[Foundation-l] representation and official positions

Mon May 31 12:29:11 UTC 2004

--- Yann Forget <yann at forget-me.net> wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Le Monday 31 May 2004 11:52, Jimmy Wales a écrit :
> > Anthere wrote:
> > > I'd like to remind you Yann, that everyone on
> fr;
> > > trust you for your PR activities. If you had an
> urgent
> > > need for official support, Jimbo would publicly
> > > brought it I think.
> >
> > I agree with this, even though I also support the
> creation of local
> > associations where a significant group of people
> desire it.
> >
> > The issue of official titles is a complete
> non-issue though.  Titles
> > are cheap and easy to generate -- just tell me
> what you want to be
> > called, and you can be called that.
> 
> Thanks Jimmy.
> That's solve part of the problem, but not all.
> 
> Because speaking in behalf of Wikimedia
> (internationally or locally) means not 
> only to have the support of the board and the
> partipants, but to be able to 
> implement a decision. This can have legal or
> financial implications. Right 
> now I am more concerned with legal implications.
> 
> For example, in my district ("département"), primary
> and high schools already 
> use Wikipedia has a reference for students and
> teachers. I would like to 
> start a general promotion campaign to all schools in
> France, Switzerland, 
> etc. I would like to be able to speak to school and
> university teachers, 
> directors, librarians, etc., in behalf of Wikimedia.
> The first questions will 
> be "Who do you represent?" and "Do you have a local
> organisation?"
> 
> Practically this also means to print tee-shirts,
> leaflets, posters, etc.
> 
> > --Jimbo
> 
> Regards,
> Yann

Well, after the answer Jimbo gave you
"Who do you represent" answer is : I am an official
porte-parole from the Wikimedia Foundation

"Do you have a local organisation" answer is : Not
yet, but we are working on it. Legal and financial
implications must be carefully considered before any
official structure is set, to guarantee the proper
growth of our projects and make best use of the money
offered by our donators.

The tee-shirts and promotional material : I think Erik
had some tee-shirts printed or meant to be anyway.
Organising full scale promotional material production
will always be less expensive because of the large
scale. I think Walter from nl also worked on
promotional material at some point.

I invite you to make use (and to improve)
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_promotion
and in particular
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_T-shirts from
cafepress
and 
http://meta.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_promotion_material

Perhaps Walter, Erik, Tom and you could set a "special
promotion team" and work together to set us a full
collection of possibilities and promotional material,
from which all wikipedias could benefit.

It is probably unecessary and financially not so
interesting that all promotional material is done
independently in each country. Better make use of each
other ressources, and enlarge scale when possible.

I, for one, would be happy to see these pages improve,
and an easy way for each project to quickly have
material available.

How to find the money to have this material done :
well, ask the Foundation for a grant. Certainly, a
certain percentage of future budget can be used to
print material, in particular since these ones are
sold afterwards (hence, it is lending money).
I suspect that a donation call will occur quite soon
if I draw correct conclusions from my connection time
:-) and discussions on irc. Surely, a little
reasonable part of this money may be used for
promotion.
We may also make an extra call on the french wikipedia
for money for promotion for your talks.
My little left finger tells me we would get enough of
it.

This is not to say we should not have a french
association (I think we should), but to say that once
the Foundation is properly and efficiently organised,
we can also go through the Foundation for some issues.

If I may dare say, you are in particular looking for
* support to prove you are not a random speaker
* promotional material

The proposition above give you that.

On the other hand, if we hurry to make an association
essentially for this
* we risk doing mistake in the setting of the
association
* some one will have to organise a donation system
* some one will have to take care of money issue
(treasurer)
* some one will have to take care of all these
organisational points (like having teeshirt printed)

I'd say, not many people are willing to do this. So,
what about temporarily making best use of what we have
at hand ?

*this* is meant to be a solution *now*.

I'd like us to think globally rather than locally.
When there are few people to take care specifically of
one issue, and when less money and sweat can be used
to produce, we should just team up. 

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