Hi Siko,
Thanks for the constructive thoughts.
I agree it is good to focus on the future, and have a good discussion about
this. I hope that chapters and organised groups (who could have higher odds
for bidding/hosting) also discuss this topic, and use that as input. That
way, more people can be included indirectly.
While I do think we should really discuss this, I do also think Esino Lario
is a very brave experiment, and I would like to separate the discussion
between general goals, and how we accomplish them. I expect we will learn
many lessons from Esino Lario based on the very creative approach to the
conference. Some things will work out great, and should be repeated, others
probably give a less enthusiast feeling for repetition. That is nothing to
be ashamed of, because if we never try, we never find out.
So I would like to propose that this consultation does /not/ result in a
very rigid set of criteria and process, but that it focuses on the main
goals, the main ideas what we want with Wikimania - and that we revisit
that shortly after Esino Lario to incorporate those lessons. That also
gives some space to have a real life discussion at Wikimania about this
plan :) It would be nice to have a good set of input for that real life
discussion though!
Best,
Lodewijk
On Tue, Oct 6, 2015 at 12:11 AM, Siko Bouterse <sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hi folks,
Just letting you know that I’m reading the recent Wikimania-focused
mailing list threads with interest, as the Community Resources team is now
on-point for funding and coordinating WMF’s involvement in Wikimania.
A couple of first thoughts to share:
1. WMF has learned from past Wikimanias that we need to do our
due-diligence on venue etc before the host team and location is announced.
One reason for this is that we have a limited budget for Wikimania, and
doing a site visit before the host is finalized helps us ensure that we’re
able to support the costs of the event in a given location. Ellie Young is
headed to Montreal in 2 weeks and based on what she learns from that visit,
we’re aiming to give the steering committee what they need to confirm
selection before the end of 2015. That said, we recognize that
communications around this haven’t gone as planned, and we are looking into
improvements…(see thought 2)
2. We, too, would like to see the movement building towards a shared
vision of Wikimania! It is great to see so many people, in true
Wikimedian-style, thinking about big-picture questions of participation,
representation, and content at Wikimania. Knowing that mailing list
discussions have their limits, here’s how my team is thinking about
collecting feedback more systematically for this going forward:
We’ll be launching a community consultation in November to help build
towards more shared vision and process improvements for Wikimania 2018 -
2021. Two key inputs we’ve been thinking about using to launch that
conversation are 1) responses from the survey of last Wikimania’s attendees
and 2) the steering committee’s recommendation for host selection going
forward.
We’re still regrouping from the latest Resources Consultation, and will
begin planning for a Wikimania Consultation next week, so after that we’ll
be able to share more information about what this consultation will look
like and the exact timeline. Meanwhile, suggestions and open questions that
you’d like to see resolved via this consultation are most welcome in this
thread. My hope is that a consultation will help broaden participation in
these conversations and get us from input to action.
Warm regards,
Siko
--
Siko Bouterse
Director of Community Resources
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
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