Wikimania Committee/Minutes/2022-01-13

Wikimania 2022 Core Organizing Team – setup and selection

72 applications (29 public) were received for joining the Wikimania 2022 Core Organizing Team and supporting the work.

2-hour working meeting on Thursday January 13:

Steering committee tasks were reviewed from earlier discussions in November and December
Those interested to continue supporting Wikimania 2022 in various capacities expressed so
Main areas of work for the new COT and the short-listing process were discussed

Andrew, Anna, Butch, Florence, Gnangarra, Iolanda, Phoebe, Susanna, Winnie Staff: Elfego, Elena, Lisa, Mehrdad

The role of the Wikimania Steering Committee

Ensure continuity, sharing experience, avoiding repetition of mistakes
Set up the Core Organizing Team for each Wikimania
Guarantee that WM takes place as an international event belonging to the whole movement
Making sure that the community is represented in this process
Ad hoc and hands-on support when needed, especially closer to the event
Triaging issues and finding solutions
The connection between the SC and the COT is very important
Having someone from the SC join COT discussions / milestones is very useful
ONBOARDING - both general and more granular (e.g. work flows)
Assuring that the COT takes decisions (feels capable and enabled to make decisions)

Continuing support

Iolanda, Phoebe, Butch
Andrew, Florence, and Eric with limited availability
Gnangarra is interested to join the SC and to support the new COT with certain tasks
Winnie happy to join the SC and provide support for the COT as well
Susanna interested to help the 2022 COT members

COT areas of work

COT 2022 overview

Somebody from the COT to have a leadership / decision-making role, instead of one group of people trying to make everything happen
- Electing a "leader" right away could be hard, but highlighting the leadership for the program and working with each person is better
- Lead and co-lead – having a point person in the volunteer COT is very important with chairs and co-chairs
- The lead can also come from the 2021 COT
- I think it is better to have leaders for different activities
Having a project manager is helpful, this has often fallen with staff
For the main project and for the specific buckets of work, e.g. submissions, speaker engagement
Active liaising between the COT and SC
Working with people's capacities -- do a mapping of everyone's skills and interests
- Build people's capacity in the process
- This will also naturally emerge as time goes
- Wikimania also provides a way for people to develop leadership – they need a structure to do that in!

Short-listing process

Short-listing based on direct experience in the Wikimedia movement and/or relevant skills (events, technical, communications, ...)
To finalize the 2022 COT based on overview of combined skills and the global composition of the team
Step 1: staff to do a first short-listing; YES/NO based on experience and skills
Step 2: the SC and 2021 COT indicate applicants that they have worked with who have relevant skills for organizing Wikimania
Step 3: with peer pairs to review batches of applications based on (1) Having direct Wikimedia events experience, and (2) having general virtual experience