[Wikimedia-l] Hiring Community Liaisons (Contract)

[Oliver Keyes]

Howie

The person doing the email screener was meant to be me. When did this
change?

On 18 May 2013 06:58, Howie Fung <hfung at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> *
>
> Hey all,
>
> For the last 18 months, the Engineering & Product Development department
> has been experimenting with the role of “Community Liaison, Product
> Development” - a staff member embedded in the Product team and tasked with
> factoring community concerns into our software development process, keeping
> editors informed about what we’re doing, and maintaining a dialogue between
> those who write code and those who write articles.
>
> While there is always room for improvement, I think this role has shown a
> lot of promise.  We have a number of large projects coming down the
> pipeline (e.g., visual editor, discussion systems) and we need more help
> reaching out to our contributor communities, especially our non-English
> speaking projects, as our outreach there has traditionally been challenged.
>  We’d like to recruit a small number of English-speaking or multilingual
> editors to do the Community Liaison job with different development teams
> and focuses.
>
> In particular we’re looking for people with a strong history of
> contributions to our projects who can provide sound and reasoned judgment
> and are trusted to do so by their community. Speaking other languages in
> addition to English is a major plus, as one of the objectives here is to
> ensure we can properly interact with and support non-English projects.
>  I’ve included the full job description below.
>
> Our immediate need is for help with the Visual Editor.  We’d like to hire a
> few community liaisons to help inform different Wikipedia language
> communities of the upcoming launch, create spaces for feedback and
> discussion, synthesize feedback for the Visual Editor team, and other
> activities required to support the Visual Editor launch later this year.
>
> If this is a role that would interest you, please e-mail Philippe Beaudette
> at pbeaudette at wikimedia.org<
> https://mail.google.com/mail/?view=cm&fs=1&tf=1&to=pbeaudette@wikimedia.org
> >.
>  And if you know someone else who might fit the role, let them know about
> it :-). We’re provisionally interested in hiring 2-3 liaisons, at an hourly
> rate commensurate with experience.  This can be a part-time role, but we’ll
> need at least 15 hours/week for the length of the engagement (minimum 3
> months).  Please do apply if you think it’s a role that suits you, and if
> you find places we haven’t notified, spread the word!
>
> Thanks.
>
>
> Howie
> *
> _________________________
> Howie Fung
> Director of Product Development
> Wikimedia Foundation
>
>
> *
>
> Community Liaison Job Description
>
> Background Information and Statement of Purpose
>
> The Wikimedia Foundation’s Engineering & Product Development Department is
> looking at ways to more effectively incorporate broad community
> perspectives in decisions and hold dialogues with our editors about the
> scope, pace and features of upcoming changes to Wikimedia projects. As part
> of this, it is hiring additional Community Liaisons from our volunteer
> community.
>
> Scope of Work
>
> Support and improve our ongoing software development projects, in
> particular:
>
>    -
>
>    Building up a network of volunteers from both English language and
>    non-English language wikis, increasing the number of projects we can
>    interact with;
>    -
>
>    Engaging the community in the software development process, by acting as
>    a conduit for community questions, bugs and and feature requests,
> talking
>    to editors about our work and how they can participate in it
> effectively,
>    and recruiting them for workgroups and studies;
>    -
>
>    Being available from time to time to provide expertise and knowledge
>    about our projects, including but not limited to training
>    externally-sourced staff in the way our projects work, answering their
>    questions, and providing expert advice on an ad-hoc basis;
>    -
>
>    Ensuring that our community is represented in the decision-making
>    process and that our planned software adequately reflects user needs;
>    -
>
>    Monitoring Wikimedia projects, with the assistance of a network of
>    volunteers, for emerging issues that have an impact on Engineering
>    programmes; and
>    -
>
>    Other duties as needed.
>
>
> Requirements
>
> Effective Community Liaisons will be:
>
>    -
>
>    Experienced users of Wikimedia projects, capable of representing our
>    community within the Foundation and vice-versa.
>    -
>
>    Strong communicators (both verbally and with the written word), able to
>    explain our products to different groups of users with different levels
> of
>    technical understanding.
>    -
>
>    Able to focus on the larger picture, understanding which concerns and
>    views are widespread and which are marginal or individual.
>    -
>
>    Approachable, as both users and product developers must be able to trust
>    these people for the relationship to function.
>    -
>
>    Self-motivated - they will be given important projects and expected to
>    execute with little to no supervision.
>    -
>
>    Strongly empathetic - they excel at understanding the perspectives of
>    others and bridging the gap between different approaches to the world.
>    -
>
>    Willing and able to remain resilient in the face of frustration from our
>    users, in order to get the job done.
>
>
> Pluses
>
> Other positive attributes or areas of knowledge include:
>
>    -
>
>    Diverse language skills. While the Wikimedia Foundation communicates
>    internally in English, we aim to be able to talk to our different
>    communities natively.
>    -
>
>    Experience with the software development process. You will be thrown
>    into teams that are actively working on new features; having a
> background
>    that reduces the slope of your learning curve is a plus.
>    - Familiarity with multiple Wikimedia projects is a major plus; we are
>    about more than just Wikipedia.
>
> *
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-- 
Oliver Keyes
Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation