Sunday, December 16, 2007

Philadelphia Meetup 6

I just heard word tonight that the sixth Philadelphia Wikimeetup is in the planning stages, and is scheduled to be sometime in january/february. I couldn't make it to the last one, and would love to come prepared to this next one with fliers or something about the chapter. At the moment there are only about 3 people who are really "involved" with the chapter, and I would love to get more people involved in these early planning stages. People who are in the Philadelphia area (or who could get here with a reasonable amount of travel) should definitely try to attend.

I'm also really looking forward to talking with Delphine about the whole US chapters issue, since there are still more questions then there are answers. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this issue in the coming weeks, so I'll not spoil the fun now.

Tuesday, December 11, 2007

Getting the Ball Rolling (Slowly)

Interest in Wikimedia PA has been decreasing lately, can't blame anybody because we have been moving along at a snail's pace. I know that I've been busy with the fall semester, and many other people have been busy as well. Also, there is still the ambiguity of how, exactly, the Chapcom and the WMF want to handle local USA chapters (or if they want to allow them at all). If we push forward, we would set the standard for all other possible USA chapters, so everybody wants to get this right. Of course, there is a "New York City" chapter in the works as well, so if they beat us to the punch we could wind up being "Wikimedia Philadelphia" instead.

The few people who are active in WMF PA have made some final changes to our bylaws and now they are essentially "feature complete". There is always going to be room for spit and polish, but the "spirit" of them is right where we want it to be. If the Chapcom doesn't send us a cease-and-desist soon, will will probably be ready to submit our bylaws for approval by early 2008.

We are also working on setting up a "preparatory board", or some other official point of contact with the chapter while the chapter gets going. How we want to do this, and who would be on such a board (not that we have many possible candidates) is all up in the air, but expect to hear more about this in the near-ish future.