What strategies and tactics are successful in increasing awareness of Wikipedia projects in a specific geographic region and how can Wikimedia empower people to implement these strategies and tactics?
This question was about local projects, not necessarily about small projects. Please read my answer in that way too. No form of outward communication should be forced on any project, yet they can (and imho should) at least be offered better ways and means of communication. A one-man project in the incubator isn't going to need or create an embassy. However, many projects do have enough manpower to communicate with others.
How am I going to make it so? What I did was just some brainstorming. I am not going to make anything so, neither is this strategic planning project. I thought (correct me if I'm wrong) the goal is to advise, not to implement or to force. Attempts to implement guidelines by the foundation have in the past been unsuccessful. For bad or for good, the foundation is limited to an advisory or accommodating role. Neither should any discussion at meta automatically mean a community should do this or that.
If the language barrier is a problem, a tiny project will not use the 1000 'must-have' subjects list, since they won't be able to understand it (off-topic: the list is imho of rather bad quality in its current form). If language isn't a problem, small projects will have more benefit from an interwiki Q/A-page at meta than from that list.
Reports can contain data from statistics (content/users/pages/vandalism) with some small comments. If local decisions/solutions about community problems were made, these could be reported too. For example, were the Dutch wikipedia to accept a guideline about reliability of sources, the fact could appear in their annual report. That could be followed by a discussion of the type: 'why didn't you guys have this guideline before'. If the Hungarian wiktionary switches to Flagged Revisions, they could report about their personal experience with it. Discussing differences brings to light potential new solutions and their advantages/disadvantages. It is a way to make all projects more aware of potentially beneficial progress and solutions made by others. Anyway, I was just brainstorming and a yearly report is just one way to communicate. A regularly updated project profile page at meta is another way. Note that currently, some chapters make regular reports at meta already ([1]), and many projects do have embassies and ambassadors in their own space ([2]). My idea was simply to extend the first to projects themselves and the latter to meta.
The incubator projects are too small to matter, they have their own process to become realised. What makes a "local" project is not defined. From my perspective, if we come up with strategies that will grow any project, particularly the projects that are not in the top 10 in traffic, I think we have a fine approach. This project is not about Asia, Africa, Europe and with my approach it is practical again.
There are plenty of one man bands ... Any and all projects not in the top 50 are likely to be projects where individuals may have a strong influence on a project. When the WMF provides information ON the projects, it is for the projects to decide what they do with it. In this way the WMF does not interfere but can provide metrics that help understand what makes a difference in the development of a project. When we inform what people are looking for, what the new artiles are that are read most, you help by growing traffic. This in turn may grow the editor community. Obviously people can ignore such input, but ensuring that the best possible data is available will imho make a difference.