Deutsche Version: siehe unten - german version: see below
A short report from the WCA meeting last weekend. This is a personal
point of view and might not cover all aspects and details and might
contain subjective views. There will be an official report by the chair
and you can also read the minutes on Meta.
* How to proceed with WCA after the Letter from the Board?
WCA has its goals and ideas and we still stand for them. We accept the
criticism made and are adjusting the organisation, just as we did before
in Berlin and Washington when meeting with the chapters. The WCA has a
working council which provides a value in itself, a forum to reach out
to chapters, discuss and get things done.
There has been a dilemma of expectations about the WCA. Accountability
and Governance were topics WCA picked up first and received a lot of
agreement from the WMF for this. A strong and secure framework was
needed to provide a governance body and as such we tried to set WCA up.
Narrowing focus was another point WCA took up and in further discussions
with people - especially from WMF - there was a certain pressure to get
WCA in place and take over the expectations. To the chapter it was clear
that in order to deliver these we need to have support from experts who
are not doing WCA as a volunteer, mostly beside chapter board positions.
Therefore we put a lot of hope in hiring a Secretary General who would
be able to execute many of these tasks the Council would have
oversighted and initiated. Now this focus of the WCA on structures and
staff has been the doom of WCA.
The WMF board of trustees provided us with their input right in time,
shortly before our planned meeting in London so we were able to pick
this feedback up and adjust expectations and plans. We feel freed from
some of the burden while we feel another pressure for activities. We
will use the existing structures to execute our updated plans.
Therefore there are no further plans for hiring a Secretary General, so
we don't need to incorporate and don't need a budget. Instead we are
focusing on smaller activities which can be done by the chapters
themselves while WCA is their to communicate and coordinate, bringing
together the right people. The resolustions about the position of the
Secretary General and the incorporation in Geneva are still valid and
will be implemented once there is a need for them.
Alice and Jan-Baart, trustees from the WMF, have joined our meeting on
Saturday and engaged in our discussions in a very good and constructive
way. We could feel that there was a mutual understanding and agreement.
* Communication
Wikimedia has many communication channels and for WCA there are several
facilities that have been used in the past. We agreed that we don't want
our own mailinglist and that we want to communicate as public as
possible. Therefore we will use whenever possible wikimedia-l. A
special, moderated list wca-announce will be used to announce new
things, mostly links to Meta.
Working space has been and will stay Meta.
There seems to be a misconception about having had a lot of discussions
behind closed doors. There were actually discussions on the chapters
list which is not public but used by all chapters, but most likely there
was less communication then oustiders expect. The work and results have
all been placed on Meta and there were phone conferences which have been
openly announce and were open for everyone and their minutes are on Meta
as well. The meeting in London was open to virtual attendees via video
conference, all discussions have been documented live on Etherpad.
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Chapters_Association/Meetings/2013-07
* Openess / Inclusion
Open communication is inclusive by itself but we also discussed about
membership in the WCA. Actually every chapter is a member who sends a
council member and agrees to the basic principles of the Charta. The
Charta has the same basic principles as the Wikimedia Movement as a
whole, so any chapter should by definition agree to our Charta anyway.
Basically a member is an organisation that actively participates in the
activities of the WCA. The WCA is a body which provides a forum and
services, done by its members. Any organisation - being a member or not
- can make use of these services. This includes thematic organisations,
user groups... whatever organisations have been accepted by the AffCom
and the Board.
Currently we have no experiences in working with other Wikimedia
organisations than chapters and we are busy in serving these, getting
our first results to become reality. Therefore we currently don't
actively reach out to other entities, nevertheless they are open to
participate in discussions and use our material and services.
* Chair
The WCA has a Chair and Vice Chair who have been elected in a democratic
process during our physical meeting in Washington. While both of them a
doing good work there is an issue that the Chairman is a
