Hello, everyone.

TLDR:

The Board of Trustees’ Community Affairs Committee https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Committee (CAC) is hosting its first office hour on May 13, 2021, at 19:00 UTC (check for your local time https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1620928828)!

Now in more details:

What are we announcing?

The CAC is a new Board of Trustees https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Board_of_Trustees committee established to assess, explore and address current and future community-related efforts. The Committee's Charter https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Community_Affairs_Committee_Charter lists its full responsibilities, with the first 3 being a priority for this coming year.

As part of our commitment to foster better communications with the Wikimedia Movement Community, and based on feedback received from community members requesting more availability from the Board of Trustees, the CAC will be hosting its first Office hours.

When & Where?

The Office hours will be held on May 13 2021, at 19:00 UTC (check for your local time https://zonestamp.toolforge.org/1620928828) via Zoom. At least 3 Trustees, as well as relevant WMF staff, will be in attendance. The session will be streamed live and recorded, so those who cannot participate live will be able to watch later.

How will it work?

The meeting will last for 60 minutes and an additional 30 minutes of an “open room”. The first 60 minutes will be divided into 45 minutes of structured Q & A (based on either update from the CAC and questions sent by the community in advance). The final 15 minutes will be in the “ask us anything” format, with live participation. We will be monitoring live YouTube, Wikipedia Weekly Facebook group https://www.facebook.com/groups/553393111375191 and the Wikimedia General Chat Telegram group https://t.me/WikimediaGeneral and the talk page on Meta https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Committee/2021-05-13_Office_Hour. The structure is meant to enable the CAC to not only update the community on current matters the Board is working on, but also hear directly from the community, which will help inform the Committee’s future work.

Setting the agenda with your Questions

In order to be as efficient as possible, and since we anticipate that some questions will require answers from WMF Staff, we are encouraging community members to send questions in advance. Please send all questions to askcac@wikimedia.org, by Friday, May 7th (midnight, whatever time zone you may be in). The office hour agenda will be based on the main topics related to the questions received. We will share this agenda on Meta https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Community_Affairs_Committee/2021-05-13_Office_Hour on May 12, including the final names of Trustees in attendance.

How to register?

For security reasons and specifically to avoid Zoombombing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoombombing, we will be sending the Zoom link only to people who have registered in advance close to the meeting. In order to register, please send an email to askcac@wikimedia.org, indicating your name, username, affiliation if you have any. The title should be: “Registration for the May 13th CAC Office Hours”.

Please note --

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This is the first time that the Board is attempting something of the sort. This is an experiment. We’ll see how it goes - how many people are interested in attending, timing, translation needs etc -- and make decisions about future meetings / changes to format accordingly. -

The session will be moderated based on the Universal Code of Conduct https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Universal_Code_of_Conduct -

Universally blocked users will not be allowed in the room, but can still participate by watching live and sending questions in real-time.

Please help us spread the word by sharing this message with your local/online communities.

Hoping to see as many of you as possible,

Krishna Chaitanya