«Testing Wikipedia» could be a nice catchy name for a series for events in various cities around TDD, with experienced dev mentoring less experienced community members, etc. Even if the experts come and go, everybody learn, some test and process get done, and the community grow and learn.

From: juliendorra(a)juliendorra.com Date: Thu, 2 Aug 2012 20:16:47 +0200 To: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org CC: adrienne.alix(a)wikimedia.fr Subject: [Wikitech-l] About outreach and tech events (as suggested by Sumana!) Hi all, I'm Julien Dorra, I build creative communities using events. ex: http://museomix.com, http://artgameweekend.com, http://dorkbotparis.org, http://codinggouter.org. After a short discussion with Adrienne Alix from Wikimedia France, I took my chances and applied for the new role of Engineering Outreach Coordinator a few days ago!! Wish me luck!! (It's basically what I'm doing here in France with maybe the difference that we mix devs and non-devs, like designers and others professionals. We found that mixing is good for the cohesiveness of the communities built out of the events, because they are issue-oriented communities, mostly. Doing it for Wikimedia would be a dream job :) I also got a very nice answer from Sumana, encouraging me to "email this list with proposals/ideas of what the Wikimedia community ought to be doing" in term of engineering outreach. This application is a great occasion (excuse??) for me to divert some time and better understand the tech-side of the wikimedia community. I have collaborated with the non-tech side of the french community on issues like museum innovation and photography, but never directly with the tech-side of the community. I read with great interest the draft "Wikimedia Engineering/2012-13 Goals" ( http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2012-13_Goals). It's super-rich and very exciting in term of focus. - - So, I wanted to start with a couple of questions I was curious about: 1. In term of outreach to engineers, devs or other technical talents, in your experience is there a specific community that is harder to reach to than others for Wikimedia? 2. Also, would like to see even more effort toward the students? (as in "the future professionals"!). What about the web startuppers? (AFAISee in Paris, they don't really consider Wikimedia as a software project.) 3. Do you sometimes think there is not enough ux designers on this list? And during hackatons? What about other skills? - - Then, to engage the conversation further, I wanted to test on you some specific ideas around hackatons and technical events ;-) The wider issue of testing, of setting up a more robust test culture is one of the key goals for 2012-2013, if I understand well. I personally know at least 3 developers that are passionate about testing, love to evangelize Test Driven Dev, and that might attend a test-oriented, or TDD-oriented event – but they would probably *not* attend a Wikimedia or MediaWiki generalist event. They have so many event to attend! They even organize events themselves… These 3 devs I know personnaly are the kind of test-oriented mentors we want to be part of the wikimedia community, if for a weekend or a week, because they are good at mentoring and showing the path to others. So, how can we bring them in? That made me (re)think about the limits of generic events, and the importance of issue-oriented event. The idea I would like to put up to discussion would be to organize more fine grained events around specific issues: «Testing Wikipedia» could be a nice catchy name for a series for events in various cities around TDD, with experienced dev mentoring less experienced community members, etc. Even if the experts come and go, everybody learn, some test and process get done, and the community grow and learn. Another issue is engaging other orgs, so why not engage startups: «Wikimedia for fun and profit!» Ok, this title is a joke -- but we should do a series of events focused on encouraging startups to build products on top of MediaWiki, APIs and Wikipedia sites. The rationale here is that the more startups invest on the wikimedia tech, the more they contribute in return. The documentation of MediaWiki is also an issue. Let's not wait to have a big team to launch more sprints, let's the sprints build the team: «DocDocDooooc Sprints» Realspace events are a powerful way to focus people on a goal. So to build a stronger documentation team, we could start designing an engaging and inclusive event format, setting up dates and places for a series of events. That could boost interest, and gather people that wouldn't have think of helping on MediaWiki. Of course the challenge is to keep the momentum going in between realspace sprints. So that means building an strong doc community online too. Obviously, setting up events, even small ones, takes a lot of effort! Scaling them can seems too much to do, too, when resources are limited. The good news is that we have successful examples of worldwide scaled event formats, like Startup weekend, Dorkbot. It's doable. And the rewards can be huge. So the strategy here would be to kickstart local chapters with recipes for events and by connecting them with I call 'serial-collaborators', (people that love to attend hackatons and creative weekends - they know a lot about these events, and are precious resource for advice and support). Identifying and contacting partners and places usually helps a lot, too, for helping first-time event organizers. Having a regular schedule for the local, issue-driven events help the community stay focused on the goals in between events. - - - Of course if I post here it's because I need feedback, and I might be overly naive, overlooking many things. Does it makes sense to you? What's your own ideas about events as community catalyzers? Let's discuss here –– you can also reach me on twitter : http://twitter.com/juliendorra Julien _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l

Hi all, I'm Julien Dorra, I build creative communities using events. ex: http://museomix.com, http://artgameweekend.com, http://dorkbotparis.org, http://codinggouter.org. After a short discussion with Adrienne Alix from Wikimedia France, I took my chances and applied for the new role of Engineering Outreach Coordinator a few days ago!! Wish me luck!! (It's basically what I'm doing here in France with maybe the difference that we mix devs and non-devs, like designers and others professionals. We found that mixing is good for the cohesiveness of the communities built out of the events, because they are issue-oriented communities, mostly. Doing it for Wikimedia would be a dream job :) I also got a very nice answer from Sumana, encouraging me to "email this list with proposals/ideas of what the Wikimedia community ought to be doing" in term of engineering outreach. This application is a great occasion (excuse??) for me to divert some time and better understand the tech-side of the wikimedia community. I have collaborated with the non-tech side of the french community on issues like museum innovation and photography, but never directly with the tech-side of the community. I read with great interest the draft "Wikimedia Engineering/2012-13 Goals" ( http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Engineering/2012-13_Goals). It's super-rich and very exciting in term of focus. - - So, I wanted to start with a couple of questions I was curious about: 1. In term of outreach to engineers, devs or other technical talents, in your experience is there a specific community that is harder to reach to than others for Wikimedia? 2. Also, would like to see even more effort toward the students? (as in "the future professionals"!). What about the web startuppers? (AFAISee in Paris, they don't really consider Wikimedia as a software project.) 3. Do you sometimes think there is not enough ux designers on this list? And during hackatons? What about other skills? - - Then, to engage the conversation further, I wanted to test on you some specific ideas around hackatons and technical events ;-) The wider issue of testing, of setting up a more robust test culture is one of the key goals for 2012-2013, if I understand well. I personally know at least 3 developers that are passionate about testing, love to evangelize Test Driven Dev, and that might attend a test-oriented, or TDD-oriented event – but they would probably *not* attend a Wikimedia or MediaWiki generalist event. They have so many event to attend! They even organize events themselves… These 3 devs I know personnaly are the kind of test-oriented mentors we want to be part of the wikimedia community, if for a weekend or a week, because they are good at mentoring and showing the path to others. So, how can we bring them in? That made me (re)think about the limits of generic events, and the importance of issue-oriented event. The idea I would like to put up to discussion would be to organize more fine grained events around specific issues: «Testing Wikipedia» could be a nice catchy name for a series for events in various cities around TDD, with experienced dev mentoring less experienced community members, etc. Even if the experts come and go, everybody learn, some test and process get done, and the community grow and learn. Another issue is engaging other orgs, so why not engage startups: «Wikimedia for fun and profit!» Ok, this title is a joke -- but we should do a series of events focused on encouraging startups to build products on top of MediaWiki, APIs and Wikipedia sites. The rationale here is that the more startups invest on the wikimedia tech, the more they contribute in return. The documentation of MediaWiki is also an issue. Let's not wait to have a big team to launch more sprints, let's the sprints build the team: «DocDocDooooc Sprints» Realspace events are a powerful way to focus people on a goal. So to build a stronger documentation team, we could start designing an engaging and inclusive event format, setting up dates and places for a series of events. That could boost interest, and gather people that wouldn't have think of helping on MediaWiki. Of course the challenge is to keep the momentum going in between realspace sprints. So that means building an strong doc community online too. Obviously, setting up events, even small ones, takes a lot of effort! Scaling them can seems too much to do, too, when resources are limited. The good news is that we have successful examples of worldwide scaled event formats, like Startup weekend, Dorkbot. It's doable. And the rewards can be huge. So the strategy here would be to kickstart local chapters with recipes for events and by connecting them with I call 'serial-collaborators', (people that love to attend hackatons and creative weekends - they know a lot about these events, and are precious resource for advice and support). Identifying and contacting partners and places usually helps a lot, too, for helping first-time event organizers. Having a regular schedule for the local, issue-driven events help the community stay focused on the goals in between events. - - - Of course if I post here it's because I need feedback, and I might be overly naive, overlooking many things. Does it makes sense to you? What's your own ideas about events as community catalyzers? Let's discuss here –– you can also reach me on twitter : http://twitter.com/juliendorra Julien _______________________________________________ Wikitech-l mailing list Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l