Wikimedia monthly activities meetings/Quarterly reviews/CE and Advancement, July 2015

Notes from the Quarterly Review meeting with the Wikimedia Foundation's Community Engagement & Advancement teams, July 7, 2015, 8:30 am - 10:00 am PDT.

Please keep in mind that these minutes are mostly a rough paraphrase of what was said at the meeting, rather than a source of authoritative information. Consider referring to the presentation slides, blog posts, press releases and other official material

Present (in the office): Lila Tretikov, Terry Gilbey, Luis Villa, Sarah Malik, Jake Orlowitz, Pats Pena, Floor Koudijs, Garfield Byrd, Rachel diCerbo, Toby Negrin, Rosemary Rein, Geoff Brigham, Philippe Beaudette, Katherine Maher, Kim Gilbey, Adele Vrana, Caitlin Virtue, Anne Gomez, Katie Horn, Siko Bouterse, David Strine, Tilman Bayer (minutes); participating remotely: Megan Hernandez, Quim Gil, Wes Moran

Terry: welcome
goals are meant to be challenges...

Advancement

slide 2

[slide 2]

Anne: (Lisa on vacation)
revenue went over plan quite a bit as directed by the board
Lila: congratulations, this is fantastic

slide 3

[slide 3]

slide 4

[slide 4]

Successes

slide 5

[slide 5]

Misses
CaitlinV: Endowment was envisaged as contractor position, but learned this needs to be a staff position
Terry: that's in budget? yes
Lila: (question about budget)

Online Fundraising

slide 7

[slide 7]

Megan: ...
Terry: was what that against plan?
Megan: plan was $7M, we raised over $8M in Q4

slide 8

[slide 8]

slide 9

[slide 9]

successes
community banners can significantly affect team's workflow
Lila: but community campaigns typically target editors, and FR targets anon readers?
Megan: e.g. current Wikimania banners target anons too, upcoming campaigns also target anonymous users
Luis: there are technical solutions, puts pressure on us to implement them
it's a consensus process
agreed to formalize our role as clearing house, share best practices

slide 10

[slide 10]

misses

slide 11

[slide 11]

tested a new payment method (general tech work not done yet), no significant difference when added to payment options. We decided not to implement this payment method at this time.
Lila: a great learning
could we run a similar test for Apple Pay or other new methods?
Megan: we could
Lila: guess that people on iPhone might donate more, different demographic
Megan: the new method performed better on Android (unsurprisingly)
Lila: that kind of testing is the right approach, should separate from platform

slide 13

[slide 13]

slide 14

[slide 14]

Megan:
down 40% in April 2015 vs April 2014 test
concerning, but not end of world, we already know we can't rely on the same banners all the time
(more example screenshots from Appendix)
--> Lila: should solicit banner ideas from community, also actively announcing this invitation
people asked for it last winter, it would be good to be responsive to that
Megan: OK, can announce this on mailing list

Appendix: Example new variables to test

Fundraising Operations

slide 20

[slide 20]

Pats: ...
Lila: when are we doing...?

slide 21

[slide 21]

(Pats:) store relaunch
Terry: net profit?
Garfield: losing money
CaitlinV: to be clear, it is not meant to make money
Terry: do we know what it has cost us to [set up store]? "no" is OK answer ;)
Pats: not right now

slide 22

[slide 22]

Donor services
complaints vs. ...
Lila: ...
Terry: benchmark?

Major Gifts and Foundations

CaitlinV:

slide 24

[slide 24]

slide 25

[slide 25]

Humble Bundle: unusual partnership, needed to work and vetting to get up and running, but worthwhile
did donor cultivation event in NYC - these are rare for us

slide 26

[slide 26]

Misses:
CiviCRM: ...
Lila: make sure we have a combined and organized CRM system (not fragmented)
---> CaitlinV: will touch base with you on that
Lila: next time ...[?]
CaitlinV: ok, quarters are different

slide 27

[slide 27]

Fundraising Tech

slide 29

[slide 29]

Katie: had one goal, redefined to only cover credit cards in Brazil, got that done
[slide 30]Successes
two hires
fastest integration in team I've seen
last year concluded we have huge tech debt problems
Lila: recommend to engineering teams to [specify] percentages [for such tasks][?]
Katie: team was one of the first to do large scale refactoring iteratively, without disruption
Terry:...

slide 31

[slide 31]

Misses
(Katie:) going forward, want goals to be less aspirational (what we would like to do), more predictive

slide 32

[slide 32]

Appendix: Phabricator

Wikipedia Zero

slide 34

[slide 34]

Adele: pageviews goal not reached, might be due to seasonality or HTTPS

slide 35

[slide 35]

Android preload - not reached
Lila: just delay, or?
Adele: see next slides

slide 36

[slide 36] Successes
usually our surveys are all internet-based, so we hope for significant new insights from phone survey

slide 37

[slide 37]

Misses
did not know what is involved with preload, e.g. needs budget for marketing (customers don't know WP, so don't understand the value of the preload)
Lila: connected to people who have experience?
Adele: talked to OEMs...
Lila: talk to experienced people in industry before engaging OEMs
--> Lila: make sure we measure effectiveness of app preloads - how many clicks, how many opens...

Strategic Partnerships

Adele: (Kourosh could not attend today) ...

slide 39

[slide 39]

slide 40

[slide 40]

Lila: when going to a market, make sure you're aligned with other teams[?]
Adele: OK
Toby: need to be very realistic about preload etc. in Global South without marketing/awareness
that's one big learning form WP0
Adele: hopefully after Q1 we will have data from the phone survey

Slides from the Community Engagement department's presentation

Community Engagement

Luis: welcome
--> Lila: in future quarterly reviews, every team should have at least one top level KPI, should be 1st slide

Learning & Evaluation

Rosemary:

slide 3

[slide 3]

slide 4

[slide 4]

slide 5

[slide 5]

Successes
now have a curated space to connect people on [eval data]
huge demand from community for qualitative information (after rollout of WLM report)

slide 6

[slide 6]

Misses
dropoff in pageviews
introduced "project charters" for efforts >6h (does it advance us?)
--> Terry, Lila: can we have copy of that report on community capacity needs?
Rosemary: OK

Community Resources

slide 8

[slide 8]

Siko: 4 hits, 2 misses
Capacities Development Framework (CDF) miss because Asaf had to divert about 80 hours to crisis work

slide 9

[slide 9]

Inspire goal was originally framed as # of grants, but that's not our ultimate objective, real measure is increase in gender-focused portfolio

slide 10

[slide 10]

Successes
Luis: percentage of grants addressing gender issues is measured by dollar value?
Siko: yes, and in appendix also by number of grants

slide 11

[slide 11]

miss: friendly space expectations - takes more time to coordinate
Luis: CA working on it, sense growing community awareness about topic
Siko: for successes, important to do impact analysis, have resourcing for that
Wikimedia Conference key messages were also useful
Terry: summarizing misses - it's about planning, right? yes
talking points - similar for Wikimania?
Lila: appreciate the work put into that for Wikimedia Conference. Should define focus areas and messages for all events we go to
--> Luis: will share that [messaging for Wikimania] in C-team meeting

Wikipedia Education Program

slide 13

[slide 13]

Floor: hit all goals
Viable pilot for fall semester in Oman, still missing: person on the ground to be coordinator

slide 14

[slide 14]

engaging community members to contribute to Learning patterns
going well (small number of people editing, but high number of views)

slide 15

[slide 15]

Facebook group a success, grew more than expected
Luis: that's followers or traffic?
Floor: followers

slide 16

[slide 16]

Misses
Collab: ...

Terry: you said goals were stretchy, but achieved all
why do you think you achieved all of them?
Floor: I think because team has been around for a while, built relationships
getting established in relationship-sphere hard to measure, but important
Terry: so it was about trust
Floor: yes

Community Liaisons

Rachel:

slide 18

[slide 18]

conversation about launching VE on enwiki going well
Process Ideas page: missed goal of responding there
Lila: yes, I'm getting asked about that
Luis: addressing requires cooperation/planning with engineering

slide 19

[slide 19]

Lila: a good team operates around 70% green

slide 20

[slide 20]

[Rachel:] Succeses
really happy with SUL results
Learned: VE: planning of announcements and messaging important
Thrown into our laps: e.g. HTTPS

slide 21

[slide 21]

Misses
Process ideas:
perhaps this was cart before horse
--> Lila: Rachel, let's meet on that [Process Ideas] after Wikimania
Toby: shouldn't have goal that completely depends on other people
Rachel: good point
Lila: actually it's OK, will always have dependencies on other people
spell them out
Luis: discussed that in Q1 goals planning with Damon
Toby: it's a big ask, you shouldn't commit without us (Engineering) committing

Community Advocacy

slide 23

[slide 23]

Philippe:
stewards visit to SF will happen this q
Lila: community election participation how much higher than this time?
Philippe: 280%, compared to previous cycle.

slide 24

[slide 24]

Lila: thinking about next steps, safe spaces..? yes

slide 25

[slide 25]

slide 26

[slide 26]

Luis: did we accidentally leave out the "Misses" slide here?
Philippe: no, folded it into rest
Luis: important about hiring Kalli: had always hired from core community [for , but this success shows it's not a necessary condition
Geoff:[?] elections was more a 1y project, rather than just this q
Luis: yes, and others were involved too[?]

Engineering Community

slide 28

[slide 28]

Quim:
Even if we got all green, it has not been an easy quarter, also with the Engineering reorg that implied our change from department
The high point of the quarter was undoubtedly the Hackathon Showcase in Lyon, with 33 showcased projects (we expected 8)
Terry: (question about pipeline of project selection and support)
--> Lila: can you share process outline, between genesis of idea and product
Toby: as shout-out from Reading, this [hackathon emphasis on prototyping] was really valuable for our team, contributed to our roadmap and understanding
Lila: thank you for taking my challenge to think differently, open mind. 33 projects vs. 8 expected is amazing

slide 29

[slide 29]

(Quim:)
Successes
earlier WMF had hired Sumana part-time as GSoC org admin, now it is done by Niharika on a volunteer capacity, thanks to good processes and organization
Luis: warning flag: great success, but often relies on staff volunteering, danger of burn-out
Lila: in general, ask the question: can a volunteer do a good job about it, or an affiliate?

slide 30

[slide 30]

(Quim:)
Misses
more work than expected with WMFR on hackathon, spent energy to align different working styles
Lila: think about affiliate's focus, e.g. next year WMIL focused on education, how would that influence tech side?
Luis: also has local startup community, so this can be good test of our developer relations approach

Wikipedia Library

slide 32

[slide 32]

Jake: hit all metrics well except "accounts distributed" (which is where rubber hits road)
shifting away from running programs to documenting / sharing approaches

slide 33

[slide 33]

unfortunately had to reschedule one of the partnerships brunches
ALA [very large librarian conference] outreach event went really well

slide 34

[slide 34]

successes
KPI of links added: 12k links added to partners
(caveat: don't know yet how many added by actual program participants, Q1 goal about finding this out)
--> Terry, Lila, Luis: let's chat about analytics resourcing for WL
Lila: don't have internal support for this team, needs it

slide 35

[slide 35]

(Jake:)
project management support?

Terry: continue feedback on QR process
Lila: success criteria
CE involved with so many areas, open up qr meeting to community?