Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Steering Group/Minutes/2019-01-24

Overview

Recommendations

Implementation

Reports

FAQ

Participants

1. Camelia Boban - Diversity
2. Jorge Vargas - Diversity
3. Matanya Moses - Product and Technology
4. Alek Tarkowski - Partnerships
5. John Cummings - Partnerships
6. Anna Mazgal - Advocacy
7. Alice Wiegand - Advocacy
8. Daria Cybulska - Resource Allocation
9. Liam Wyatt – Resource Allocation
10. Margeigh Novotny - Roles and Responsibilities
11. Nicole Ebber - CT
12. Kaarel Vaidla - CT
13. Douglas Ssebaggala - CT
14. Tanveer Hasan - CT

Apologies

• Biyanto Rebin - Revenue Streams
• Sandra Rientjes - Community Health

Agenda

1. Check in (5 minutes)
2. Agenda review (2 minutes)
3. Overview of last meeting (2 minutes)
4. Discussion
   1. Working Group Progress and updates (20 minutes)
   2. Support Plans (5 minutes)
5. Virtual / external Facilitation (10 minutes)
6. Working Group Travel (5 minutes)
7. Wikimedia Summit 2019 preview (10 minutes)
8. Steering group confirmation and mailing list (5 minutes)

Summary of the call

Check-in

A check in round, agenda adoption and Steering Group call extension from 60 to 90 minutes were communicated to all participants.

Review of the last meeting

The previous objectives of the interim coordinators’ meeting in December were reviewed which highlighted

• Get a shared understanding of discussed topics.
• Identify synergies to avoid replication across Working Groups.
• Determine the changes in the composition of coordinators due to new responsibilities and availability.
• Plan the December holiday break and a follow up on framing calls with Working Groups that had not heard from Katherine Maher (Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director)
• Cohesion and/or unity between the Core Team and Working Group Coordinators
• Communicate the offer  from the Wikimedia Foundation Legal team to provide legal advice for the groups
• An update from the survey by the Learning and Evaluation team, which will be shared after completion.
• Appreciate the Working Group commitment to the process, before, and after the holiday break participating with the same commitment and energy.
• Conclude Working Group members’ nominations and representation at the Wikimedia Summit.

Working Group progress and updates

Working Groups were given a platform to share with fellow coordinators and the Core Team what is working well, what can be improved and any other updates. These updates will also feed into conversations of the Core Team with Wikimedia Foundation staff at the all hands meeting in San Francisco next week to help them understand how the Strategy Process relates to their work.

Diversity Working Group

Working on different documentation including scoping, what the Working Group needs to be achieved, and the definition of Diversity.

• These documents will be put together to  form one central document.
• They have also started writing documents about what Diversity meant for individual members,  including Language Diversity

There’s collaboration with a liaison from the  Community Health Working Group, the next call is 25th January.

• The Working group would like to know what other groups are doing

Feedback was given from Resource Allocation about if a definition that was shaped in the Diversity Conference 2017 has been considered, which was supposed to be taken into the Movement Strategy Process.

• There are two Diversity Working Group members who attended the Diversity Conference and some of the content is linked under reading material on the Meta page. The group has been encouraged to review these documents and build upon them.

Product and Technology Working Group

The Group has agreed to submit a scoping document per sub group (4 sub groups). These documents will be collated into the Scoping document.

• They had a productive discussion with Wikimedia Chief Technology Officer, which was highly useful because of the Working Group members’ close alignment with the Foundation and the teams working there.
  • They hope to finish all the scoping documents on time.

Partnerships Working Group

Had the first call of the year on January 21, and finally the team has clarity on what the final product should be, beyond asking questions and answering them.

• There are voluntary subgroups working on partnerships.
• They talked with a liaison from the Capacity Building Working Group and discussed sharing content between the different Working Groups since by now all the Working Groups can get peer support from each other.
  • Feedback to this was that nothing should stop members from sharing the Scoping document with other Working Groups and coordinators.
• The Working Group will have weekly calls starting February, and will have the scoping document ready in time.

Advocacy Working Group

Organising their document with a structure that allows for clarity regarding content and ideas and relooking at our questions.

• Some questions are well developed and some are vague. There were some challenges in bringing people who had not been participating in earlier calls.
  • Have changed the meeting time to be of help to all the other participants.

Would like to exchange some notes, and are interested in Jorge’s observations regarding Languages in the context of Diversity.

• If Advocacy would like to have someone from the Diversity Working Group join their discussions (Advocacy) it can be arranged.
• Advocacy Working Group members have submitted a session at the Creative Commons Summit in Lisbon, which has been accepted, and would like to collaborate with the Partnerships Working Group as Advocacy cannot be done without partners.
  • What would be the responsibility of the partners and what would be the initiative taken up by volunteers.
• The Working Group will approach the Steering Group in February and invite suggestions regarding the overlapping work.

Resource Allocation Working Group

Members have been working on definitions , and focusing on equity. The Resource Allocation Working Group members would like to know what other Working Group members think about Equity and equitable allocation of resources, and

• if other Working Groups have any discussion about equity or about defining equity.
  • They have co-opted for aperson external to the movement.
  • Feedback on this was: there’s an informal cross group discussion among Wikimedia Foundation Staff Working Group members form Resource Allocation, and Roles and Responsibilities on creating a shared understanding of "equity"
• They are digging up the review that was done by Wikimedia Foundation to determine the resources that are currently available for the movement, and the research into the definitions of resources and equity.
• Looking forward to meeting and discussing with the Roles and Responsibilities and Revenue Streams Working Groups because of the overlapping scope and themes, and how these can be mapped.
  • There has been one conversation that Product and Technology would like to understand about Roles and Responsibilities and how the Product and Technology Working Group can incorporate these roles into their scoping document

One member has decided to leave the Resource Allocation Working Group due to time constraints.

Roles and Responsibilities Working Group

The Working Group has made lots of progress since November: there’s a lot of momentum, there’s eagerness in the team due to the scopoing work happening, since the early slow start.

• There are currently two projects: a census - survey within the different entities in the movement, how they joined the movement, and views on how the movement is organised. They plan to create a mailing list mainly about the roles and entities in the movement.
• Secondly they are carrying out interviews on people’s involvement and history in the movement, asking about where activities are working well, and where there are tensions and breakdowns, sources of the tension, what’s at stake, and what qualities a new organisational structure should have to achieve 2030 goals, drawing out on people’s perspectives on where these changes should happen.
• They have carried out around 20 interviews, and the goal is to use every conversation as an opportunity to find out other suitable people. Asking interviewee to mention people with different opinions.
  • They have however been stuck on the transcription method, and have not been able to find a method to work asynchronously yet it is important for them to use these conversations from the interviews.
  • The Working Group prefers a human transcription as there are nuances to the conversation that might not be reflected in a machine led transcription.

Community Health

(Sandra provided this summary in writing after the call)

• we have a regular schedule of meetings. Every second Monday we have a one-hour call to review progress, discuss any documents/text produced, and decide on next steps.  The Mondays in between these calls we have optional 'office hours': there is no firm agenda for these. Working group members can drop in if they have questions or to consult with other members.
• we are now finalizing a first document in our scoping exercise which identifies major areas of challenges regarding community health.  These were compiled by reviewing relevant documents (reports on discussions during WIkimedia Conference and Wikimania, community surveys etc), a facilitated brainstorming session and working in small groups.
• we are also identifying - at a very general level - potential ways in which these challenges could be addressed.  This is still a long way removed from formulating concrete recommendations. We are trying to identify whether a solution would require changes in rules, changes in technology,  capacity building etc.
• our next step will be to reach out to other working groups and external experts.

Information from the Core Team about the scoping template

The Core Team is working on a rough scoping format, which considers the questions and concerns that have been raised (above).

• Community Consultation is included in parts of the survey but still having discussions with this scoping format which will be shared with the Coordinators and then the Working Groups.

Support Plan

The Core team has developed customised support options from both internal and external sources, we will share the support document after the call, for your input within 3 days. After that,  it will be shared with the rest of the Working Groups.

Virtual / external Facilitation

The Core Team has received feedback that ‘facilitation’ is essential for the success of the Working Group meetings. The decision was to get facilitation by an external agency as it allows the Core Team to retain its neutral position regarding content and discussions, the Working Group can concentrate on the intellectual and content related discussions.

ICA UK is the organisation that we are working with.

• They will help in facilitating the calls
  • Identify action items
  • Arrange for the assignment of tasks.
  • Ensure the discussions will have flow and retain focus.
• The facilitation will also help in ensuring the diverse range of opinions are heard and discussed.
  • Any other tasks needed from the facilitators can be discussed.

Some Working Groups already have the momentum and consider continuing their meetings without the services of the facilitators.

• The Core Team will reach out to members of the Roles and Responsibilities Working Group to further discuss the facilitation services.
• The Partnerships Working Group was split between facilitation, and those who feel that it will complicate the process
  • They decided to give the facilitation approach a go especially that there are planned very long 3 hour calls that are not easy to conduct.

Working Group Travel

The Core team has come across a few challenges, and had to cancel two Working Group meetings.

• The WMF travel team needs 12 weeks notice ahead of travel to make travel arrangements.  
• We (Working Groups and Core Team) need more advanced planning to make these meetings happen in the future.
• The Core Team has shared an advisory (Working Group representation at events) and travel procedures, which includes an assessment of planned in person meetings to give a good framing of conversations.

The Advocacy Working Group has been planning extra stay at the Wikimedia Summit but this has been general conversation, and nothing concrete.

• When the Advocacy Working Group comes close to a decision at the agenda of the next meeting they will communicate to the Core team as soon as possible, especially taking the 12 weeks planning time for travel into account.

Wikimedia Summit 2019 preview

See the rough initial outline here.

Working Groups are the core essence for the Wikimedia Summit 2019, we are designing the conference with strong emphasis on Strategy and Working Group discussions.

• Friday is the kick off session and time is allocated for each Working Group to refine and improve their scope as per the discussions in the Movement Strategy Process. Also there is an allocated time for synchronising content across the Working Groups.
  • Our effort is also to get other affiliates understand and contribute to the strategic process. Not only at the programmatic level but also at the level of the structural changes.
• Saturday is the input collection sesion, for the scoping document, present the work, collect feedback and gather insights. Feedback on general progress, and full discussion regarding the plans.
• Sunday are next steps to identify tangible outcomes and outputs. Moving forward with the recommendation phase, progress made so far, progress made during the conference and the tasks and milestones for the upcoming Wikimania.

Feedback on the above outline is welcome.

Steering Group confirmation and mailing list

The Core team will send out an email to confirm participation and transition from interim to permanent coordinators, which will formalise the formation of the Steering Group.

• A Mailing list which will have all the steering coordinators’ emails and focused conversations on a dedicated channel will also be created.  
• Each group is asked to assign 2 coordinators, or up to 3 if necessary.

Next steps and action points

Core Team

1. Set up the next monthly Steering Group call for February.
2. Share the scoping format (draft) when ready.
3. Share the support plan with coordinators to provide feedback within 3 days
4. Reach out to the Roles and Responsibilities Working Group with an update about transcription services.
5. Identify, and introduce Virtual Facilitators across all Working Groups.

Working Groups/Coordinators

1. Share scoping documents across Working Groups, when ready, and if there’s need.
2. Provide feedback on the outline of the Wikimedia Summit 2019 preview.
3. Share the Working Group support document with the rest of the Working Group members after providing feedback to the CT.
4. Advocacy Working Group
   1. Determine collaboration with the Partnerships Working Group
      1. Diversity Working Group about language diversity
   2. Communicate to the Core Team about any planned in-person meetings after the Wikimedia Summit.
   3. Approach the Steering Group in February to invite feedback regarding the overlapping work.
5. Resource Allocation Working Group to link up with Diversity Working Group in locating the material and other resources about Diversity (from the Wikimedia Diversity Conference, see reading material).