[Wikimedia-l] Hiring Community Liaisons (Contract)

[Oliver Keyes]

Whoops; sorry, all! Evidently it was a mistake to go near my laptop before
my morning coffee :).

Please ignore me; I'll be dunking my head in a barrel of water to wake up.

On 18 May 2013 15:48, Oliver Keyes <okeyes at wikimedia.org> wrote:

> 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
>



-- 
Oliver Keyes
Community Liaison, Product Development
Wikimedia Foundation