Hi folks,
Just letting you know that I’m reading the recent Wikimania-focused mailing
list threads with interest, as the Community Resources team is now on-point
for funding and coordinating WMF’s involvement in Wikimania.
A couple of first thoughts to share:
1. WMF has learned from past Wikimanias that we need to do our
due-diligence on venue etc before the host team and location is announced.
One reason for this is that we have a limited budget for Wikimania, and
doing a site visit before the host is finalized helps us ensure that we’re
able to support the costs of the event in a given location. Ellie Young is
headed to Montreal in 2 weeks and based on what she learns from that visit,
we’re aiming to give the steering committee what they need to confirm
selection before the end of 2015. That said, we recognize that
communications around this haven’t gone as planned, and we are looking into
improvements…(see thought 2)
2. We, too, would like to see the movement building towards a shared vision
of Wikimania! It is great to see so many people, in true Wikimedian-style,
thinking about big-picture questions of participation, representation, and
content at Wikimania. Knowing that mailing list discussions have their
limits, here’s how my team is thinking about collecting feedback more
systematically for this going forward:
We’ll be launching a community consultation in November to help build
towards more shared vision and process improvements for Wikimania 2018 -
2021. Two key inputs we’ve been thinking about using to launch that
conversation are 1) responses from the survey of last Wikimania’s attendees
and 2) the steering committee’s recommendation for host selection going
forward.
We’re still regrouping from the latest Resources Consultation, and will
begin planning for a Wikimania Consultation next week, so after that we’ll
be able to share more information about what this consultation will look
like and the exact timeline. Meanwhile, suggestions and open questions that
you’d like to see resolved via this consultation are most welcome in this
thread. My hope is that a consultation will help broaden participation in
these conversations and get us from input to action.
Warm regards,
Siko
--
Siko Bouterse
Director of Community Resources
Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.
sbouterse(a)wikimedia.org
*Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the
sum of all knowledge. *
*Donate <https://donate.wikimedia.org> or click the "edit" button today,
and help us make it a reality!*