Events Team Portal/Our work
Who are we?
editEvents are an important part of the infrastructure in the Wikimedia movement, enabling movement building, knowledge sharing, partnership and outreach opportunities, and much more. They enable us to connect, to learn from one another, to collaborate on shared goals, and to unify around common agendas.
Who do we work with?
editWe work with event grantees, community organizers, community leadership and other Wikimedia Foundation's teams to bring you better resources; data and practical tools to organize successful, collaborative and impactful events.
Event Ecosystem
editEcosystems are dynamic systems, consisting of a community of organisms together that sustain each other. Just like the ecosystems in nature, an events ecosystem in our context involves the free knowledge movement, the Wikimedia community, community event organizers, participants, movement partners, etc. These elements are interlinked within an event environment, interacting as a system and collaborating with each other to produce a sustainable continuity of valuable exchanges.
Our vision is to have a global events ecosystem that fosters a thriving movement for all. We wish to do that by developing and designing events to serve a global, diverse and innovative community, by supporting mission-aligned people and organizations around the world to increase the quantity, quality, diversity and reach of free knowledge.
Design Principles
editDesign principles are a set of guidelines to support making decisions, and they were derived from the Movement Strategy recommendations, and align with the Foundation’s Thriving Movement priority in the Medium Term Plan.
These principles ensure that we will achieve our mission. They are universal, yet specific to our projects in the events space. We are looking at events through the lens of the following principles, which serve as a compass to lead our work:
- Equity - Inclusion of all voices. We want to create mechanisms that enable all participants in our movement to express their interests and experiences to take into account when designing solutions, tools, providing support and inclusion in decision-making.
- Growth - Newcomer participation and retention It’s important to welcome and retain newcomers to the movement by maximizing the use of events as a tool for this purpose.
- Unity - Collaboration and cohesion. Unity refers to coherence of a whole. Where all of the moving parts are well-balanced to achieve a common goal.
- Capacity - Building skills and competencies We want to empower organizers and participants by building their skills and knowledge to do their activities competently or to a greater capacity.
- Innovation - Identifying unarticulated needs Events should be utilized as a venue to encourage and promote a culture of innovation for movement needs.
- Safety - Safe and secure spaces Providing safe and secure spaces to participants on our projects will remain a top priority in all our movement events, whether they are online or in-person.
- Focus - Movement goals and MTP Thriving Movement priority
Events Refresh
editWe recently completed our Events Refresh project to reevaluate the strategy, design, and logistics of Foundation-funded and produced movement events to illuminate opportunities for making events more effective, as well as making the event experience better for both participants and organizers. To learn more about our findings, methodology and next step, please see here.
The Team
editCommunity Events Team, Operations Department at the Wikimedia Foundation
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Rachel Farrand: Senior Program Officer, Conference Grants -
Chen Almog: Senior Program Officer, Conference Grants -
Joël Letang: Senior Event Strategist -
Lydia Hamilton: Director of Operations
Our team hosts informal monthly community office hours! Come stop in and introduce yourself, ask your questions or chat with us. Details about upcoming office hours here.