[Wikitech-l] Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017 discussion

Hi everyone, Abstract ----------- This mail doubles as an invitation to come to this week's ArchCom office hour (Phab:E285), and provides an attempt to provide answers to questions about the agenda of the Wikimedia Developer Summit (WikiDev17). I'm hoping we find a way to work with people who can't travel, and noting we're also working to make remote participation more rewarding. This emphasizes the importance of WikiDev17 being a better event for online attendance this year, and the primacy of online conversations in our community's decision making. Table of contents for the rest: * ArchCom office hour E285 * Previous Dev Summits (2014-16) * The dangers of prior RFC requirement * Less spectators, more participants ArchCom office hour ---------------------------- This week's ArchCom IRC office hour will be this coming Wednesday, <https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/E285> Wednesday, 2016-09-28, 21:00 UTC (2pm PDT, 23:00 CEST) on #wikimedia-office This is a continuation of the many conversations we've had on this mailing list (e,g, the "Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017: Registration Open" thread last week) and elsewhere about the summit. Previous Dev Summits (2014-16) ---------------------------------------------- This is an admittedly biased version of history, based on my involvement in the program committee that is still forming. Quim is chairing the program committee, and I'm one of the members, but my understanding from Quim is that we're still waiting for some invitees to respond. Previous years, we had a more explicit emphasis on "architecture" (e.g. even calling our 2014 event the "Architecture Summit"[1]). The ties between "architecture"<->MediaWiki<->wikitech-l are very strong. Additionally, the 2014 and 2016 events had very explicit instructions insisting on submission of MediaWiki RFCs[2]. The benefit of requiring submission of RFCs was that it caused many people to write down "this is what I want to talk about". There were many conversations leading up to last year's summit that might not have happened without such an explicit prompt. Many of the unconference sessions last year were discussions that were submitted as RFCs, but were turned down for plenary session time. Those unconference sessions benefited from the prep work. The dangers of prior RFC requirement -------------------------------------------------------------- We don't intend to make the requirement so tough this year. A challenge we face is that many topics don't fit well into RFC form. "RFC" and "conversation" are not interchangeable terms. We hope that all RFCs are indeed conversations, but certainly not all conversations belong in RFCs. Last year, the RFC requirement also meant that all of the scheduled topics had Phab IDs associated with them. Is there some other short identifier we can use as a standard conversation identifier? Maybe Wikidata QIDs? ;-) The hope is that WikiDev17 enriches conversations that are well underway *before* everyone shows up in San Francisco. Complicated conversations require a shared context, but humans have traditionally had a difficult time building shared context without physically putting everyone in the same room at the same time. Developers frequently want to cram "context building" into their discussion time, spending 70 minutes out of a 90 minute conversation time bringing attendees up-to-speed, so that we can have a "really good" 20 minute conversation. A big fear: we fail to connect WMF staff developers with larger Wikimedia community developers. Meetings bust up unconference style into two camps: WMF staff led discussions where participation relies on having the kind of knowledge that one needs "insider" access to stay abreast of, and non-WMF staff led discussions where participants try to solve problems that WMF staff doesn't seem interested in solving. A huge challenge: we can't *know* in September 2016 what conversations will be important in January 2017, but based on our experience with past Dev Summits, it's worth creating the opportunity for important conversations to happen. We have plenty of conversations that are still ongoing, and plenty of conversations many of you all likely know need to happen in January. Let's start the conversations we know about now, and *hope* that they're already done before the summit Less spectators, more participants ---------------------------------------------- One thing we know from all of our experience: y'all don't want to make a point of coming to San Francisco to be talked at by someone. As in past years, we're working to bring up to 200 people together to have great conversations about the collective hopes of the Wikimedia development community. It's happening the same week as the Wikimedia Foundation All-Staff meeting, so the attendance will be heavily biased toward WMF staff, but we hope this isn't just us talking to ourselves. We're working hard to provide a framework for good conversations to happen; not for us to talk at you, or for you to talk at us, but for all of us to learn from each other. We're really happy with the satisfaction numbers from last year[3], and in particular, we hope that the 75 respondents (out of 84 responses) who agreed with "I would like to attend this event again next year" still believe that now. Let's use the IRC meeting this week to prepare for the January event. Rob [1]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Architecture_Summit_2014 [2]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit_2016/Program [3]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit_2016/Lessons_Lear… (satisfaction numbers)