Hello everyone!
The update the past two weeks were delayed while I joined members of our
African community in Ghana for WikiIndaba 2017 and participated in
organization-wide quarterly reviews.
This is a long email. In summary, you will find information on:
- The core movement strategy team
- Team tracks being developed
- The Community Process Steering Committee
- Strategy discussions being planned for Wikimedia Conference 2017
- The results of preliminary discussions at
- Wikimedia Foundation's All Hands gathering
- Wikimedia movement affiliates executive directors gathering in
Switzerland
- The WikiIndaba conference 2017
First, a quick note from Ghana: congratulations to the WikiIndaba
organizers for a high-energy, high-quality event. The program was engaging,
highly relevant, and thought-provoking around the future of our movement in
Africa. It was great to see people from across the continent, from Algeria
to South Africa, Uganda to Nigeria. If you are reading this from anywhere
else in the world, and haven’t had a chance to get to know our communities
in Africa, you should check out these blog posts about the first Africa
de-stubathon[1] and the third annual Wiki Loves Africa - and mark your
calendars for Wikimania Cape Town 2018!
Over the past couple weeks, the core strategy team discussed the
distribution of these updates, and the likelihood that we’re not reaching
enough people in the community with these notifications. We want to make
sure everyone has the opportunity to participate in conversations and
discussions.
As such, the Foundation’s Community Engagement and Communications
departments are working on plans to increase the distribution of our
updates to different places and on different channels beyond Wikimedia-l
(such as other mailing lists, social media groups, and more). *We need your
help to get the word out so as many communities as possible can make their
voices heard. *Where do your communities gather? *We welcome your
suggestions on where we should share these and other updates.*
*Core movement strategy team*
As I shared in my last update, the core team who will help facilitate the
movement strategy process is coming together. They have the experience to
do the work we need to do—from deep strategic consideration to long-time
knowledge of Wikimedia.
The core team[2] is composed of individuals from the Wikimedia Foundation
and williamsworks:[3]
- Whitney Williams, williamsworks
- Ed Bland, williamsworks
- Shannon Keith, williamsworks
- Guillaume Paumier, Senior Analyst, Wikimedia Foundation
- Suzie Nussel, organizational strategy consultant, Wikimedia Foundation
*To be clear - this team will not be determining the strategic direction.
The Wikimedia movement will, together. *Instead, the core team’s
responsibility is to shepherd the overall process and keep everyone
involved and engaged. The architects (Whitney, Ed, Guillaume) will
co-design the conversations within our communities and beyond, and help
transform these conversations into meaningful, informed summaries and
proposed direction. They will work in close collaboration with, and seek
counsel from, track leads, working groups, and volunteer advisors. The
project/stakeholder managers (Suzie and Shannon) will work with track leads
to drive engagement, coordinate the tracks and support them as needed, as
well as manage tasks, deadlines, and budgets for the overall process.
We had an opportunity to introduce the core team at the January metrics
meeting, and you can find that here.[4]
*Team tracks (A-D)*
Our proposal is to identify different audiences within our Wikimedia
communities and organize "tracks" of information sharing and dialogue that
meet the unique needs of those different audience. Each track would have a
working group who would advise the core team on the best way to engage that
track’s respective communities. While these are still evolving, the four
tracks we are currently considering are:
- *Track A - Organized groups* - Would coordinate efforts related to
Wikimedia organized groups, which include the Wikimedia movement
affiliates,[5] Funds Dissemination Committee, Affiliations Committee, the
WMF Board, Foundation and affiliate staffs, and other organized or
semi-organized groups that help support the movement, such as GLAM-wiki.
- *Track B - Individual contributors* - Would coordinate efforts related
to engaging individual contributors, such as editors, curators, and
volunteer developers, across different languages and Wikimedia projects.
- *Track C - High reach markets* - Would coordinate efforts related to
existing and new readers of our projects, and potential and new partners,
in countries or languages (markets) where we are well-known. Outreach to
readers or prospective readers will focus on those markets where we have
high reach in terms of awareness and usage. We will also talk with
like-minded organizations and experts in knowledge, communities, and
technology associated with the movement now, and those outside the movement.
- *Track D - Low reach markets* - Would coordinate efforts related to
existing and new readers of our projects, and potential and new partners,
in countries or languages (markets) where we are not well-known. Outreach
to readers or prospective readers will focus on those markets where we have
limited reach in terms of awareness and usage. We will also talk with
like-minded organizations and experts knowledge, communities, and
technology associated with the movement now, and those outside the movement.
We welcome your thoughts on these proposed tracks. Are there stakeholders
we are missing? Do they make rough sense? Please share your thoughts on the
talk page for this update.[6]
*Process design for community audience tracks (A and B)*
The Foundation's Community Engagement department has invited people from
across the movement to convene a Community Process Steering Committee. This
Committee has been having discussions with the core movement strategy team
on how we might best engage individual contributors (Track B) and organized
movement groups (Track A) in the strategy process. They will continue
meeting on Fridays in the coming weeks to propose and collect input for a
participatory and open movement process.
In their first meetings, the group has discussed how to engage more "quiet"
members of our community, and ways to utilize channels and platforms to
encourage participation beyond Meta wiki and mailing lists. In addition to
using a diverse number of communications channels - both on and off wiki -
they also proposed engaging ambassadors (highly engaged community members)
and hiring additional community liaisons to provide support for our many
different languages.[7] These roles are now posted and accepting
applicants.[8]
The group has also been discussing how to build a facilitator toolkit to
help ensure strong and effective discussion in local communities and
projects and have a good template for reporting back to/from English.
Additionally, a goal is for this toolkit to be able to help engage both
long-time contributors and newer contributors.
On a weekly basis, the Core Team will be sharing iterative prototypes of
the first 2 suggested processes, based on input and feedback from this
Steering Committee. The prototypes will be posted weekly on Meta for
everyone to share their thoughts and feedback.[9]
*Process design for experts and readers audience tracks (C and D)*
The Core Team has been brainstorming some ideas for how to best convene or
consult with global experts. The Foundation’s Global Reach team, led by
Adele Vrana, is working to identify markets where outreach will have the
most impact, and areas where outreach will require special consideration.
We are currently considering leaders, both inside and outside the Wikimedia
movement, to help develop and lead efforts around these two tracks.
*Wikimedia Conference in Berlin (late March)*
The Wikimedia Conference in Berlin is coming up in late March/early April.
Given that it is one of our major annual community convenings, we have been
asking ourselves how we can take advantage of having so many people from so
many backgrounds together, in the same place, to talk about the future of
our movement.
Working with Wikimedia Deutschland, we have expanded the list of attendees
for the conference, and are in the process of developing a dedicated
“strategy track” for discussions. We have invited and confirmed
arrangements for an additional 145 people, including our stewards,
individual contributors, representatives of other movement organizations or
groups (such as GLAM-wiki), and additional participants from smaller and
newer affiliates. We will use Berlin as an opportunity to have an open
conversation on the thematic direction of the overall movement. We will
document these conversations in detail, to make sure they are open,
transparent, and inform our broader community conversation.
*Wikimedia Foundation's All Hands gathering*
Whitney, Ed, and Shannon from Williamsworks attended the Wikimedia
Foundation's All Hands staff meeting in January and have posted a report on
Meta-Wiki with their initial findings.[10] Some of the themes emerging are:
sharing knowledge (contributing, not just consuming/distributing),
education (pathways to learning, curiosity), access to knowledge (next
versus last billion on the internet, or other spaces for knowledge),
greater kindness, advocacy (standing up and fighting for free knowledge in
the world), and partnerships (the bigger "we").
*Wikimedia movement affiliates executive directors gathering in Switzerland*
Suzie, Ed, and Anna Stillwell joined 12 executive directors of Wikimedia
movement affiliates for a discussion in Switzerland on the movement
strategy process. The meeting helped our core team gain insights on
challenges and opportunities of the represented affiliates, as well as
initial ideas around strategic direction themes and process recommendations
for effective community conversations. Key themes identified include
Education (focus on media literacy and leveraging projects for education),
Go Global (everyone has the same access to knowledge), Inclusion (sum of
all knowledge, coming from diverse sources and new formats), and Facts
Matter (reliable and true knowledge in a "post facts" political climate in
the US and Western Europe).
*WikiIndaba conference 2017*
I had an opportunity to have a number of wonderful conversations with
members of our African community who attended this year's WikiIndaba
conference 2017 in Ghana.[11] Instead of a feedback sessions, we agreed
that the Indaba community would send me a message with their hopes, dreams,
and what they would like Wikimedia to focus on over the next 15 years. I’m
looking forward to receiving this, and sharing those themes on the
Meta-Wiki strategy portal.
One thing my trip to Ghana allowed me to reflect on is that even with how
far this process has come in a short time, we have much farther still to go
before we are fully able to engage a movement of our size in a truly
meaningful way - or for every corner of our movement to even know this work
is happening! I welcome your thoughts on this, and look forward to being
able to share more in the coming weeks on how we efforts will help us meet
this goal.
*Next Steps*
- Collecting community-wide feedback on proposed processes (organized
groups and individual contributors)
- Confirm track teams, roles, and responsibilities
- Build facilitator toolkit, including:
- Premises for the discussion
- Framing context (research brief) for the discussion on movement
strategy and questions/prompts to inspire conversation
- Tools and ideas for engaging communities (e.g., in-person
facilitation approaches, best practices on community outreach on wiki)
- Template and instructions for written summary on discussion.
- Build out documentation on Meta-Wiki 2017 Movement Strategy Portal to
support engagement and transparency
Beginning this month, we will be sharing a monthly summary of these emails
via the strategy updates MassMessage list people have been signing up for.
:) If you would like to add your user page or group's talk page to this
update list, you are invited to sign up.[12]
Thank you for reading so far!
I really appreciate your continued interest in and patience with this
process as it develops. I appreciate the feedback people have provided and,
like many of you, am eager to begin a movement-wide discussion.
Katherine
PS. A version of this message will be available for translation on
Meta-Wiki.[13]
[1] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/11/22/digest-africa/
[2] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_movement/2017/Team
[3] http://williamsworks.com/
[4] https://youtu.be/6fF4xLHkZe4?t=31m45s
[5] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_movement_affiliates
[6] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_
movement/2017/Updates/27_January_2017_-_Update_5_on_
Wikimedia_movement_strategy_process
[7] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_
movement/2017/Team#Strategy_Coordinators
[8] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Work_with_us#Wikimedia_Careers
[9] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_
movement/2017/Process/Design
[10] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_
movement/2017/Research_and_notes/All-Hands_Summary_Report
[11] https://blog.wikimedia.org/2016/12/12/digest-wiki-loves-africa-begins/
[12] https://meta.wikimedia.org/?curid=10153505
[13] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Strategy/Wikimedia_
movement/2017/Updates/27_January_2017_-_Update_5_on_
Wikimedia_movement_strategy_process
--
Katherine Maher
Wikimedia Foundation
149 New Montgomery Street
San Francisco, CA 94105
+1 (415) 839-6885 ext. 6635 <(415)%20839-6885>
+1 (415) 712 4873 <(415)%20712-4873>
kma...@wikimedia.org
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