Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee/2012-02-08

Attending

 * Donald Albury (OA)
 * Cindy Ashley-Nelson (OA)
 * Christopher Cheney (CA)
 * Tom Fish (OA)
 * Richard Knipel (CA/RA)
 * Piotr Konieczny (CA/OA)
 * Swaroop Rao (OA)
 * Jami Matheson(WMF)


 * Guests:
 * Aude
 * Dominic (CA)

Discussion Topics

 * Restructuring WMF/SC duties
 * Idea is to move SC to subcommittee structure with focus on long/short term strategy, recruitment, day-to-day operations
 * Eventually will allow WMF to hand-off more duties as originally envisioned back in 2011 but was put on back burner with increased funding
 * Ideal situation is 2nd week of March a meeting in SF to confirm details, but per emails looks like a go with official handover Fall 2012
 * Question then becomes, what can be done today?
 * Proof is needed of success in order to better sell the program to the community - newsletter?
 * Student Tracking Program ETA is currently April 2012
 * Talk that we need to sell that B/C Class appears to be better than the average user - and GA is not always going to be possible (even if it remains the gold standard for classes)
 * Data will be out shortly on Compare the student editor to a typical new user to see if their contribs are generally better/worse/the same 2. establish whether we have more copyright violations
 * Currently outside of IEP - rest of education is moving nicely
 * Piotr offers up his class as a partial guinea pig: Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/User:Piotrus/Fall_2011


 * Class Objectives/Types
 * Question is raised do we need to focus more on graduate classes (or at least make the undergrad classes more contained then they are currently).
 * Question is also raised should we try to encourage some classes to contribute to some gnome like work
 * Newsletter
 * User:Thelmadatter/sandbox is getting a start on it - should be back in business shortly
 * Weekly level? perhaps a little lofty right now, focus is getting more regular attention in the signpost.
 * Agreed to take more action and use resources at hand, red tape be damned.


 * Wikiproject
 * WikiProject_Classroom_coordination is a partial model for some pieces, may try to fold in operations once things get moving nicely


 * Germany Update
 * Germany got off the ground in december, Frank, Annie paid visits to their campus teams. No impact on US/Can but likely next term.
 * Spain: Toying around with a new model that takes place on en.wp (for non-professional reasons) - user:Thelmadatter is also heavily involved both on Spain and general newsletter project
 * May want to keep an eye on spanish-catalan - but spillover should be minimal
 * Spanish point persons are on target to meet up in Berlin in March


 * Regional Ambassadors
 * We need to potentially find a replacement for the NW region - Tom Cloyd looks like he is stepping down
 * Also should Western Canada be folded into said NW region instead of being covered from the Great Lakes
 * Can Campus Ambassadors really take over the job as efficiently? / how can we find new ones in a timely manner - in particular when ambassador ranks are low
 * Would it be possible to have Assistant Regional Ambassadors - yes but only regions with enough ambassadors.


 * Academic Journal
 * The Wikipedia Review? Could be a combined effort on marketing side, and get more people involved for the potential prestige?
 * Idea needs to be floated through the right back channels, but could work.
 * Jan will float to Geert and others that may be more inclined..
 * Would the focus need to be strictly academic/marketing - or both
 * CUNY Digital Humanities / MSU Quello would they be interested in helping?