[Sorry all for the long email.] James, apologies for the schizoid use of names. I'm Oliver. Colm, I'm very much behind the kind of ideas you've put forward. Like James though, I would be skeptical that a Wikimedia Ireland would be a sudden source of funding. A corporate body certainly is more capable of winning funding (and we should keep our eyes open for opportunities to get cash should we form an Irish chapter); but passion and hard graft, I imagine, is the way forward. Like James, I also think the benefit of a Wikimedia Ireland is the credibility and group co-ordination and support that it would provide. Conor: "A good publicity tool would be a competition involving music, photography and/or art. All entries could be released under CC license and the winners promoted on the Irish Wikimedia website." With respect to promoting free licenses, I think ideas like this is are good. Releasing a CD or coffee-table book of free media would further build on it and could help promote creative work in Ireland (as well as being a possible source of funding for the work of an Irish chapter). [See the second part of this email for something else in relation to this.] With respect to Wikipedia, a "competition" is maybe not the best approach. We don't for example have any right to say that the "winner" would appear on any article above an entry from a "runner-up". Pulling the local angle might be good. We could organise a drive through local newspapers to capture an appropriate "static_image" element for every town and village in Ireland for use in the Infobox_Place_Ireland template on the en/ga.wiki. Geograph.ie (which I suspect has failed in Ireland for lack of grass-roots support) is maybe an effort we could tie in with, or try to emulate. I would see a Wikimedia Ireland as being capable of credibly approaching organisations like orchestras to record samples of instruments, such as uilleann pipes, harps and bouzouki, or language departments to collect phrases said in different dialects of Irish for use in articles. --- Conor, James, Jodi and others - Conor: "Wikimedia doesn't seem to have much in the way of music storage - discuss?" No, it doesn't. This is likely because the goal of the Wikimedia Foundation is "to collect and develop educational content". For that reason, I think this kind of thing would probably be 'ultra vires' for a Wikimedia Ireland. But work in promoting Wikimedia projects and tools in schools would be "in". Don't get me wrong though, I am fully behind ideas like this. I'm delighted yourself and James brought up the topic of OSS, CC and related matters. Coincidentally, over the last few weeks I have been putting thought into how to organise people interested in these topics in Ireland. The ideas that I have been playing with related to how to get people in Ireland interested in OSS development and evangelism, Creative Commons, wiki-ery, hacker culture, etc. to get in contact with each other. In particular, I have been thinking about how to create a shared/collaborative space with the eventual idea of enabling folk in Ireland to find and collaborate on projects, to co-ordinate efforts, share ideas and to establish a "community" out of individuals. And also to promote these kinds of ideas/philosophies (both in community and in business). (As with a possible Wikimedia Ireland, a corporate personality for such a group might not be a bad idea either. Though, I would be more on for something closer to the philosophical roots of this kind of culture, such as a co-op, rather than an Ltd. company for example.) The ideas I've been mulling over would be to draw interested people (and their capabilities) together rather than form a hierarchical body of any sort or dictate the direction of this movement in any way. Maybe, I'm wrong but I can't find any group particularly dedicated to these kinds of topics. James, I see you're lead on Audacity. Do you know of any Irish OSS evangelism/collaboration group, for example? Jodi, I get the impression from references you've made into these topics too? Like I said, I think this kind of thing is outside of the remit of Wikimedia. If you are interested in developing a network such as this in Ireland, get in touch with me. I've a spare server with a suitable (I think) domain name left over from a idea I didn't follow through with. I'd be happy to give the three of you (Conor, James and Jodi) FTP and DB access; and to set-up a mailing list, if you think there are more that would be interested in communicating over these kinds of broad "hacker", OSS, CC culture, collaboration, evangelism and development etc. in Ireland. Regards, Oliver 2010/9/4 Conor Wao <conorwao(a)gmail.com> Hi all,