Wikimedia Conference 2015/Programme/5

5: Reflections on Lila's talk

How to move forward

Group discussion

What was this session about?

The session was mainly a chance for the participants to talk more intensively about questions raised in Lila’s talk.

What are the next steps to be taken?

No concrete further steps were announced in this session.

Who is the person to reach out to?

Luis Villa (WMF Senior Director of Community Engagement) and Siko Bouterse (WMF Director of Community Resources)

Photos

see the Commons category

Session Documentation

Original Description: A high-level discussion between the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation and the affiliates
(NB: Due to changes in the schedule, the original description does not fit with the actual session content.)
Desired Outcome: WMF and affiliates come to a common understanding on how to work together as organisations
Audience: All conference participants
Session Format: Group discussions; 60 min
Speaker: No official speaker.
Summary of the group discussions

Lila’s talk finished with some questions:

What are we missing? What should we NOT do?
How can we work together as better partners?
Coming in Q3 2015: a community consultation on our grants programs. Is there also interest in a consultation about the future roles of affiliates and WMF?

The facilitators introduced the session and added one question (“How do we overcome the old narratives and tea leaf reading?”). Afterwards, the audience split into four groups and discussed the questions.

One group (at the front) discussed the question whether there should be a community consultation on the role of affiliates. One participant said such a consultation should be built on the insights and questions of the Chapters Dialogue, as a lot of data is already there. The Chapters Dialogue questions can be seen from the perspective of the Collective Impact concept and a follow-up process should be created. Other participants in the group expressed that they don’t understand where the strong wish for definition of roles comes from; some guessed they result from the old narratives. Instead the movement needed to build more trust, empathy and better relationships, as a clearer definition of roles and responsibilities might come after that easier/automatically. One participant noted that affiliates play an important role in supporting community health. WMF and affiliates should work together to figure out how this task can best be shared between WMF and the affiliates. Others asked whether it was clear what could be changed if roles would be defined. One participant expressed his/her joy about Lila’s slide on local and global task division between affiliates and WMF. However, as someone added, roles should not be defined too strictly, as it might prohibit the movement from experimenting and trying new stuff. There are global tasks that affiliates can work on and support the WMF with, too. The last question that came up revolved around the local and global division of donor relations and communications.

Another group did not discuss one of the above mentioned questions, but raised general concerns and expressed needs. Those were:

Need for for unified voice on public policy, copyright law, open database rights, freedom of panorama, etc.
Better methods for prioritising partnerships
Lowering the barriers to participation and contribution for institutions that want to contribute
Chapter-to-chapter grant review procedure
Way to contact all chapters (President of Board, or leadership) at once
Wish to prevent duplication of help resources on multiple wikis
Chapters partnering on conflict resolution
Better knowledge of the WMF and clarification of roles and contact persons

In the third group, participants discussed the most different questions. Luis, who attended the group for a while, asked what the WMF should prioritise, while having limited resources. Someone replied that supporting emerging/non-EN communities as in making sure to enable them to grow should be important. After that, several participants raised technical concerns, but decided that the Wikimania is a more appropriate place to discuss those. Another (yet related) topic was the support of small language communities by translating texts for them. One participant said in his/her opinion APG rules are too strict, which led to a discussion about grants and micro-grants, as the latter seem to be more effective.

There is no documentation of the fourth group’s discussion available.