Product and Technology Advisory Council/Meeting notes

Details from the Product and Technology Advisory Council (PTAC) monthly meetings are published below, capturing key discussions, outcomes, and actions to take forward.

2024-10

31 October 2024 (Virtual)
PTAC met for the first time as a group on October 31, 2024 in a virtual session. The agenda covered introductions, discussion of goals and expectations, and preparation for onboarding sessions with Foundation Staff to learn from decisions made recently.

2024-11

20 & 22 November 2024 (Virtual)
Two sessions were held in a small "Listening tour" to learn respectively about how the Foundation came to prioritize work on a new Charts service, and formed a new strategy for MediaWiki support.

2024-12

4 December 2024 (Virtual)
Further onboarding/listening tour session covering:

Multi-generational strategy. Learning about the longterm strategic objective to become a multi-generational project.
Movement metrics. Overview of the metrics that drive the movement and discuss how the WMF Product & Technology department's initiatives might influence these metrics.

2025-01

24-26 January 2025 (In-person)
PTAC's first in-person meeting was held over three days in Portland, Oregon, USA. The group looked at data and trends and explored the potential value of different strategic directions as part of putting forward a draft first recommendation, subsequently publishing February 2025 draft PTAC recommendation for feedback.

2025-02

25 Feb 2025 (Virtual)

Agenda covered:

Recommendation response from the community: PTAC provided feedback on the community response to the published Recommendation.
Recommendation iteration: discussion on whether there should be iteration on the recommendation.
Annual Planning: how the foundation’s Product and Technology department is incorporating the recommendation in annual planning and the product roadmap.

Key notes:

Although we received some great feedback regarding our recommendation, it was from a limited number of people. We acknowledge that if the community had strong objections, they would have communicated their concerns to us. Therefore - we are moving forward with the Recommendation.
We noticed there might be some confusion about who the recommendation is for - is it for WMF Product and Tech, or for the community volunteers? It is important to note that the Recommendation is for the Product and Technology team, but also to signal to the community that we are embracing and encouraging a mobile-first approach.
We had a great discussion about the role of PTAC in representing the community. We agreed that it is each PTAC member’s responsibility to reach out and talk to the right stakeholders, and bring that back to the council, especially on technical topics.
One of the key things we need to do is package our process-learnings from making this Recommendation. This will be a task to be tackled over the next few months.

2025-03

19 March 2025 (Virtual)

Agenda covered:

Feedback and discussion regarding the recent New York Strategy Retreat
Revisit of the PTAC Recommendation in the Annual Plan
Discussed a proposed timeline towards Wikimania in August
Freestyle generation of topics to inform a possible next topic to make a recommendation on

Key notes:

The strategy retreat was an opportunity to engage as a broader community, with a focus on what the world needs from us in context of global trends. Two big topics surfaced through the retreat include the need for neutrality across all projects, and the responsible use of infrastructure.
We discussed the emphasis of mobile experience work in the next annual plan, including but not limited to Structured Tasks on mobile, Edit Check and a mobile-first design in everything we do. In addition we are researching article creation on mobile and additions to mobile Visual Editor.
PTAC talked about two upcoming events at which PTAC members can share messages and gather more input: Hackathon in May and Wikimania in August.

Our next meeting will be 23 April 2025.