Dear all,
I am excited to provide some updates on the movement strategy process. After a break for re-energizing after phase 1 (and a focus on some internal priorities at the Foundation, such as annual planning), we are now about to kick off the next phase of our work.
In Phase I, we agreed upon the movement’s new strategic direction: to become the essential infrastructure in the ecosystem for free knowledge, with a focus on knowledge equity and knowledge as a service.
Now it’s time to determine how we actually get there. Our next step will be to build a process to coordinate and facilitate the movement-wide change process. Our aim is to create collective ownership of this process, so each step will be created with, and enriched by, individuals and groups from across and beyond the movement. And in doing so, we’ll go on a journey together, as we explore the future of our movement.
*Who is 'we'? *There is no team in place yet, but I’ve been working closely with Nicole Ebber, of Wikimedia Deutschland, who was previously leading Track A of Phase I of the process. I’m happy to report Nicole will be leading this next phase of work, including putting together a team from across the community. Nicole brings insights from years of working with the global movement, from organizing the Wikimedia Conference to leading the Chapters Dialogue to her work as a team member in Phase I. She is a trusted and longstanding member of our global community and we will be working closely together as we go forward. I am thankful to Nicole for her interest in being a partner in this strategy work.
*What are the questions we’re trying to answer? *In addition to developing the strategic direction statement, we also finished Phase I with a set of questions. Our community and process leaders identified answering these questions as critical to our success in moving forward. Currently, we’ve organized them as representing four different levels of our work and movement:
- *At every level (conceptual): *How do we evolve in a healthy and consistent way? What do we need to change or adapt as we move toward the essential infrastructure for free knowledge? A constant and stable change process, inclusive, culturally sensitive and true to our values. - *Across the movement (structural): *What are the critical questions we, as a movement, need to resolve around roles, resources and responsibilities, in order to be successful? Leading to recommendations, agreement and a process for implementation. - *In movement organizations (programmatic): *How do we contextualize and apply the direction? What sort of programs and efforts should we undertake? What are our first priorities? Including support, coordination and innovation across the movement. - *For projects and individuals (tactical):* What are the priorities for individual Wikimedia projects, or within projects? What do contributors need and care about? Product and program support by the key organizations’ departments.
We know the movement needs to engage with these questions in this next phase; some of these questions will be best answered at the individual and project level, some of these will be facilitated by the core team. We’ll be able to share more as we get further into process design.
What’s the timeline? To ensure a stable and sustainable journey, our intended roadmap includes two full years, through June 2020. By that time, we hope to have reached agreement on the essential questions and common goals for our movement.
*Our next steps include: *
- Defining the roles and expertise we need in the journey, and starting the search for team members and contractors (important note: we will be hiring language contractors, as we did in Phase I, in order to support multilingual participation) - Determining the governance and decision-making models we’ll need for the journey - Designing the movement strategy track of WMCON, where we will kick-off the journey for the organized part of the movement - Refining the roadmap for 2018-20 beginning with insights from WMCON - Identifying key themes and processes for development of recommendations - Planning consultations and participation from old and new movement stakeholders
That’s the first update of Phase II!
Nicole and I plan to resume the practice of sending regular status updates with more information as we move forward, starting next week with more information on the team, roles, timeline, and set-up of the process.
Yours, Katherine