[wsfii-discuss] WSFII site is up and running again

Wed May 21 12:43:30 UTC 2008

Dear Bjarke, dear DIIRWB Team, dear all,

I am glad and happy to see that the WSFII-website is up and running again! That's really great. Thank you so much!

I have some thoughts about WSFII online:

With all my activities, whether it's freifunk.net or the newly formed OpenHardware Initiative, I am always pinpointing to WSFII and our website http://wsfii.org. You can see that e.g. in my latest OHI presentation which I held in Taiwan: http://www.openpattern.org/slides/OHI_Presentation_TW_20080425_jpn.pdf.

To me the true value of WSFII is the world spanning social network of experts in various fields we all have formed over the past 5 years. Many times friendships have been the result of our common activities. 

I know that some people would like to turn WSFII or likewise initiatives into an legal and more organized entity. But I do not see the value of this for our concernes. Most of the people here have numerous legal entities in their backhand and if there is a need for an organisation we already have so many of them. Forming a legal entity always includes exclusion and hirachies. For WSFII I am happy that we have managed to avoid that. How far one can get on this path is well dicumented with e.g. the Debian project, who never formed an entity for the main project either.

On the other hand a loose organisation has it's problems, too, especially when it comes to the need of cooperating with exisiting entities or other legal bodies. Also some people see lack of liability and engagement. But as many of our engagement is based on volunteer acitivies I do not see how getting a body could really help to escape from that. Especially I think that many foundations have to struggle with fundraising and halfly payed and non-payed labor and administration. I do not want to see WSFII end there. Especially not if I think of the true size WSFII has already achieved.

But as we are not an entity I still see a great need for a brand or label, something we all refer to. I really like the WSFII slogan and the logo (see upper left side of the webpage) and our memorandum of understanding. And I still see a great need for physical meetings with a refenrence to the WSFII project.

So, I would really like to invite you to add the WSFII logo and a link from your local projects webpages to the WSFII website and to make use of the event calendar on the website to add your local WSFII relevant events there.

Also we had the plan to start a new wiki at http://www.wsfii.org/wsfii-memorandum-of-understanding/wiki/, long time ago, where you can also find a link to the original WSFII wiki at http://www.wsfii.org/wiki/FrontPage. 

I think it could still be of relevance to switch to a media wiki as most of us are very familiar with it's syntax. Saying that I would really think that it would be a good idea to install a new Media-Wiki now and fill it will a lot of WSFII relevant contents we can gather from the various online and offline sources. This could include 

- links with short descriptions of the various WSFII affiliated projects around the world
- Documentations of past WSFII events

and most important to me:

- a short bio of every person that feels close and supportive with WSFII, including skills and experience, as well as their local acitivities.

I do believe that WSFII people arround the globe have already formed a unique human network across many boundaries, boundaries like countries, continents and organisations. I would love to see that documented at some place and I think that the WSFII-wiki would be the right place for doing so. As we discussed earlier on the mailinglist, I do NOT want to make use of existing commercial systems like linked-in, XING or likewise for our purpose. Fitting our DIY approach our own wiki is the right place to do so I think.  

Please state your comments on my thoughts. I would be glad to hear your opinions, criticism and ideas.

Thx,

JuergeN