Re : New WMF initiative: Community Capacity Development - Wikimedia-l

31 Aug 2015

Hi Asaf,

Thank you for sharing these news! I think building capacities is key for
our movement and the way this initiative is presented seems to me very
relevant and useful.

I am wondering to what extent / how this articulates :
- with the programme and work done at Wikimedia Conference this year, where
most of these topics where covered
- with the follow-up day of WMCON at Wikimania in Mexico where some
sessions where dedicated to these topics
- with the work done by several subcommunities (such as the Volunteer
Support Network, for instance, who - I guess - is dealing with most of
these issues)

Do you plan to map and embark the several existing initiatives around these
topics across our movement, to build on what's already existing, and how?
Do you plan to have one contact point per topic at WMF to make co-creation
and cooperation as efficient as possible?
What is the actual target group of the initiative? Only "Emerging
Communities" or also already "emerged" communities?

It seems to me that there are parallel actions aiming at the same goal
here, and it would be great to see them dialogue, converge or even merge
rather than dissipating our efforts on such important matters. What do you
think ?

Thanks a lot for your answers,

Have a great week,

Anne-Laure

*Anne-Laure Prévost*
CONSEILLÈRE SPÉCIALE PARTENARIATS ET RELATIONS INSTITUTIONNELLES /
SPECIAL ADVISOR PARTNERSHIPS & INSTITUTIONAL RELATIONSHIPS

*Tél  +33 7 62 93 42 02 /* *+33 1 42 36 97 72*
*www.wikimedia.fr <http://www.wikimedia.fr/> *
*40 rue de Cléry, 75002 Paris* <http://osm.org/go/0BPIihnIn?node=691082430>

Date: Tue, 25 Aug 2015 16:40:25 -0700
From: Asaf Bartov &lt;abartov(a)wikimedia.org&gt;
To: Wikimedia Mailing List &lt;wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org&gt;
Subject: [Wikimedia-l] New WMF initiative: Community Capacity
        Development
Message-ID:
        &lt;CAAmrcwftyCuv2MF6es0yjDGhcXyZhNvBBN5xdx8iWEJENcqEKg(a)mail.gmail.com&gt;
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

Dear Wikimedians,

{{Nutshell|WMF Community Engagement Team is allocating staff time and
funding to deliberate capacity-development projects with interested
communities in six capacity areas: community governance; conflict
management; on-wiki technical skills; new contributor engagement and
growth; partnerships; communications}}

==Details==
This is a new way of partnering with WMF: through two way conversations
(rather than top-down planning), WMF will work with specific emerging
communities to explore obstacles for community growth and explore and pilot
solutions together.

The first phase of this work consisted of a series of in-depth interviews
with individuals from 16 specific emerging communities to gather
information about existing and missing capacities.  Reviewing those
interviews in aggregate, we came up with six capacities it seems useful to
work together on.

We prepared a page per such capacity, detailing challenges and possible
approaches to build that capacity. We welcome your  feedback! Contributions
to those pages can be done in the following ways:

* Sign up on the sidebar of each capacity subpage if you want to implement
certain practices described,
* Provide more links to resources,
* Expand the Potential Solutions section with new ideas.

These pages, including your contributions, will serve as the basis for
specific conversations with specific communities to develop plans or
projects to build capacity.

During this initial pilot period, we intend to pursue projects in two or
three capacities at most, which will be chosen according to community
interest, scale of community, and scale of readership.  We expect some of
the specific actions we take in these projects would create resources
[re-]usable by other communities as well.

==Join the Conversation==
We invite you all to read through the capacity pages, and specifically, to
see if the challenges described resonate with you and your community.  If
they do, have an on-wiki discussion about it with your community, and if
there's general interest, sign up on the capacity pages and we'll have a
conversation about what might be some possible next steps.

Find the six capacity pages on Meta, here:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Capacity_Development

Looking forward to fruitful engagement,

   Asaf Bartov
   Sati Houston
   Community Engagement department
--
    Asaf Bartov
    Wikimedia Foundation <http://www.wikimediafoundation.org>

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