Hi folks,
A few weeks ago, our product group started a new editor engagement program we call
Roundtables, to improve our software tools with community participation.
The goal of this experimental program is to create better user experiences through
focused, small group discussions between members of the Wikipedia and MediaWiki
communities and Wikimedia product teams.
We aim to build closer closer collaborations with our community, through face-to-face
meetings and video conferences that can augment text-only communication channels to solve
complex issues through real-time, high-bandwidth conversations.
So far, we have found this roundtable process to be incredibly helpful for our teams. This
convivial approach seems to be a promising new way to collaborate with community members
and inform our product development.
In coming weeks, we will write a more in-depth report on our findings and will keep you
posted on our next steps with this program.
For now, here are our preliminary reports on the first two roundtables:
• Roundtable on Editor Engagement - Wikimedia Foundation - June 22, 2013
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Roundtables/Roundtable_1
• Roundtable on Multimedia - Google Hangouts - July 10, 2013
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Roundtables/Roundtable_2
The first roundtable on engagement was a daylong face-to-face discussion in San Francisco,
while the second roundtable on multimedia was hosted virtually, over Google Hangouts. Both
approaches seemed effective in their own ways, and we are now evaluating the pros and cons
of each collaboration method.
Next, we plan to host two more roundtables at Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong this summer:
* Roundtable on Multimedia - Wikimania 2013 - August 8, 2013
http://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Multimedia_Roundtable
* Roundtable on Flow (Discussions and Messaging) - Wikimania 2013 - August 9, 2013
http://wikimania2013.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Roundtable_on_Messaging…
You are welcome to sign up for the second roundtable about Flow on the Wikimania page.
(The Multimedia roundtable is nearly full, and we would like to keep it up to a dozen
participants, but the Flow roundtable still has room for more participants.)
And be sure to add this Roundtable page to your watchlist, to learn more about future
events:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Roundtables
We want to make it clear that this Roundtable program is intended to complement existing
talk page discussions and IRC chats, not to replace them. It helps our product teams to
have focused discussions with small groups of contributors, but we will continue to
interact with our community through existing channels.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the community participants who joined
our first roundtables, as well as the many team members who made them possible, including
Howie, Maryana, Brandon, Brian, Mark, Robla, Jared, Erik, Steven, Asaf, Chip, James, Siko,
Oliver and Philippe, to name but a few.
To be continued!
All the best,
Fabrice
_______________________________
Fabrice Florin
Product Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
+1 (415) 860-6484
fflorin(a)wikimedia.org
Wikipedia Profile:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Fabrice_Florin_(WMF)