Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Advocacy/Minutes

This page contains summaries of meeting minutes for the Advocacy Working Group, one among the nine groups involved in the Wikimedia Movement 2018-20 Strategy process. The full versions of these minutes are accessible on Google Drive, but given their extensive length and detail, only their summaries are being shared here for the time being.

October 2019

21 October

The Core Team shared a proposal for the next steps for WGs. Members can (individually) optionally choose to continue in the new Strategy phase in either of three roles: as a writer, connector or reviewer.

The writer role will be relatively limited to keep the workflow efficient. The reviewers and connectors, on the other hand, will have no member limit. The writer role isn’t only about writing and doesn’t require specifically high English language skills. It will be up to them to decide which feedback they would like to incorporate to their work. WG members encourage receiving external feedback from experts with the ‘bigger picture’ to help the writers.

Those interested in new roles can send an e-mail to the Core Team, get in touch or simply declare their interest/commitment during the call. If there’s a huge imbalance in those signing to each role, the CT will attempt to bring more diversity.

Most of the WG members expressed interest in at least one new role. Alice (reviewer) and Anna (writer) declared commitment during the call.

Instead of prioritizing/ranking the recommendations, the WG decided to go back to their core ideas and map them out in a way that can help/lead the writers in including advocacy in the Meta recommendations. Anna already shared the circles mapping and some of her thoughts about it.

July 2019

1 July

Martyr Recommendation

The Advocacy Working Group will wait to share their version of martyr recommendations with other Working Groups until there’s a set of recommendations developed
- There are currently no limits on the number of recommendations, but there could be patterns and possible contradictions between recommendations.
- Creative excursions overview, brainstorming, disruptive thinking, individual, and group work can be used to come up with more recommendation ideas.

June 2019

17 June

Meeting was adjourned

May 2019

20 May

Sample recommendations

The Working Group explored ways of surfacing the value of the recommendations. They were providing answers to the scoping questions to take this forward, sample topics included.

Developing a streamlined process for community advocates for requests, support, and how this can relate to their personal lives and interests of communities that will be the beneficiaries from these roles and processes.

Re:publica and CC Summit participation updates

Participation at the re:publica event offered a strategy discussion or dialogue opportunities at the Wikimedia Deutschland booth. There were also a number of informal discussions.
The creative commons summit had two sessions about Strategy, and enabled Advocacy Working Group members determine what needs to be done to deliver the recommendations.
- Feedback on the Scoping documents was provided from people from different language groups and backgrounds.

Community conversations, feedback and upcoming survey

The community survey should not have abstract language that would limit an understanding of Strategy.
Advocacy seems to be a Western centered topic, it could l be rephrased basing on the target audience, as questions are for people who already function in advocacy.
The Survey will have a 2 weeks pilot planned, to determine changes that could be made. Then it is possible to iterate and tweak the questions based on the actual feedback.

6 May

A check on challenges to reaching the recommendations

Most of the Working Group members had a clear target and path to the recommendations, but there were slight uncertainties on the limits of costly recommendations.

Reviewing the research brief and needs

Framing was provided to the research needs of the Working Group, to formulate research questions on advocacy, democracy, freedom of speech, and determining the role of the experts to map and provide suggestions or answers to the recommendations.

Allison will be able to do her own research part without external expertise
The Core Team’s deadline for Working Group external expert support request was 3 May
If the Working Group (members) still has an urgent need for expertise, they need to be surfaced as soon as possible.

Working on actual recommendations

The Working Group members at the Creative Commons Summit in Lisbon will use a “recommendation martyr” over dedicated time and/or space for advocacy/strategy then share results with the Core Team for course correction and/or feedback.

Realistic, quality, and necessary recommendations should be highlighted no matter the cost.
- The recommendations format provides general guidelines that can be used to develop quality recommendations, without pinpointing specific organisations.
- A budget can be made available basing on the needs of the recommendations, whether for a short or long term implementation. This will be a decision taken probably by the Board of Trustees.
- The selected option for a martyr recommendation to be used at the moment was “The WMF should develop a streamlined process for community advocates to request support for their advocacy actions”
After the Creative Commons Summit more recommendations will be developed for Working Group members to prioritise.
Resources for brainstorming recommendations
- Face2Face meeting documentation
- Theory of change for advocacy group
- Advocacy working group guiding questions
- Creative excursions
- Scoping document
- Research questions

Working with Whose Knowledge

The Working Group will set a scope and engage with Whose Knowledge after most of the members are comfortable with recommendations.

There was already a good conversation with Whose Knowledge at the Wikimedia Summit.

Community Conversations update Anass, as a Strategy Liaison, requested for how Working Group members preferred to receive community conversations feedback either directly or through the monthly outputs/updates from the Core Team

This would depend on the kind of response, otherwise meta updates would be fine to avoid any hidden agendas, followed by Core Team reports/summaries.

April 2019

22 April

Working Group (updated) timeline

The timeline for the work of the working groups has been updated to provide enough time for them to develop recommendations and incorporate input from Community Conversations (incl. Strategy Salons) and expert input /results from research.

The Harmonization sprint will happen in September 2019. Harmonization across Working Groups will also be a continuous and ongoing effort from now to the end of the process , via liaisons that have been selected per Working Group.
Wikimania will be a chance for the Working Groups to interact with the wider movement. The idea for Wikimania is to present the draft recommendations and the work of the Working Group in the Strategy Space, but also via informal discussions throughout the event.
If any Working Group realises a need for a Strategy Salon, they can be able to provide input to the Community Relations Specialist or be in contact with local affiliate.

Conversations will be ongoing with existing (and new) communities, but there is room for Salons to also include input from external experts.

Planning documents and Progress on research questions

All Advocacy Working Group needs should be surfaced for future planning and resource requests to the Core Team, so they can be budgeted for and be in the procurement plan. If the Working Group has a doubt (on accomplishing any research topic), they can leave it for external expertise at the moment, to ensure that it is taken into account in planning. It is easier to cross out the expertise needs rather than add them later in the process., A guideline for external expertise has been provided by the Core Team.

8 April

Reflection from the Wikimedia Summit

Highlights

Exchange with other Working Groups, Whose Knowledge? and their human-centered perspectives.
Working Group being able to work together to get feedback from people outside of the group, especially with those who are working or have worked in the advocacy space, and interested in providing their perspective.

Challenges

Advocacy is an abstract term and needs rethinking to a more human aspect.
Having to move on so fast from draft scoping to recommendations.
The format of the Summit, and finding a common language to speak about advocacy with everyone.

Working Group sprint in July

The Core Team had mentioned the idea of gathering up to 4 Working Group members to join a Harmonization Sprint. Anass can be available, but July will also have the Wiki Indaba conference. A decision about the representation at the sprint will be made when Paula (new member in the Working Group is available), any 4 chosen members can represent Advocacy Working Group.

Next steps

A mapping exercise to determine an overlapping list of topics, to work on and prioritise, determine overlaps, then do a brainstorm on user centered ideas, dream big, but also check against the scoping ideas was carried out.
At the Wikimedia Summit people found it difficult to provide feedback to the working group, because scoping questions were a bit ‘wordy’. This means that a structure to present work can be more visual, and human-centered.

How to generate initial recommendations

The Working Group members will use the scoping document developed in the framework of the Wikimedia Summit to name topics or areas which should be prioritised for getting more research, determine knowledge that’s missing, expertise, and capacities in other Working Groups that can bring the recommendations to the right level.

March 2019

18 March

Next steps after scoping

The next steps for Working Groups presented by the Core Team had been reviewed during the Advocacy online and face to face discussions in Brussels, the focus will now be on the analysis phase, activities before and after the Wikimedia Summit.

Alice shared a document with advocacy scoping questions, that can also be populated with ideas and other helpful resources to design research for data gathering on the next steps of analysis work.
A recommendation was made for 2 or 3 Advocacy Working Group members to put the Meta page which has the Scoping document of Advocacy WG on a Watch list and ensure that questions are directed to the people with right capacity.

Community conversations

Scoping documents are uploaded on meta, community representations, engagement, reflections and input will also be ensured by Strategy liaisons, there will be surveys going out via village pumps and the t, Working Group members are encouraged to do a watch list of the meta page and address questions and comments from community conversations in consultation with the Core Team

To avoid swamping the community members with information overflow, two levels of participation can be to pick one or two Working Groups and engage with selected scoping questions, or pick more than three Working Groups and selecting all the scoping questions, this is a decision left to the community members.

Advocacy Working Group members are encouraged to engage with people from other networks, discuss and share difficulties in these conversations with the whole Advocacy Working Group.

Review of the Summit Schedule

There will be Working Group time, a central note taking document with a rotating system for Members to collect inputs from networking and casual conversations will be created..

The Working Group will clarify the scope, definition of Advocacy, case studies, and next steps during the Wikimedia Summit.
As part of preparation, each individual will identify one or two Working Groups to read, draw and collect information from the Scoping documents of the groups that they chose to be a liaison/Point of contact.

A majority of the available members agreed to have post Wikimedia Summit Working Group meetings every two weeks at the same time.

11 March

Agenda: Core Team Scoping feedback/Advocacy Working Group liaisons for other Working Groups

Reactions to Core Team Scoping feedback

The feedback from the Core team was positive ,any other Changes by the Advocacy Working Group need to be done by 12 march 2019.

Advocacy Working Group liaisons for other Working Groups

Members discussed having a dedicated representative from our group to read and analyse Scoping Documents of other Working Groups

Coordination, reading and making sure that the Advocacy Working Group has the right conversations
- Identify areas of collaboration and reach out to the different Working Groups, read and analyse Scoping documents in a structured format for areas that are relevant and participate in the other Working Group calls to contribute to conversations that will make the Liaison a two way idea exchange process.
- Find familiar community members across Working Groups and use that angle to build conversations.
- The Scoping documents of other Working Groups will be shared for everyone’s access.

February 2019

22 February

Agenda: SWOT Analysis/Face to Face meeting in Brussels

SWOT Analysis

The Strengths and Weaknesses will also need to be discussed/clustered starting with a look into a brainstorm on what has already been added. Alice Wiegand and Anass Sedrati will be able to work on further clustering their sections over the weekend.

There are alot of threats that the Advocacy Working Group needs to consider. Some of them are really difficult to tackle, e.g. political threats. The types of opportunities are a part of holistic approach of being on the right side with great partnerships and connections that can be created working together. An example of the future opportunity is also development of artificial intelligence that might, for example, in the field of language remove an online language barrier.

It is a good idea to find solutions to and ways to mitigate against threats and ways to leverage opportunities. There is need to group these and get high level clusters according to long term - short term potential to make these ideas concrete. This is something that was started during the call to prepare for the discussions that will follow in a Face-to-Face meeting in Brussels.

Face to Face Meeting in Brussels and Case Studies

The Advocacy Working Group was requested to let the facilitator know what they would like to achieve, and what are their expectations regarding the meeting.

The content discussions on the call also served as preparations for the meeting. Also, following discussion/thoughts about creating potential case studies of negative and/or positive scenarios, Isla noted some ideas for a possible template to develop those case studies. Everyone was requested to review and provide feedback, additions, thoughts, criticisms, before the Face-to-face meeting.

Members were advised to come to the in-person meeting with initial scenarios from their own contexts or case studies that can be sampled in terms of geographies, stakeholders, and workshopped to work negatives into positives.

13 February

Agenda Introduction to the Virtual Facilitator/Next steps in scoping/Organisational Update/In-person meeting in Brussels.

Introduction to the Virtual Facilitator

The virtual facilitator introduced her roles for the Advocacy Working Group and Movement Strategy Process in general. She recommended the Advocacy Working Group to consider having regular meetings for better time management, prioritisation and future virtual facilitation planning whether online or in-person.

Next steps in scoping

The Working Group members discussed the need to transition from a conversation about advocacy, to actual content, which includes values, topics and problems advocacy should address for the Movement Strategy process.

A working document for thematic scoping was already shared, which covered some of these questions and topics on fundamental human rights, free access to knowledge, and information that is free from propaganda, censorship and key stakeholders and donors who have opposing positions that influence the application of these values. (We may ask the partnership group how far they discussed this perspective)

There’s a feeling that we need to include more forward and future thinking community into this part of the process and be able to justify our position and conclusions taking into account different beliefs, contexts, opportunities and ideas without being overwhelmed.
A suggestion was made to do a concise SWOT analysis. Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats, with an internal, and external focus, respectively, which need to determine the unique capacities that the community brings: the SWOT analysis was grouped in the following format:
- Anass and Alice will work on strengths and weaknesses
- Allison, Anna, and Isla can work on opportunities and threats
There’s need to look at the target list - to allow for approaching the policy /change makers but also provide the teachers / students, or the members of all countries the tools to get around any potential censorship or other troubling potential national limitations.

Core Team organisational update

The interim coordinators are to be changed to Permanent Coordinators, if there are no objections by the end of the call, on telegram or mailing list, the Core Team will proceed with a confirmation.

In-person meeting in Brussels

The Core Team will work with Wikimedia Travel Team for logistical preparations of the in-person meeting to be held in Brussels .

There are no experts invited because of limited time, but the Working Group and facilitator will have to come up with a draft agenda to be shared with all the group members for input, the facilitator for this conversation will be available in-person to ensure the outcome from the meeting is met.
Representation from the Core Team will be Nicole Ebber
Jimmy Wales was following the Working Group conversations, and would be happy to participate, but the timing for the in-person meeting is not so convenient.
Anna Mazgal will share the doodle for the next meeting so that a document is available for initial thoughts to analyse the notes and discussions..
- The next meeting would be a good opportunity for the facilitator to help the Working Group move forward.

January 2019

11 January

Agenda: Advocacy Working Group representation at the CC Summit/Scoping planning and review/Virtual facilitation/Sharing new information on meta, and mailing lists/Next Advocacy Working Group Meeting

Advocacy Working Group representation at the CC Summit in Lisbon (May 2019):

Submissions made to share Strategy with the broader community by members of the Advocacy Working Group have been accepted. Anas and Isla received scholarships. The Core Team is glad to look into what was submitted, and also find means of supporting the people whose submissions were accepted, but have not got sponsorship after the second round of initial scholarship applications vetting from the Creative Commons organising team.

Some Advocacy Working Group members who are WMF staff will be joining the Wikimedia Summit on a WMF ticket.
There are options of having some Working Group members join the summit as external experts.
For the next meeting we can plan to have Nicolas and other Working Group members join remotely if they are not joining the summit when the Working Group meets.
- Once we have the Wikimedia Summit program schedule, we can probably take a room and arrange for this meeting.
- This can be discussed early March, an extra day in Berlin with our Working Group can be helpful.

Scoping plan and review

The Core Team had shared a scoping plan to give a big picture view for developing recommendations in the current stage of scoping, timeline, deliverables, moving forward, and determining an inclusive, thorough approach and methodology on findings.

A glossary for Advocacy in the Movement can be developed with the help of the scoping plan. Capacity Building and Community Health Working Group are developing glossaries as well, and would be good to have a compilation of all these glossaries. It would be an excellent idea to map the advocacy and ecology of our movement, including Intellectual property.

Virtual facilitation for Advocacy WG

In order to reduce the burden on managerial and facilitation roles, the Core Team has contracted Virtual Facilitators from ICA-UK, if there are Advocacy WG members who can volunteer to liaise with the Virtual Facilitators, to bring the facilitators up to speed with the Advocacy Working Group. Virtual Facilitation has already happened with Community Health and Capacity Building Working Groups with positive feedback, facilitation is to organise the conversations, discussions, brainstorm sessions and get the group to move towards recommendations.

Sharing new information on meta and mailing lists

David Kode was a new member added to the Working Group and there’s need to ensure that he receives all the information, gets invitations and updates from the Working Group. He responded with enthusiasm to participate, but we will reach out to him again to get an update.

Next Advocacy Working Group Meeting

At this phase weekly calls would help, since we are in the middle of the recommendation process, constant calls can help. We need to discuss the possibility of having regular meetings and arrange a dedicated regular flow of work. There was some flexibility from members to have calls on civilised hours during weekly days or weekends, Monday - Saturday, everybody can also indicate changes in preferences, if any.

Due to global time zones, there are good lessons from this Working Group, if we could start 2 hours earlier, it would be good. Monday or Tuesday could be good for some members. A doodle from time to time would help since people might have changing schedules. If people can respond in order to have a good picture overview of availability.

Some Working Groups have set specific schedules which they have been following in the last 3 months, even with diverse members.

December 2018

14 December

Meeting schedule during the holidays (Dec 2018-Jan 2019): If Working Group members are available during the holiday period, activities can continue, a doodle can be arranged on a weekend to arrange the meeting, which does not need to be formal, asynchronous work can also be considered.

Wikimedia Summit participation: There are five Working Group members who were interested in attending the Wikimedia Summit. There’s need to balance participation between Affiliate members and Working Group members. Anass Sedrati and Mohsen were selected as Advocacy Working Group representatives to register for the summit. A confirmation email will be written to confirm the nominated members for the Wikimedia Summit.

Core question(s) identified from the scoping document were discussed. The Working Group then extracted necessary preconditions, that is: Strategy that is context relevant.

The steering group call discussed a Big picture reference timeline for scoping steps.

9 December

Discussions of the working group's scoping questions defined at the previous call.
A joint check if the responses prepared provide a good picture of what needs to happen to accomplish the vision.
Decide if there's a complete picture of what needs to be accomplished for the current stage of the process in order to proceed.
Reaching out to non-participating members, and a telegram channel to discuss Wikimedia Summit

November 2018

25 November

Brainstorming scoping questions A to D, by creating subgroups for members to finalise the scoping questions.
Discussion about incorporating Core Team feedback

17 November

Discussion around the vision for Advocacy
- Advocacy Working Group Vision: Advancing the opportunities offered by the Wikimedia Movement to all peoples across the globe (citizens, groups, governments, and organisations)
- In 2030 everyone can access, use, transform and build on Wikimedia projects in a global environment that empowers them to share the diversity of knowledge and express it freely. That legal and functional environment nourishes free knowledge created and maintained by Wikimedia movement and elsewhere in the world.

Mission vs. vision
- VISION is about WHAT state of affairs we want to see in the world. General examples: No child is hungry. Knowledge is accessible to everyone. The continents have the same coastline.
- MISSION is about HOW we want to contribute to making the vision a reality. General examples: We work to ensure fairer distribution of food around the world. We provide infrastructure for sharing information. We prevent climate change by reducing global car emissions.

7 November

The best timing for Working Group calls and new member applications/confirmation
Guiding Questions on meta for Advocacy
Participation criteria at the Wikimedia Summit.

October 2018

19 October

Next steps regarding the Scoping Phase
Updates for people participating in the call for the first time
Updates regarding the Diversification process

16 October

Introductions

Advocacy Working Group diversification process and expertise evaluation
Clarity and support needs available from the Core Team.
Next steps (Outreach) to the new member applications
Scoping process and resources explained (shared)

August 2018

20 August

Basic functionalities of the Working Group
- Channels of communication (mailing-list, telegram)
- Meetings (Schedule, timezones, length, Platform
- member roles and Coordinators
- Diversification Process, and template to be filled