2009/4/30 Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com:
2009/4/30 Michael Snow wikipedia@verizon.net:
Anybody who wants to help the Wikimedia projects is invited to participate. I expect that the primary activity will involve working groups developing pieces of the strategy on-wiki.
How will these working groups be organised? Having a specific group working on something and having everything open to participation by everyone seem to be contradictory. Will there be a deadline to sign up to each group before it starts work, or will the groups not actually have a well-defined membership? Or do you have some other plan I haven't considered?
Hi Thomas,
We don't have answers to those questions yet :-)
Basically, we (mostly Michael and I) will be designing the process over the next few months -- it's scheduled to kick off in July, and we'll be working through org structure, timelines, etc., between now and then.
What you say is true: there is a fairly fundamental tension between openness and a structure designed to drive towards decisions.
The fastest way to develop a strategy would be to have me and Michael create it alone in a room in a single day, or have Michael tell me what the strategy is, or have me recommend one to him. But it wouldn't necessarily be a very good strategy, and it certainly wouldn't be as good as what we can accomplish collectively :-)
In a conventional organization, strategy development usually involves just the senior management team, sometimes including consultation with key stakeholders or experts. We obviously don't want to do it that way. Our strength is our openness, and our fundamental premise is that broad participation drives good decision quality. Many, many people have something to contribute -- be it a fact or piece of information, the ability to brainstorm, a contrarian view, the ability to reconcile divergent views, or a pointer towards expertise we don't currently have. That is true of the work that's done in the Wikimedia projects, and we think it also should be true for our strategy project.
Having said that, we need some structure to ensure the work happens. The trick will be trying to design a process that strikes a good balance between total openness, and driving towards decision-making. It's my responsibility to try to find that balance :-)
Here's a very quick sketch of the structure I am imagining right now:
* A steering committee, made up of the board. The steering committee's job is to oversee the work, and make sure it's consistent with our core values. To evangelize on behalf of the project and support it, and to make hard decisions about priorities when necessary.
* A project team made up of a small number of people accountable for driving the work forward, keeping it on track. I expect it would be mostly paid staff and paid support. It would be process-focused not substance-focused.
* A small number of Working Groups, responsible for developing a set of strategic recommendations within a fairly broad scope. For example, we might have Working Groups on Reach, on Quality, on Participation. The Working Groups' job would be to evaluate and synthesize recommendations from the Sub-Groups, below. I do not think the people on the Working Groups would necessarily need to be experts in their area, but they would definitely need to be strategic thinkers, inclined towards convergence, and ideally with some expertise doing strategy work.
* A larger number of Sub-Groups, with responsibility for developing recommendations that feed into those broader-scope Working Groups. For example, the Reach Working Group might have a Sub-Group focused on "reaching people with offline readers"; the Quality Working Group might have a Sub-Group focused on "freeing up archival/library/media content"; the Participation Working Group might have a Sub-Group focused on "attracting academics to participate in the projects." Those aren't necessarily the best examples, but I'm sure you get the idea. The people in the Sub-Groups will need, ideally, to have real subject-matter expertise, or be willing to work hard to get it where it's missing.
* A small number of people supporting the process, and the groups, in various ways. That will include the Wikimedia Foundation staff, who will be available to the groups for advice and expertise as needed. It will also, I hope, include our Advisory Board members, who support our goals and are expert in various fields. And it will include three new paid positions -- short-term contracts designed to support this process. Those jobs will be posted within a week or so, and will include a Project Manager, a Research Analyst, and a Facilitator. (I'll post a note here when those jobs go up.)
A couple of quick additional points:
* The structure outlined above will simply address the "what" -- what we want the Wikimedia movement to accomplish together. It will not address the "how" --- big questions around how to structure ourselves to achieve this work, how to pay for it all, how to communicate our plans externally once they are developed, etc. I am thinking now about how to best address the "how" questions in this process.
* I believe the Working Groups and Sub-Groups should be fairly small, in order to gel as a team and get the work done. Like, 4-6 people in each. And, the people in the groups will need to be able to dedicate quite a bit of time to the project, probably over a duration of several months. So, we will additionally need to create other mechanisms for involving additional people -- as experts who can be called upon by the groups, as reviewers to comment upon the work as it's being done, and in other roles. I am thinking now about what that might look like, and also about how to make the work of the groups as public and transparent as possible. (It is also probable that we'll aim to construct some surveys and other mechanisms for feedback, for people who don't have the time or inclination to really get involved, but who nonetheless would like to have some input.)
* There is also a big question about languages. The work will need to be done in English, but we will also want to provide avenues for non-English-speakers to participate, other than through their own direct connections to people who do speak English. That will be hard.
* I am also thinking about how best to involve the voices of readers -- the people who use our projects, but don't contribute to them. I think this is really important -- after all, the purpose of the projects is to freely provide information to people everywhere in the world, so it's critical that those people's differing opinions and attitudes and desires be well-understood. I am not yet sure how to make that happen. But I think that if the project were to end up ignoring Wikimedia readers, that would be a huge missed opportunity.
Hope this helps a little. Please feel free (anyone) to comment on this: it's very much a work-in-progress, and your views are welcome :-)
Thanks, Sue