Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Transition/Events Outline/ca
The Wikimedia 2030 strategic direction was set in 2017, for us to become the essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge. From 2018 to 2020, close to 100 Wikimedians collaborated in nine working groups to draft recommendations to move us in that direction. After multiple iterations and consultations, 10 recommendations and 10 underlying principles were finalized and shared with the movement in May 2020. With the ongoing global pandemic, a chance to meet in person to begin implementing the recommendations was not possible. Instead, the Wikimedia Foundation will organize in collaboration with affiliates and communities a series of online events to create an inclusive transition process to start implementing some of the recommended changes and actions. A Transition Design Group was convened to create the design for the Transition events. This document contains the overview and outline of the events as well as summaries from related discussions.
Prepare → | Thematic events → | Global events → | Follow-up events → | Implement |
Summary table
Event type | Objectives | Organizers | Attendees | Notes |
Preparation |
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Communities and affiliates with support from the Support Team and Design Group members | Language-based (e.g. Thai)
Region-based (e.g. North America) |
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Focused events |
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Communities and affiliates with support from the Support Team and Design Group members | Language-based (e.g. Thai)
Region-based (e.g. North America) Theme-based (e.g. community health) |
Working between the events:
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Global events |
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Support Team | All Wikimedians | |
Follow-up events |
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Communities and affiliates with support from the Support Team and Design Group members | All Wikimedians | |
Implementation |
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Wikimedia, Foundation, affiliates and communities | All Wikimedians | Requires:
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Transition events brief
Preparation and thematic events
Objectives
- To build alignment and shared understanding for the purpose and scope of events.
- To introduce people to the recommendations and the work ahead.
- To build momentum and excitement for participating in Transition and implementation discussions.
- To bring people interested in a specific topic area together to discuss needs and priorities.
- To extend the circle of people engaged with the Transition events and encourage others to participate.
Responsibility
- The Support Team will organize or directly support events in major languages and regions (in collaboration with local / regional affiliates, where possible)
- Affiliate and community members can apply for a WMF-grant to organize their own events for any specific theme, region or language
Agenda
- Unpack the movement strategy recommendations to reduce complexity and open pathways for conversations:
- Prioritize changes and actions within each recommendation that are locally relevant.
- Discuss local and topical interests to later identify where global overlaps emerge:
- Identify cross-cutting priorities: such as the Interim Global Council, content gaps, funding, etc. (whether these discussions will be small or large events will be determined based on interest and scope).
Online discussions
- Reach a shared understanding for the purpose and scope of events
- Anyone can join and share ideas around a topic of interest or priority, either:
- global needs for the movement, or
- local, project-based, grassroots, and programmatic needs
- Can be extended into larger in-depth conversations around complex topics (Interim Global Council, securing funding, etc).
- Invite work between the events
- So everyone can contribute, especially those who cannot join the virtual events
- To unpack the Movement Strategy recommendations to break down goals and define locally-relevant action(s)
Engagement
- Connect with a wider range of people, in between events, to orient them and to bring them into further discussions and actions.
- Can invite experts, researchers, external partners for a specific topic
- Increasingly build capacity to enable greater participation for those interested
- Bring people with similar interests, languages, and regions together
- Encourage mentorship, possibly through a “buddy” system
- Strong communications in-between events for keeping stakeholders informed and bringing feedback back into the conversations
- Openly communicate around the events and any results or decisions for: legitimacy, triggering more participation and analyses of overlaps and common interests.
- Time of the events has to accommodate volunteer availability as well as international differences in weekdays and weekends, something that local communities and organizers would know best
Identification phase
- Analysis and review (with professional and/or staff support) to:
- Identify which steps are dependent on each other requiring coordination and which can move forward independently
- Identify overlaps between various communities emerging from small calls
- Identify global dependencies for sequencing
Participants
- Start small and local with individuals and organizations (for example from a specific language group, region, or project community)
- Invite traditionally underrepresented communities.
- Define “external” partners.
Outputs of thematic events
- Identified priorities from Movement Strategy recommendations at varying levels, such as local, regional, and movement-wide
- Turning identified priorities from Movement Strategy into objectives and actions (whether local or global)
- Analysis of identified priorities and overlaps for implementation (at least a start)
Global events
A large full-day group session or multiple half-day sessions across different time zones so people can join at different times
Objectives
- To share findings and results from smaller focused events.
- To bring together everyone involved in the process to review the work so far and revisit the steps ahead for the implementation plan.
- To ensure a shared understanding of the principles and recommendations as well as the product that is to be created.
- To connect people from across the movement that share interest in a specific thematic area for prioritization and sequencing discussions.
Responsibility
- The Support Team will organize or directly support events in major languages and regions (in collaboration with local / regional affiliates, where possible)
- The Support Team will combine data regarding priorities, from focused events, and facilitate an open consultation around them
Agenda
- Presentation and exercises to build a shared understanding of the principles, recommendations, and the product that is to be created.
- Identifying a set of goals for the movement in the recommendation and collaboratively producing a starting point for implementation.
- There will likely be further details to discuss and clarify locally with communities in follow-up small events to close Transition.
- There should be an element of celebration in this gathering.
Participants
- All individuals and organizations interested to attend.
- Everyone who participated in the previous focused events.
Outputs
- The event will produce a collaborative vision for implementation, grounding the work ahead
- An intangible outcome could be champions of the process who can act as ambassadors for implementation
Follow-up events
Objectives
- To report back to communities at a more in-depth level.
- To coordinate roles and responsibilities to take implementation forward.
- To identify needed human and financial resources for implementation.
- To potentially sequence changes and actions on a horizontal 18-month timeline.
- For transparency and shared understanding for the implementation plan.
Agenda
- Similar to initial small events (but fewer in number), looping back to the initial online discussions and preparation calls.
- Connect people working on the same initiative, providing opportunities for growth and movement-wide collaboration.
Responsibility
- The Support Team will organize or directly support events in major languages and regions (in collaboration with local / regional affiliates, where possible)
- Affiliate and community members can apply for a WMF-grant to organize their own events for any specific theme, region or language
Participants
- Starting small and local: Individuals and organizations with specific knowledge and perspectives or from a specific language group, region, project community.
- People who took part in the preparation and any previous events.
- Defined “external” partners.
Outputs
- A final implementation plan by and for the movement
- Including needed resources and capacities and check-in points for assessment.
After the follow-up event
A final implementation plan will be prepared for use by the movement. This plan will explain how actions are coordinated, resourced, and initiated and who is responsible for what. The plan should inspire and guide a great deal of independent agency within the movement on issues that do not require global coordination.
The implementation phase begins. It will last 18 months during which the Wikimedia Foundation, affiliates and communities will begin to collaborate and work on the implementation actions. A monitoring and developmental evaluation strategy will be put in place to coordinate effort, connect these actors, and keep everyone informed on what is being learned and what needs to change.
Background
The Wikimedia Movement Strategy, released in May 2020, is an ambitious document with ten recommendations and nearly fifty recommended actions and changes. For the Wikimedia movement to begin to work on activities to implement this strategy document, we need to unpack the recommendations into a set of easily understood and prioritized starting points:
- movement-wide priorities requiring global coordination;
- priorities specific to different contexts in the movement requiring resources; and,
- work that any community could independently experiment with.
The Wikimedia Foundation convened a Transition Design Group in July 2020 to create the design for events that will transition the Wikimedia movement to implement the recommendations. The summary of discussions surfaces some of the main priorities for Transition discussed by the Design Group, as well as barriers to inclusive participation that must be tackled.
Transition events will take place through a series of small and large online events from September to December 2020, hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. During the events, project communities, affiliates, the Foundation, external experts, and partners will discuss the recommendations and related topics that are most relevant for them. This aims to surface local priorities related to Movement Strategy as well as global priorities so that a multi-stakeholder and collaborative implementation plan can be created. The result will be an 18-month implementation plan to start in January 2021. In addition to making Movement Strategy actionable for implementation, the events aim to create collaborative connections across people and organizations in our movement to take work forward.
This draft outline of the Transition events was shared with the movement for review and feedback from August 6 to 20, 2020. It will then be finalized by the Design Group and later made operational by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Summary of Design Group discussions
The Transition events will be a series of online events to begin the Transition from drafting the Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy recommendations to implementing them. The Design Group has designed a process to create collaborative, movement-wide, actionable plans for implementation. Taking place from September to December 2020, the online Transition events aim to bring together communities, affiliates, the Wikimedia Foundation, and others from across the movement to create these plans. The Transition process will indicate where specific support and resources are needed for the collaborations and where responsibilities need to be shared with the Foundation for global coordination and overarching support. Below is a table summarizing key discussions from the Design Group working sessions.
Key aspects of the Transition events
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Communication across events The Transition Support Team, in collaboration with local and external organizers, will be responsible to:
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Participation
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Inclusive engagement
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Resource requirements identified by the Design Group Professional or staff support (including, the Transition Support Team) for:
Funding by the Wikimedia Foundation for:
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Larger global events | Rationale for Global Events Advantages:
Challenges:
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Smaller focused events | Rationale for Focused Events Advantages:
Challenges:
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Change log
- An updated draft was posted by the Support Team on August 19th, to improve the language and logical structure, per various feedback.
- The final version of the events outline was posted by the Support Team on September 16th, integrating community feedback from the summary shared in late August.