[Engineering] Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018: Call for Position Statements

[Rachel Farrand]

Event: Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018

Dates: January 22 & 23, 2018

Location: San Francisco, California, USA


Details: The Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 (WMDS 18) is an invitation
only event hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. The format of the WMDS 18
will be discussions and conversations with stated goals and actionable
outcomes regarding the future Wikimedia Tech strategy. Participants will
submit position statements to the event organizers
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit#Organizing_team>,
which will be anonymised and ranked by our Program Committee
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit#Program_Committee>.
Invitations will be extended to the top 40 position statements; the 10
remaining invitations will be chosen by the program committee to ensure
diversity at the event in terms of technical background, organizations /
projects represented, and regional representation.

The Wikimedia Foundation has been hosting invitation-only, strategic,
technical events yearly beginning in 2012 starting with the Architecture
Summit. This event has changed names and grown over time until the
Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017. As we are experimenting with a new format
this year and will collect feedback and make changes for the future based
on that feedback.



Next steps for interested prospective attendees:

   1.

   Review the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 event page
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit>
   2.

   Review Thematic Overview
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit#Thematic_Overview>
   3.

   Spend some time thinking about how you believe Wikimedia Tech should
   move forward into the future
   4.

   Submit Position Statement
   <https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit#Position_Papers_.26_Registration>

*Position Statements can be submitted between Friday, September 8th and
Friday, September 29th.*

We are looking forward to reviewing your statements!


On Fri, Aug 25, 2017 at 3:59 PM, Victoria Coleman <vcoleman at wikimedia.org>
wrote:

> Hi everyone,
>
> I wanted to give you all a heads up about the upcoming Dev Summit. This
> year the Summit will be held in San Francisco on January 22nd and 23rd,
> 2018. We are still finalizing the details and will be sending out the call
> for participation soon. But meantime, we wanted to share a preview of the
> game plan with you so that you can hold the dates and begin to think about
> ways of participating.
>
> This has been a year of strategy making for the Foundation and our
> communities. As the way forward becomes clearer, we,  the technology
> community entrusted with delivering the products and infrastructure for
> supporting the community vision, need to reflect on what the movement
> strategy means for us and how to best prepare, plan and execute that
> support. This year, the Developer Summit is dedicated to this reflection.
> We invite technologists, managers and users to study, reflect and propose
> ways to support the strategic vision we are committed to. We would like you
> to capture your thoughts in a short position statement and join the
> conversation.
>
> Specifically, we invite you to think about ways of imagining, creating,
> planning, building and maintaining the technology foundation needed to
> enable the key tenets of our strategy:
>
> The infrastructure for open: We will empower individuals and institutions
> to participate and share, through open standards, platforms, and datasets.
> We will host, broker, share, and exchange free knowledge across
> institutions and communities. We will be a leading advocate and partner for
> increasing the creation, curation, and dissemination in free and open
> knowledge.
>
> An encyclopedia, and so much more: We will adapt to our changing world to
> offer knowledge in the most effective ways, across digital formats,
> devices, and experiences. We will adapt our communities and technology to
> the needs of the people we serve. As we include other forms of free
> knowledge, we will aim for these projects to be as successful as Wikipedia.
>
> Reliable, relevant information: We will continue our commitment to
> providing useful information that it is reliable, accurate, and relevant to
> users. We will integrate technologies that support accuracy at scale and
> enable greater insight into how knowledge is produced and shared. We will
> embrace the effort of increasing the quality, depth, breadth, and diversity
> of free knowledge, in all forms.
> This direction poses key questions for our technical community. Here are
> some example topics we would welcome ideas and discussion in:
>
>
>    - How do we maintain and grow the technical community and ready it for
>    the mission ahead?
>    - What should the role of open source be in the next 15 years of the
>    movement? How does it help or hinder? How do we promote it or adapt it? How
>    do we leverage it?
>    - What are the foundational building blocks for the language
>    technologies we will need in order to be present everywhere where there are
>    people?
>    - Scaling. What tools do we need as the movement and the community
>    grow?
>    - What are the implications of the strategic direction for our
>    infrastructure? Do we have any key gaps in this infrastructure? How ready
>    is our infrastructure for what is to come?
>    - How should MediaWiki evolve to support the mission?
>    - What technologies are necessary for embracing mobility?
>    - We operate in parts of the world where access to free knowledge is
>    blocked, hindered or plain dangerous. What tools do we need to support
>    these at-risk  communities?
>    - How and with whom should we partner to create the technologies
>    needed to support the mission?
>    - How can we leverage machine learning and analytics to support the
>    mission and our communities?
>    - What are emerging trends in technology that will impact our mission
>    in the next 5-10-15 years?
>
>
> These conversations will be invaluable input to the next phase of the
> strategy process as we shift from exploration to definition to execution.
> We are energized, excited and hopeful for a great set of thoughtful,
> impactful conversations.
>
> As we embark on this journey we want to have an open but focused dialog so
> we are aiming for a smaller participant cohort than previous Dev Summits.
> We want to encourage everyone to consider these questions and put forward
> ideas in the form of a short position paper or abstract. We are selecting a
> Program Committee that consists of respected technologists and best
> represents the diversity of our communities.  The Program Committee will
> screen and evaluate the position papers in a blind review process and will
> select those that best fit the strategic intent of this Summit. The authors
> will then be invited to participate. We hope to attract  those  within our
> community who are passionate about the future, hold a point of view and
> have concrete ideas for how we best use technology to support the
> objectives of the movement through 2030. We will bring the ideas and
> learnings from the Summit to the broader technology community during the
> upcoming hackathons and related events in the tech calendar.
>
> So stay tuned for the Call for Participation! Looking forward to seeing
> you in San Francisco!
>
>
>
> Victoria & the TechCom
>
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Wmfall mailing list
> Wmfall at lists.wikimedia.org
> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wmfall
>
>


-- 
Rachel Farrand
Events Program Manager
Technical Collaboration Team
Wikimedia Foundation
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/engineering/attachments/20170908/2411eb5b/attachment-0001.html>