Hello,
As most of you are aware, the Wikimedia movement has embarked on an
ambitious initiative to discuss our collective future and determine a
movement-wide strategic direction. [1]
The movement is composed of people in many different roles, notably
individual contributors who may not be affiliated with any organized
group. It can be challenging to reach individual contributors and
involve them in strategy discussions, since they may not monitor the
usual communication channels, and they may not think that strategy
discussions are relevant to them.
For this year’s movement strategy process, the Wikimedia Foundation
has decided to hire 19 part-time discussion coordinators to better
bridge the gap between the strategy discussions and local communities
of contributors.
Today, I am thrilled to announce that we have concluded the search and
assembled a stellar team of 19 long-time Wikimedians, who have agreed
to join the movement strategy efforts in this capacity.
As you go through the team’s page on Meta-Wiki, you will see many
familiar names. [2] The team is composed of Abbad, Bohdan, Chico,
Gereon, Jonatan, Ran, Marco, Nahid, Niccolò, Tomasz, Robin, Samuel,
Satdeep, Szymon, Oleg, Takashi, Todd, Tuan, and Venus. Because of the
team’s geographic distribution, Jan Eissfeldt, from the Foundation’s
Support and Safety team, has agreed to help lead the day-to-day
activities of the group of Asian language coordinators.
All the coordinators started on Monday for a 3-month contract, and
they have already been hard at work, translating materials on Meta and
organizing the outreach to their local communities. [3] Some will
focus their efforts on specific language communities [4], and others
will support an array of smaller communities.
If you are interested in working with the coordinators to bridge the
gap with your local communities, I invite you to take a look at the
description of the coordinator role, and sign up using the form on
that page. [5] You can also contact them directly via their talk page.
I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who was involved in
this ultra-fast hiring process, most notably the Foundation’s Talent &
Culture team, who handled the recruiting and administrative onboarding
masterfully, and the Community Engagement department, who reached out
to their contacts, thoroughly reviewed applications, and made this
ambitious wave of recruiting ridiculously easy for me.
Please join me in welcoming Venus, Tuan, Todd, Takashi, Oleg, Szymon,
Satdeep, Samuel, Robin, Tomasz, Niccolò, Nahid, Marco, Ran, Jonatan,
Gereon, Chico, Bohdan, and Abbad in their new role.
Guillaume Paumier
[1]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017
[2]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/People/Str…
[3]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Track_B/Ou…
[4]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017#Langu…
[5]
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Toolkit/Di…
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Guillaume Paumier