It came to our attention this weekend that User:Slaporte made a totally kick
ass logo for the WCWC2011, so we decided it was about time to move off of
meta and on to our own site.
So if you're interested in Participating/Attending/Helping Organize (or
generally anything) -- please stop by the new site and sign up for the
mailing list while your at it (so I can stop writing to 3 different lists at
once).
http://2011.westcoastwikicon.org/
-Jon
--
Jon
[[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
http://snowulf.com/
"This email should not be used to sue me" -- Bawolff
For those that might possibly haven't have heard (that's quite a nice rock
you have there), Maker Faire ( http://wmf4.me/488AD ) is this weekend in San
Mateo. It'll be all sorts of awesome, and if you're in NorCal, you should
definitly be coming. Be warned though, 120k people are expected this year
(So the rumors go). Parking and traffic will be all sorts of hell.
If you've volunteered previously and haven't heard from Phoebe (or myself)
about what to do - please email me off list.
-Jon
PS. I'm CC'ing the -CA list since I think that list should be used for
things not chapter related too.
--
Jon
[[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
http://snowulf.com/
"This email should not be used to sue me" -- Bawolff
I have asked the Chapters Committee, for those Chapters who are
membership organizations, whether they are open to members beyond
the geographical designation of the Chapter -- I believe the Chapters
Agreement and process documents indicate that they must be.
On Wed, May 12, 2010 at 5:14 PM, Johan Gunnarsson
<johan.gunnarsson(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Sorry for the late reply. Dunno really what this (I don't live in
> California?) is but I want to say that I'm still interested in my
> project (Popular related articles) but I'm busy atm.
Johan, on a personal note, your case was particularly disturbing to me
during the Google Summer of Code selection process, because multiple
mentors said that what you have already accomplished -- with
WikiTrends at http://users.student.lth.se/dt05jg2/wikitrends/en/24h.html
for example -- was impossible, or harder than you could possibly
realize. You were clearly scored lower than you should have been
because of this mistake. Oddly, three members of the Foundation's
engineering and technical staff repeated the same mistake at a talk
they gave at Xerox PARC last week. I will do what it takes to see
that this mistake is corrected.
Best regards,
James Salsman
Here are the names of the students who signed up on
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Summer_of_Code_2010/Student_signup and
proposed Google Summer of Code projects which were scored positively by
Foundation mentors, but could not be accepted because the Foundation did not
request enough slots from Google:
Cam V., Damon, Johan G., Laszlo K., Meadowlark B., Maciej S., Michael W.,
Neeraj A., Ryan M., Shubhandra.
Some of those students' projects were depricated because the mentors thought
they might need more than a summer. I think they would all make excellent
Chapter projects and I'm willing to do what it takes to see that they
succeed.
The Chapter will need officers, and I will be supporting those candidates
who would like to work for the Chapter and want to see the California
Chapter become the best of all Foundation Chapters.
If Phoebe, Jon, and/or Brion want to work for the Chapter full- or
part-time, and support the mentors' positively-scored GSoC student proposals
as Chapter projects, Chapter server hardware benchmarking and bake-offs,
Maker Faire as a Chapter project, and the West Coast Wikipedia Day
unconference all as Chapter projects, then I would be happy to nominate them
as Chapter Director, Assistant Director, and Chief Engineer respectively.
Sincerely,
James Salsman
On May 4, 2010 10:49 PM, "James Salsman" <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Jon,
Yes, please start a page on Meta with cache, memory, and mass storage
geometries for all the different classes of servers in use if there isn't
one already. A lot of MySQL users are reporting large speed-ups with flash
instead of disk, and we should measure the price/performance of local
vendors for that. FusionIO got a decent write-up in the April ;Login:
magazine.
Also we should agendize and fund the MakerFaire booth so if someone forgets
to buy something we need for it whoever ends up paying for it can get
reimbursed.
Also, the West Coast Wikipedia Day unconference should be a project so we
can afford to host it.
Can we all agree to conduct business on the email list, or should we try to
conduct business on Meta? I'm partial to trying to conduct business on Meta
for the purposes of eating our own dog food.
Regards,
James Salsman
>
> On May 4, 2010 10:19 PM, "Jon Davis" <wiki(a)konsoletek.com> wrote:
>
> I'm all for uber toolserve...
> On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 21:35, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Geoff,
> >
> > Thank you for your hard work on requesting the Chapter mailing list and
> for serv...
>
>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> Wikimedia-SF mailing list
> >> Wikimedia-SF@...
>
>
>
>
> --
> Jon
> [[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
> http://snowulf.com/
> "This email should not b...
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-california mailing list
> Wikimedia-california(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-california
>
Hi all,
As I mentioned in another private email, I am skeptical that a chapter
is needed for this community -- I'd rather see us put our energy into
actually doing projects rather than in doing the paperwork to build an
organization to do projects.
That said, I thought it would be nice to ask Austin (interim chair
chapters committee) and Pharos (chair of WM-NYC, the only other US
chapter) to give us their feedback on what forming a chapter is like,
what it can and can't do, and why one might want to do such a thing.
For instance, in the discussions so far, I've seen a fair amount of
unclarity on what chapters do. From my understanding:
* chapters are not (just) local social clubs, but are part of the
international group of chapters; expectations include international
travel to the annual chapters meeting for two officers, participating
in internal discussions about fundraising and chapter-appointed board
seats, etc. There's a lot of email traffic and work that goes along
with this role for the officers; I see some of it because of my role
in planning Wikimania and frankly I wouldn't want to deal with it on
an ongoing basis.
* money and funding is not guaranteed. WM-DE, home of the toolserver
is the richest chapter, and they have money because they run their own
fundraisers in conjunction with the annual wmf fundraiser. They also
get grants. They have also worked for years (7+) on getting to their
current position, with a very dedicated crew of volunteers. Again,
having any income is not guaranteed for the chapter. Pharos can speak
to this.
* There is a fair amount of real-world work: filing the paperwork,
keeping up with taxes, etc. that is required by any nonprofit
organization. This requires expertise, patience and a good amount of
time.
* don't expect all local wikimedians to join the chapter: the overlap
between wikimedia volunteers & chapter members is not 100% for any
chapter. Having a chapter doesn't guarantee membership, or enthusiasm.
* chapters don't fix the "you have to do things" problem. Remember
that despite being a huge tech-savvy place, the only regular meetups
that have ever happened in California have happened in the SF-Bay
area, and frankly they've only happened because either Jon or I pushed
for it. Forming a chapter would just be *more* time and energy that is
not devoted to actually doing things.
Anyway, I hope that others more involved with the chapter scene than I
can help answer questions.
-- Phoebe
--
* I use this address for lists; send personal messages to phoebe.ayers
<at> gmail.com *
Jon,
There are still several volunteer mentors who didn't get slots, either. If
you go by Google's compensation amounts for Summer of Code, mentoring is
supposed to take no more than 1/10 full time, but it may be better to hire
multiple mentors to work on patches for Mediawiki's bugzilla queue while
they each mentor 3 to 5 students.
I should mention that Sara Crouse encouraged me to support the California
Chapter when I was trying to encourage (1) specific developments, before I
realised the GSoC was coming up so soon, and (2) a National Science
Foundation grant which could probably suppport at least six full-time
chapter staff and more than ten contract programmers, including students:
http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellan…
The Foundation was too busy to apply for that, but if the Chapter were to
succeed in obtaining it, we could probably do everything that's been
discussed, including annual Wikipedia Day conference hosting and Maker Faire
presense, without costing the Foundation anything. And as you can see, it's
completely congruent with the initial Chapter goals that Geoff set forth
years ago.
In any case, whether we are able to secure external funding or not, chapters
are expected to submit grant proposals per:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_chapters/WMF_grants
There are only 10 days remaining for the nominal proposal deadline, so I
would like to have all of the possibilities we have been discussing in
seperate chapter grant applications, and a proposed set of Articles of
Incorporation and Bylaws ready by this time next week.
I will try to to that, because the only other outstanding action item I have
is the 1-page instruction sheet handout for the MakerFairePedia notecards.
That reminds me, Jon, please don't forget the Maker Faire sign-up wikitable;
that is almost a month late.
Regards,
James
On May 5, 2010 10:04 AM, "Jon Davis" <wiki(a)konsoletek.com> wrote:
For GSOC - So we start a chapter, then we can apply for extra slots - ok,
fine. But who's going to mentor them? We need coders, preferably ones
experienced in MediaWiki, to actually do the mentoring.
I'm always happy to usurp more power given to me. So... yay.
-Jon
On Wed, May 5, 2010 at 00:43, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> Here are the names of ...
"This email should not be used to sue me" -- Bawolff
Jon,
Yes, please start a page on Meta with cache, memory, and mass storage
geometries for all the different classes of servers in use if there isn't
one already. A lot of MySQL users are reporting large speed-ups with flash
instead of disk, and we should measure the price/performance of local
vendors for that. FusionIO got a decent write-up in the April ;Login:
magazine.
Also we should agendize and fund the MakerFaire booth so if someone forgets
to buy something we need for it whoever ends up paying for it can get
reimbursed.
Also, the West Coast Wikipedia Day unconference should be a project so we
can afford to host it.
Can we all agree to conduct business on the email list, or should we try to
conduct business on Meta? I'm partial to trying to conduct business on Meta
for the purposes of eating our own dog food.
Regards,
James Salsman
On May 4, 2010 10:19 PM, "Jon Davis" <wiki(a)konsoletek.com> wrote:
I'm all for uber toolservers, and I'm more than happy to be involved with
said project. I do have some other nefarious idea's for how to use a
chapter to advance evil agendas... that being said - what's the real point
of having a chapter? I mean, I know they are non-profits, but besides that
I guess I'm confused as to how _we_ (Californian's) will use it?
Looking at the projects we currently do (Just from the SF Bay perspective)
and those that we want to do - how will having a chapter help get them done
quicker/easier/faster/cheaper/whateverer?
As a random note back to toolservers, there are many hosting facilities in
NorCal. I've priced many of them for my real job. They are by no means
unbelievably expensive, but they are by no means cheap either. I'm not sure
what WMGermany is paying (if someone knows, or can point my in that
direction, I'd be interested) but we're looking at a general minimum of
$100/mo for a 1U server with 1mbit/s. That isn't exactly...much... and
doesn't count the cost of actually buying the server. Simply to have a
mirror of all the databases is going to take a lot more horsepower and hard
drive space (And therefor lots more money, upfront and monthly). I realize
we can probably get the foundation to give us some of their servers next
they remove a series for service... but I'm just thinking broadly there.
-Jon
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 21:35, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> > Dear Geoff,
> >
> > Thank you for your hard work on requesting the Chapter mailing list and
> for serv...
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-SF mailing list
> Wikimedia-SF(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-sf
>
>
--
Jon
[[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
http://snowulf.com/
"This email should not be used to sue me" -- Bawolff
_______________________________________________
Wikimedia-california mailing list
Wikimedia-california(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-california
Proposal:
The mission of the Wikimedia California Chapter is to assist the
Foundation in empowering and engaging people around the world by
implementing software and hardware systems to, and holding events to
encourage collection and development of educational content under a
free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it
effectively and globally.
That is adapted from http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mission_statement
Let's also adopt http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Values in its entirety.
Any objections?
I'm all for uber toolservers, and I'm more than happy to be involved with
said project. I do have some other nefarious idea's for how to use a
chapter to advance evil agendas... that being said - what's the real point
of having a chapter? I mean, I know they are non-profits, but besides that
I guess I'm confused as to how _we_ (Californian's) will use it?
Looking at the projects we currently do (Just from the SF Bay perspective)
and those that we want to do - how will having a chapter help get them done
quicker/easier/faster/cheaper/whateverer?
As a random note back to toolservers, there are many hosting facilities in
NorCal. I've priced many of them for my real job. They are by no means
unbelievably expensive, but they are by no means cheap either. I'm not sure
what WMGermany is paying (if someone knows, or can point my in that
direction, I'd be interested) but we're looking at a general minimum of
$100/mo for a 1U server with 1mbit/s. That isn't exactly...much... and
doesn't count the cost of actually buying the server. Simply to have a
mirror of all the databases is going to take a lot more horsepower and hard
drive space (And therefor lots more money, upfront and monthly). I realize
we can probably get the foundation to give us some of their servers next
they remove a series for service... but I'm just thinking broadly there.
-Jon
On Tue, May 4, 2010 at 21:35, James Salsman <jsalsman(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> Dear Geoff,
>
> Thank you for your hard work on requesting the Chapter mailing list and for
> serving as Chapter Contact. I hope you will conduct the business within
> reason and evidence.
>
> As for articles of incorporation and bylaws, we should adopt the Chapter
> Committee's recommendation and Roberts Rules of Order, respectively,
> coonducting meetings on IRC. Will you ask the Chapter Committee, please,
> whether they recommend copying the Foundation's Articles of Incorporation,
> and so send along a copy of them if they have them?
>
> As for projects, I know the Google Summer of Code applications with
> positive evaluations which did not get approved because the Foundation did
> not request a sufficient number of slots are excellent projects for us to
> attempt. I also think we should try to make better price/performance
> Mediawiki servers than the German chapter has been able, as a long-term
> hardware project goal.
>
> Discussion? Please reply and forward to the new list.
>
> Regards,
> James Salsman
>
> On May 4, 2010 8:46 PM, "Geoffrey Plourde" <geo.plrd(a)yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> Everyone,
>
> The permanent mailing list for Wikimedia-California,
> Wikimedia-california(a)lists.wikimedia.org has been created. Please go to
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-california to
> subscribe to the list and receive updates as the chapter for the Golden
> State is formed. You can also add your name on Meta at
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_California#Roster_.28Join_the_caus…,
> if you haven't already done so. We'll begin drafting Articles of
> Incorporation and Bylaws soon, as well as planning projects for the chapter
> to work on when fully operational.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Geoff Plourde
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikimedia-SF mailing list
> Wikimedia-SF(a)lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-sf
>
>
--
Jon
[[User:ShakataGaNai]] / KJ6FNQ
http://snowulf.com/
"This email should not be used to sue me" -- Bawolff