Wikimania Committee/Minutes/2022-01-13

Wikimania 2022 Core Organizing Team – setup and selection

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Session overview

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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

Attendance

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


Summary

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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

  • Attendee experience (newcomers, old-timers)
  • Participant engagement (scholarships, safety)
  • Programming
  • Outreach and Comms
  • Tech
  • Evaluation


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


What's next?

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  • Short-listing applicants by January 19 and inviting some for interviews