Meetups are currently happening at a restaurant in Cambridge, though there was some discussion of the usefulness in moving them potentially moving them to Boston proper, to facilitate participation. The en masse discussion led to the consensus that our meetups would be alternate between Cambridge and Boston on the Second Mondays of every month. It was suggested that those planning Meetups should focus on using the WP:Meetup pages, as current off-Wiki strategies had led to less-than-ideal results. Dominic then informed the group of the steps to planning a Meetup, outlines below. Emw was put in charge of organizing the next Meetup, which would occur on 14 May 2012 at Encuentro 5, a meeting-space in Chinatown (see WP:Meetup/Boston or the Meetup.com event for that meeting). SJ suggested contacting local professors with Open Source leanings to speak at future events, to raise awareness and participation.
Great American Wiknic (June 23)
- It was suggested and agreed that The Great American Wiknic would serve as June's meetup. Achowat was put in charge of organizing New England's participation in that.
Wikipedia Loves Libraries (WP:WLL)
Emw explained a similiar program to photograph monuments throughout Boston (Wikipedia Takes Boston). Dominic explained that it is a scavenger hunt to photograph Historic Sites. It was determined that Emw would coordinate that program in September, to coincide with the international program.
GorillaWarfare explained the program as a way to work with professors to improve Wikipedia as part of curricular course work though both online and campus ambassadors. Interested attendees were pointed to WP:Ambassadors. Pharos had mentioned potential localization of the program in DC, NYC, and New England. The Program is undergoing some restructuring at the moment, and they are forming a working group to try to establish a new structure: Wikipedia:Education Working Group.
Discussion of how to move forward with forming a chapter
A "Probationary period" was discussed to see how successful the core group could be to the events planned in the Summer and Early Fall. A tentative meeting to discuss the future of the potential Chapter for the winter when students, etc. are back in town. It was decided that serious thought should be put into handling the issue of students making up a portion of the core group. It was then determined that "Wikimedians in New England" would serve as the groups name, though discussion of the acronym [[WP:WINE]] did not occur. There was then some discussion about the boundaries of "New England", since all planned events were to be Boston-centered. A discussion was had with the representatives from WM-NYC about the potential status of Connecticut, a traditional New England/Tri-State border ground. Before the situation could be resolved, the discussion was deemed silly and ended.
- Create an on-wiki page as a subpage of WP:Meetup
- Create an appropriate Geonotice
- Create an appropriate Talk page notice and send it to coordinated editors.
Six members were selected, by consensus, to serve in eight Vice Presidential Offices.