Wikimedia Conference 2015/Programme

Over the last months, the volunteer programme team developed an extensive programme for the Wikimedia Conference.

Please note that it is a first draft of the session outline. Certain details may still change in the coming days. Everyone is welcome to provide feedback, ideas and input!

Main conference themes

The conference session are roughly divisible into two themes (or tracks): Organisation and Structures and Communities and Programmatic Work. There is a focus on the organisational issues and the future of the movement in general, rather than on the details of programmatic work. The Wikimedia Conference is a valuable opportunity where all movement entities' leaders come together to discuss our ideas, plans, challenges and fears for future, and we wish to reserve what little time we have on constructive debate and discussion.

Be prepared!

As last year's conference, it will be again a quite interactive event and all participants are asked to prepare intensively for the announced topics and sessions. All entities and their representatives are requested to thoroughly discuss the conference topics and sessions internally before they start their journey to Berlin.

Reading the session outline is necessary for active participation. Of course, participation does not end after the conference: There will be documentation, reporting back to your home organisations, evaluation and follow-up tasks to be done. Especially for the latter one, Wikimedia Deutschland hired Cornelius Kibelka as the Programme and Engagement Coordinator (see further details here). He will be in charge to design a participatory engagement process together with the participants and speakers.

Session formats

The formats differ from topic to topic. The Program and Engagement Coordinator is working closely together with the facilitators and speakers to further develop the schedule and formats. The idea is to avoid dry lectures as much as possible and rather go for interactive formats. Some session will involve decision making processes, some will be necessary to get a broader understanding of the status of the discussion and will define next steps and time-lines, some will focus on sharing experience and learnings, some will help releasing tensions and others will just foster social processes.

State of the movement / Organisational profile

The Programme Team decided to continue the shorter and sweeter version of the State of the Movement presentation by having a poster session combined with some speed dating. It will be the first session on day 1 and combines a social warm-up with the “getting to know what your peers are up to” session.

All organisations, groups and teams (incl. WMF, AffCom, FDC) are asked to prepare a simple organisational profile. Please make sure to provide your organisation's data via this form before May 10. As last year, there will be a wall of profiles of all participating groups, committees and organisations It is a way to present your organisation in really short and sweet way.

Pre-conference

The official programme of the conference will start on Friday. There are several pre-events on Wednesday (May 13) and Thursday (May 14).

Theme 1: Organisations and Structures

Theme 2: Communities & Programmatic Work

Further topics

Contact

The programme was developed by volunteer programme team. The team has set up an internal mailing list for coordinating matters within the team. Non-members can reach out to them via wmcon-prog lists.wikimedia.de.

Cornelius Kibelka (cornelius.kibelka wikimedia.de) is serving as the main liaison between participants, speakers, facilitators and the logistics team of WMDE. He is happy to help you in any issue concerning the programme and the follow-up process of the Conference. Mail him!