Sorry for being so late replying. Isarra asks a good question and I have been thinking of a good answer.
On Thu, Apr 27, 2017 at 8:35 PM, Isarra Yos zhorishna@gmail.com wrote:
Different events serve very different purposes, though - hackathons, for instance, seem to be largely useful for onboarding newcomers and giving staff and other occupational contributors an opportunity to work on projects separate from their usual work, basically whatever they feel like doing, as opposed to what they have to. But these often don't do much for established volunteers, as a result, who generally just work on whatever they feel like all the time already. Have you looked into how the roles of these different events fit together across all the different groups, and how scopes affect them (regional, topical, etc)? This would also be useful for chapters/groups planning their own events.
Yes, we have started to think seriously how the different developer events fit together, how can they support better each other, and how can chapters and other affiliates get better involved organizing local / regional events or adding a tech component to the events they are already organizing.
Until recently our approach has been quite fragmented, organizing technically successful events disconnected from each other. We started a new trend last Summer, at the Wikimania Hackathon in Esino Lario, discussing with Wikimedia Austria how could we improve the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 (in Vienna, in two weeks) after the high bar set by Wikimedia Israel in Jerusalem. We had this idea of supporting the organization of smaller hackathons and sponsoring the best participants to travel to Vienna. The idea is working so far.
Growth paths for volunteers is another idea that has become very important in our strategy and plans. While we seem to be quite good at organizing developer events, developer outreach programs, developer community support... the fact is that we are not doing good at retaining new volunteer developers. Many come, but most leave. And there are many reasons for this, but we think that an important one is that we are not offering clear growth paths that make people stick around. Some volunteers find these growth paths themselves, and we have many examples in this list, but many simply don't see them and leave.
Developer events play an important role in these growth paths. Imagine that a chapter or even a small affiliate organizes a simple local workshop somewhere. One of the best participants, a total newcomer to Wikimedia although a fluent JavaScript developer, is invited to travel to the next hackathon in the nearest regional event (WikiArabia, WikiIndaba, the CEE conference...) There, the best developers are invited to one of our global hackathons (invited to South Africa in 2018, how cool is that!?!?).
Actually, the growth paths through events can be connected with related online activities (self-paced, scheduled), which allows us to work with more people beyond travel budget and people's possibilities with travel and calendars. We can also connect them with developer outreach programs (GSoC, Outreachy...). Who was a newcomer becomes more experienced, maybe a speaker or a trainer invited to online / offline events, maybe a maintainer, maybe a mentor, maybe grantee, a professional developer at Wikimedia...
OK, all these are ideas in progress that we are starting to put together at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Technical_Collaboration/Onboarding_New_Devel...
Now, back to the Summit. The Wikimedia Developer Summit never was an event crucial for onboarding new developers, and in fact it was not an event easy to involve volunteers, because of its location (expensive San Francisco, in a region where there are not many volunteer developers) and also because the topics were quite focused on what is work mostly for professional developers (see our cyclic discussions about how to integrate volunteer developers and the topics crucial for them).
We have tried in several editions, and it has been very difficult to obtain a mild success. Instead, now we are trying to bring some of the "Summit topics" to those hackathons based on who is attending anyway (or vice versa) and then we can focus the Summit around a specific topic and the people specializing on it, in the terms explained by Victoria. What topics will be discussed where will be decided by a program committee that will be active through the year, helping to provide this connection across events (see https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T160996 )
Sorry for the long response. It is the first time I write down all these ideas in a single place. Feedback is very welcome.