I have to endorse this - while email and messaging and stuff are of course a handy way to discuss issues, nothing has yet been invented that beats an old-fashioned face to face conversation for making process on issues and getting stuff done. This is a great use of the committee's time, and I hope that Melburnians take up the opportunity to meet with the committee while they're all in one place.
(By the way, I'm sure the Brisbane community would love to welcome you all up here next time ;-) ) Cheers, Craig From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Sarah Ewart Sent: Wednesday, 20 January 2010 8:46 PM To: Wikimedia-au Subject: Re: [Wikimediaau-l] Brainstorming for 2010 Plus, the make up of the current committee is very similar to last year's committee. Brian, Brianna, Liam and myself were on last year's committee and Andrew was an observer. The only truly new member is Steve. Brian, Brianna and Liam attended the face to face meetup last year and I attended one day of it, and all six of us, including Steve, attended Glam; plus various other meetups and meetings etc that various members of the committee have attended. So, really the "get to know each other" value I think is realistically pretty limited and I wouldn't consider it good value for my time and money. However, I do think it is a very valuable opportunity for the committee to get together and properly discuss a number of issues that are difficult to discuss properly in text communication when we're all scattered around the country. On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 9:38 PM, Sarah Ewart <[email protected]> wrote: Michelle, from my own point of view, I really don't see it as a "get to know each other" thing and if that is what I considered the meeting to be, I wouldn't bother giving up a whole weekend and traveling to Melbourne, and I really doubt I'm the only one who would feel that way. There's a number of issues that have come up in recent months that have been difficult to resolve via email and IRC meetings and discussions and they really require us to sit down and have a really good discussion. Also, I think it's important for the committee to get together in person at times and talk through different issues we're facing, difficult things we're trying to achieve, etc and make sure we're all on the same page. As we all know, text based communication can be very difficult and it can be very easy to misunderstand each others and issues, too. So that's just my own perspective of the face to face meeting. There are currently two sets of committee meeting minutes in the process of being approved and published and both should be upon the wiki at the end of this week and they might help answer your final question. :) On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 8:10 PM, Michelle Gallaway <[email protected]> wrote: I don't want to shit on what is otherwise a great idea, but wasn't the AGM in November? Does it really take two months to "get to know one another"? What has (or has not) been going on in that time? On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 2:34 PM, Brianna Laugher <[email protected]> wrote: Hello members and friends, At the end of January, the committee is having a face to face meeting in Melbourne to get to know one another, strategise and make plans for 2010. Before that meeting, it will be useful to have some explicit brainstorming as a way for the committee to collect some idea of what we collectively consider important, or would like to see. Last year we did a brief survey, which wasn't a huge success; this year I would like to try something different. I set up a site for us at http://wmau.ideascale.com/ This site lets anyone suggest an idea, and others can put a number of votes to support various ideas. I have it configured so that anyone who registers with IdeaScale can add a new idea or vote on ideas. With voting, every user has a fixed number of votes (50 I think), and you can put multiple votes on an idea if you really like it. If you don't like an idea, just don't give it any votes. :) You can also of course add comments, and that is probably the most valuable thing you can do. I would guess this is most useful for 1) things that take longer than a week to plan and 2) things that involve or have some impact on the membership and/or general public. So this will not encompass all of the committee's responsibilities; some tech and policy and governance things won't be relevant to mention here. Secondly for Melburnians, we are planning to arrange a meetup for one of the meals on the weekend, probably in Richmond or the CBD. The details will appear soon at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/Melbourne_15 . Please feel free to give your feedback on this list or privately. thanks, Brianna WMAU president _______________________________________________ Wikimediaau-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l _______________________________________________ Wikimediaau-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimediaau-l
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