On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 9:31 PM, Pine W <wiki.pine(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Harry, I recall hearing that there was a push a year
or two back to alter
the proportion of presentations at Wikimania so that there were fewer WMF
presentations and more community presentations. I don't know if that was a
one time event or if that's ongoing.
As a WMF presenter, I'd like to respond briefly. First: the WMF has an
internal budget as well, and its decisions about who goes/does not go to
Wikimania have their own troubles/nuances/benefits, etc.
In my own opinion, the WMF is employed to do development work for the
community. I feel that tipping the balance too much toward either WMF or
community presentations do both a disservice. If Wikimania were to be only
community presentations, surely the complaint would arise that WMF was
absent, does not know about all the good work the community is doing, isn't
adequately supporting them with its work, etc, and conversely WMF employees
would feel the community is left ignorant of the tools they are building on
the communities' behalf. And obviously if Wikimania were only WMF
presentations those employed to serve the community would be doing all our
time talking when we should be listening! A balance is needed (and we can
have a great debate on what the right balance should be; I didn't hear any
complaints from participants about the balance at Esino Lario, for example).
Wikimania is a great opportunity for communication between different facets
of our movement, both planned and unplanned. My own experience from
leading problem-solving teams in various capacities is that the unplanned
interactions are actually the most important. Generally, if you *know
already* that X is working on Y which is of interest to you, then you can
with more-or-less difficulty find X to exchange ideas about Y. But how do
you find people when you have no idea who they are or that they are working
on something of interest! That's the opportunity you get by gathering all
sorts of different Wikimedians in one place, and having them eat and
socialize together.
As such, my personal opinion is that purely "merit-based" participant
selection --- both of community members and internally at WMF (usually
based on having an accepted presentation) --- runs the danger of not
including enough folks who are there (a) to listen, not talk, (b) who would
be inspired by things they did not expect and could not have predicted on
an application.
If I were to make this a concrete suggestion, I'd suggest including some
number of "perfectly fair" random scholarships/participant selections, so
that even non-presenting WMF employees and first-time community
representatives get a chance to listen to each other, learn unexpected
things, and be inspired.
--scott
ps. Having a "report back" expectation also seems fine and useful.