This is the first episode in a series of short interviews recorded at the Wikimedia Summit in
Berlin in 2024. The main topic of the summit was the most recent draft of the movement charter
and what feedback the affiliates could give to that. In the first episode we will meet
Eva Martin from the organizing team and Wikimedia Deutschland.
Hello and welcome to Wikipediapodden and this is a special episode recorded at the Wikimedia Summit
in Berlin 20th of April 2024. I'm your host Jan Ainali and I'm here with Eva Martin,
program coordinator for governance and movement relationships at the Wikimedia
Deutschland and in the organizing team for the summit. Hello Eva, nice to meet you here.
Very nice to meet you Jan. So we're here at the Wikimedia Summit. Can you please give our listeners
like a brief and general introduction to the summit, this kind of meeting? Of course. I think
that this year's is actually the 12th edition of the summit that used to be called the Wikimedia
conferences and well the summit is really the place where the affiliates and the Wikimedia
Foundation get together and discuss the future of our movement. This year is a little bit different
because we have a very specific topic. What is the purpose this year? All right so traditionally
we've been always talking about movement strategy at the summit and before the Wikimedia conferences
and this year we have a very strong focus on a particular aspect of the movement strategy
which is the future of our movement governance and I think many of you know that there has been a
committee the MCDC that has been drafting the movement charter that is potentially going to
redefine the way we work together as a movement in the future and that's the reason why we've
designed this year's summit around this movement charter and the idea is to bring everyone together
so the affiliates can review the current draft of the charter, discuss it, share opinions and ideally
converge on the things that they like about the charter, the things that could be potential deal
breakers and suggest alternatives for this but also just have deliberations and just come up
with considerations that go even beyond the charter. That's the idea, that's the main purpose
of this year's summit but there is a second purpose because as some of you may have heard
this summit is going to be the last of its kind and what does this actually mean? Well it means
that Wikimedia Deutschland is saying that that's the last summit that they will be organizing
and therefore we also want to create space at this year's event so that the affiliates can get
together and discuss what should be the future of affiliate gatherings. That's very good and a wide
and complicated topic and as an organizer of you're the host of this meeting what are the
hopes of the outcome that like in your role that you can enable the summit to do? Well first like
we have a series of concrete outcomes or desired outcome that we hope we will be reaching by Sunday
and when it comes to the track around movement governance the idea is that by the end of the
summit the participants will have agreed on a list of outputs that will be reflecting the points that
I mentioned earlier so will be reflecting the things that they really like about the
charter the things that they would like to see changed and also just general considerations.
That's the first thing that we really hope to reach by the end of the summit this general common
understanding that will reflect what a majority of participants could agree upon and then concerning
the second track around the future of affiliate gatherings well we know that you know during those
three days we won't already come up with all the answers so we don't hope to have answered the
question of where should it happen and when should it happen but at least we hope that there will be
a general understanding around what the purpose of those events should be and also ideally a group
of affiliates will have made a commitment to taking this forward and I really hope that by
Sunday I can see smiles on the face of a few people that will be on stage and we'd say here
we are and we're really motivated and we just commit to be working on you know designing a
concept for the future of these events. Yeah that would be a good outcome. I've been to a couple of
these summits so I really feel the value myself it's also sort of a summit that is a little bit
different in the wikimedia movement that it's not open to anyone who wants to attend it it has
never really been that way it's in the way it has been has been various ways. Who is it open to this
year and what was the sort of the process to get to that? Yeah so we always say that the summit
is the affiliates conference so the affiliates are just like Wikimedia organizations in the
movement the chapters the user group the thematic organization and we've added the ongoing hub
projects to the list of potential participants for the summit and we know that the affiliates
are just one part of the movement right we know this but we feel like they have common needs
common interest and particularly they also need like space where they can get together and they
can talk to the Foundation they can just discuss with their peers what should be the focus of their
work in the next years and that's where we've decided to create this space for the affiliates
only however not all the affiliates are represented at the summit there was a selection process
people had to demonstrate previous engagement around the topic of movement governance we've
had a series of online events before the summit that participants had to join to be eligible for
the summit here in Berlin and also we don't only have affiliate representatives at the summit we
also have Foundation representative staff members also board members of the Foundation
and this year because of the strong focus on movement governance we also have the MCDC that
is present with us. And finally I imagine even though the participants will go home on Sunday
or soon thereafter what will the like the continuous work with the results we're doing a
lot of posters and discussions and taking notes how will that be sort of collected in the
the time to come just after here. That's a very good question. So I would say from Sunday on
it's not in our hands anymore but it's in the hands of the movement and I would say it's
particularly in the hands of the MCDC that we will be handing over the results of the conversation
to the mcdc and they will be working on the charter potentially integrating some of the
feedback they've received here potentially and most probably not all of it because as I've said
the affiliates are just a part of the movement not like the whole movement and therefore I would say
the next steps would be to just follow up what are the development happening on the movement
charter it should be up for a vote in June and then when it comes to the second track as I said
I hope that there will be this group of committed affiliates that will be taking this forward
and I really hope that they will also be informing the movement about the stages of their work in the
common months. What Ii can say however is that the event organizers will make sure that everything
that has been discussed here in Berlin will be documented available on Meta of course and we
are always really happy to just do some knowledge transfer so if there are other event organizers in
the movement that would like to reach out please do it always happy to help or at least always
happy to just have conversations and try to just do some peer learning. That's very nice to hear.
Thank you Eva for taking time during this busy conference and thank you for organizing the
summit. You're welcome, thank you. In the next episode we will hear a little bit more about
the movement charter and then in the coming six episodes we will hear different affiliates and
their perspectives on the work of the movement charter here at the Wikimedia Summit.