Submissions/Wikimedia relations with governments, lobbying and public relations

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2012.

Submission no.

731

Title of the submission: Wikimedia relations with governments, lobbying and public relations

Type of submission (workshop, tutorial, panel, presentation): Presentation with workshop

Author of the submission: James Forrester & Philippe Beaudette

E-mail address: jdforrestergmail.org & philippewikimedia.org

Username: Jdforrester & Philippe

Country of origin: UK & US

Affiliation, if any (organization, company etc.): Philippe Beaudette is a staff member of the Wikimedia Foundation, in the Legal & Community Advocacy department. James Forrester is now a staff member in the engineering team.

Personal homepage or blog: www.jdforrester.org / www.philippewiki.com

Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal): [Provisional, and subject to change based on feedback!]
An informal presentation and discussion about the Wikimedia movement's involvement with governments, including lobbying, regulation, and public relations. We will briefly touch on the strategic and tactical issues, and suggest practical steps through which we might be able to more successfully meet our goals.
In terms of strategy, we will discuss the movement's history of government relations, our global outlook and how that should input into what we do, and the core drivers and areas of concern that we as a community might wish to consider (and those to avoid!)
In terms of practicalities, we will address how to ensure that individual members of the movement are supported in putting forward their views, how we might want to make "official" interactions and statements (and making sure we don't edge out the community or say things we don't all agree on), the critical need to use the community's expertise rather than bring in external people wherever possible, and what we can do to make certain that we as a movement expend appropriate resources (and how to tell when to stop).
Finally, in terms of putting it into practice, we will present a short set of recommendations on what "best practice" should look like, how we should start prioritising issues, and the (relatively) easier areas where we can start to get involved and help the community flesh-out our ambition and how we can reach it.
[Our intent as of writing this abstract is to have a short (10-15 minute) presentation up-front, followed by an informal workshop/discussion with audience members. As the potential field for discussion and action is huge and generally unexplored territory for the Wikimedia movement (this January's SOPA protest and the occasional amicus brief not withstanding), we imagine that this session will need a substantial slot to do it justice.]

Track: Wikis and the Public Sector

Length of presentation/talk: 45 minutes

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes (for both) :-)

Slides or further information (optional): To come. Probably the night before they're presented. :-)

Special request as to time of presentations: No particular requirements (as yet).

Interested attendees

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--Jan Engelmann (WMDE) (talk) 09:59, 14 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
--Carolmooredc (talk) 14:19, 16 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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CT Cooper · talk 20:01, 22 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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MichChemGSI (talk) 20:49, 5 July 2012 (UTC)[reply]
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