Notes from the discussion at Chapters Conference

It seems to me like there are some idea about chapters as a national lobbyist group, sometimes able to create local interest and sometimes not, and a more global view of the Foundation projects. Projects are global, chapters are local, and Foundation is something so distant people can't really grasp it. Then there are volunteers not affiliated with any of them, they just work on Wikipedia which magically emerges on their computer from nowhere.

The unaffiliated volunteer group is for all practical purposes the major bulk of the community body. Typically the number of such active users are 50 times higher than the number of chapter members during a 30 day period. More about this in Wikimedia chapters/Members of chapters vs unaffiliated volunteer contributors.

Somehow users should be able to get into more formal roles, or rather into roles that are better suited to be a step stone for those who want to get a more involved role. Especially the senior roles are interesting, not only for Foundation roles but also for chapter roles. Both groups can do head hunts for people among those in such senior roles.

Then there are roles that may relate both to Foundation, chapters and the community as such. An example is the press contact role where one press contact may answer questions in multiple roles. If the answer is different for each role it can very soon be a mixup in the newspapers, other roles may be even worse on possible conflicting roles.