On Apr 28, 2017, at 2:25 PM, zppix e
<megadev44s.mail(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Victoria,
Thanks for replying quickly, however what about the event I suggested, any
thoughts on that?
On Fri, Apr 28, 2017 at 3:57 PM, Victoria Coleman <vcoleman(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
Hi there,
Quim and his team have indeed thought through the totality of tech
community events and I am sure he can respond here with his thoughts.
Regarding the MediaWiki roadmap, the thinking is that by publishing it we
a/make planning for 3rd party users much more feasible, b/inform the
community about what the Foundation will be doing so that we can avoid
overlap, and c/hopefully incentivize broader participation by the
community in the formulation and delivery of the roadmap.
I hope this makes sense.
Victoria
On Apr 27, 2017, at 11:35 AM, Isarra Yos
<zhorishna(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Thanks.
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.
How exactly is publishing a roadmap going to help facilitate community
contributions?
-I
On 27/04/17 03:11, Victoria Coleman wrote:
> Hi Isarra,
>
> thank you for the question. We want to support our diverse technical
communities in a variety of ways. One of our key tools are the hackathons,
where we hope to welcome both seasoned and new volunteer developers. We
want to support them not just by providing a series of events but also with
tools and WMF staff time. These are the key goals of our new Wikimedia
Cloud Services team. They build and make labs and tools available and
participate in the hackathons to onboard newcomers and in general assist
volunteers. Another key change we are making this year is creating the
MediaWiki Platform team who as well as doing much needed work on the
codebase will also facilitate contributions and planning with the volunteer
community by publishing a roadmap. And as Quim notes below we are changing
the nature of the Dev Summit to have it focus on the strategic technology
issues and decisions the Movement is faced with. As such it is an event
that might appeal more to the seasoned members of our community. Attendance
for the summit will be decided on the basis of position papers for WMF
staff and volunteers alike. I am personally excited about the lineup of
events this coming year. But as always we learn and adapt. If we
collectively decide to try for a different configuration the following
year, we can totally do that. Please keep the feedback coming!
>
> Best regards,
>
> Victoria
>
>
>> On Apr 26, 2017, at 12:23 PM, Isarra Yos <zhorishna(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> Regarding the Developers Summit in particular, how do you plan to
reconcile making the event smaller with your goal of better retention of
newcomers and volunteers in general when that's often the only venue they
have at which to discuss the high-level technical issues with other
stakeholders? Volunteer and third-party developers are not privy to most of
the usual venues afforded to WMF staff such as inter-team meetings and
events, and yet they make up an important part of the overall stakeholder
community that these issues impact. They - we - need to be able to
participate in these discussions, and the Developers Summit is one of very
few opportunities even open to us where we can make our voices heard.
>>
>> -I
>>
>> On 20/04/17 07:28, Quim Gil wrote:
>>> On Sun, Apr 9, 2017 at 1:14 AM, Quim Gil<qgil(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi, the Wikimedia Foundation has published a draft of its Annual Plan
>>>> FY2017-18
>>>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_
Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Draft>
>>>> and it welcomes your review.
>>>>
>>>> I want to highlight here the improvements that we are proposing to
the
>>>> developer events (co)organized by
the WMF. From local to global:
>>>>
>>>> The Technical Collaboration team proposes to combine multiple
activities
>>>> (often disconnected) in a single
program focusing on onboarding new
>>>> developers
>>>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_
Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Draft/Programs/Community_Engagement#
Program_12:_Onboarding_new_developers>. We
>>>> want to work with the Wikimedia
technical community to bring a new
wave of
>>>> developers to our projects, and
events play an important role.
>>>>
>>>> Local developer events
>>>> We want to support developers and organizations willing to reach out
to
>>>> specific groups and geographies.
We are hoping to see many local
developer
>>>> meetups and small hackathons or
workshops around the World, starting
small
>>>> and simple. We should be able to
offer introductory materials,
contacts
>>>> with Wikimedia developers in the
region, maybe travel budget to send
>>>> experienced volunteers to help mentoring the in the bigger events,
maybe
>>>> travel budget to invite the best
newcomers to our regional and global
>>>> events.
>>>>
>>>> Adding tech to regional Wikimedia events
>>>> Last year we experimented organizing technical workshops in
WikiArabia,
>>>> and others have done similar
efforts in other regional events (for
>>>> instance, a small hackathon next to WikiConference India). We want
to work
>>>> with the organizers of these
regional events in order to attract
>>>> experienced Wikimedia developers and newcomers, organize developer
>>>> activities, and also improve the collaboration between the technical
and
>>>> non-technical contributors in
these regions.
>>>>
>>>> Better retention of newcomers at the Wikimedia and Wikimania
hackathons
>>>> Although we don't expect
major changes in the organization of the
>>>> Wikimedia Hackathon and the hackathon at Wikimania, we want to focus
better
>>>> on new developers onboarding and
retention. In every Hackathon we
meet many
>>>> new developers, but the retention
rates are very low. We want to
review
>>>> what we can do before, during,
and after these apparently successful
events
>>>> in order to retain newcomers
better. One hypothesis is that we
should focus
>>>> call for participation,
scholarships, and Wikimedia Foundation
>>>> participation in providing a great experience to new volunteers who
have
>>>> gone through local and regional
events, and also "junior" developers
coming
>>>> from wiki projects through the
development of bots, gadgets, tools,
>>>> templates.
>>>>
>>>> A smaller and more focused Wikimedia Developer Summit
>>>> After some discussions between Community Engagement, Technology, and
>>>> Product, we have decided to propose a different approach for the
Wikimedia
>>>> Developer Summit. Organized by
the Technology department as part of
their technical
>>>> community building
>>>> <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_
Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Draft/Programs/Technology#Program_4:
_Technical_community_building>
>>>> efforts, we want the Summit to
finally become the venue where the
toughest
>>>> technical problems are discussed
between the stakeholders directly
related.
>>>> We want to reduce the size/budget
of the event, separate it from the
WMF
>>>> AllHands,
>>>>
>>> Due to travel budget considerations, the Summit still might be
connected to
>>> the WMF AllHands.
>>>
>>>
>>>> and define its main themes well in advance.
>>>>
>>>> A Program
Committee<https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T160996>
would
>>>> decide these main themes to be
discussed at the Summit. We also want
to
>>>> explore the possibility of
tackling some of these themes at the
Wikimedia
>>>> Hackathon and Wikimania, where we
could get most stakeholders
involved with
>>>> just a little extra effort (since
many of them would be attending
anyway).
>>>>
>>>> We believe that this approach will serve better the Wikimedia
technical
>>>> community that we have, and also
the the community that we want to
have,
>>> with a new wave of developers joining our various projects.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Quim Gil
>>> Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation
>>>
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil
>>>
> _______________________________________________
> Wikitech-l mailing list
> Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
>
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikitech-l
_______________________________________________
Wikitech-l mailing list
Wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org