Topic on Talk:Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017

The Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017 aims to focus the call for participation around these main topics:

• A plan for the Community Wishlist 2016 top results
• Handling wiki content beyond plaintext
• A unified vision for editorial collaboration
• Building a sustainable user experience together
• Building on Wikimedia services: APIs and Developer Resources
• How to manage our technical debt
• How to grow our technical community

You can find more information about these topics and how we selected them here.

The next steps are:

• Each main topic needs at least one facilitator, who will assure that the topic is well promoted in the right places, the right activities are proposed, and the right people participate in them with common goals. These facilitators will join the Program committee https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Developer_Summit/About

• Each main topic needs good quality and quantity of proposals submitted, so a good selection can be made for the pre-scheduled Summit program.

• Each main topic needs its own wiki page for information, coordination, discussion, and documentation.

If by the end of October a main topic is still missing a facilitator, a critical mass of proposals and/or a decent wiki page, then the chances are that such main topic will be dissolved. If that happens, the activities proposed can be still pushed by their promoters in the context of the Unconference. Just like the rest of proposals not fitting under the main topics.

Now each main topic has its own page and a skeleton that the contributors of each page are totally free to edit away. See Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Program.

I have changed the term "owner" for "facilitator", which reflects better what this role is supposed to do.

The model for mentors in developer outreach programs has worked quite well, and I think we can apply it here as well:

• two facilitators are required for each main topic, a primary and a secondary (to clarify responsibilities and assure some redundancy and diversity of perspectives).
• ideally one person takes one facilitator role only, or two at most if there is no alternative, either as primary-secondary or secondary-secondary (to propitiate quantity and diversity of facilitators, and reduce the risk of excessive workload and single points of failure.

Do you agree?

We need to start aligning Program committee members with main topic facilitators. I think all primary facilitators should be Program committee members. However, this could be optional for secondary facilitators. On the other hand, maybe the committee would benefit from the participation of some members providing a perspective not fully covered by the main topics. We'll see as we go.

You can find more information about these topics and how we selected them here.

I wanted to know what "Useful, consistent, and well documented APIs" was about, for example, but I'm not seeing anything there. The only mentions of it seem to be when you proposed it and when you declared it a chosen topic.

I have collected the various ideas in the wiki page as a first step. Yesterday in the ArchCom meeting Daniel Kinzler was also puzzled by these titles. Note that they are meant to be an orientation for the kind of proposals desired, not titles of sessions themselves.

The point is, do you have a proposal in mind that would contribute to Useful, consistent, and well documented APIs? If so, you are especially encouraged to submit it.

It's October, and before the end of the month we need to have the people we want registered and the topic we want submitted. @MKramer (WMF) is driving the promotion of the Summit beyond the usual suspects and she needs the help of facilitators and anyone else interested. I have listed the current status of facilitators at Phab:T146615#2687934.

Problems:

• A unified vision for editorial collaboration and How to grow our technical community are missing facilitators. @Trizek (WMF) and @Qgil-WMF are trying to find them.
• Useful, consistent, and well documented APIs and Artificial Intelligence to build and navigate content have two facilitators each in theiry (my assumption) but it would be good to have a confirmation.
• Handling wiki content beyond plaintext, Building a sustainable user experience together, and How to manage our technical debt are missing a second facilitator. @RobLa-WMF is volunteering to be facilitator of Technical debt in addition to Wiki content, but as explained above I'd rather have roles as spread among different people as possible. We can get involved in the topics we want anyway, but when it comes to duties it is better to have them distributed whenever feasible.

Regarding my dual volunteering for tech debt and wikitext, here's what was said in Phab:E285:

• 21:49:55 * robla volunteers for "Handling wiki content beyond plaintext" and "How to manage our technical debt"
• 21:50:27 <DanielK_WMDE__> robla: these are my favorite of the lot. let me know if i can help.
• 21:50:28 <greg-g> ah, I was going to volunteer for the tech debt one

I've earmarked Wikitext as a goal for Architecture next quarter, but that's not as central to Architecture as tech debt. I'm willing to step away as facilitator from one or the other, but based on the IRC comments, DanielK (@Duesentrieb) is also willing to be a facilitator for one or both. Your thoughts, Daniel?

I'm certainly interested in content models and tech debt. I see that as a facilitator, I "will assure that the topic is well promoted in the right places, the right activities are proposed, and the right people participate in them with common goals". I'd need some help with that, since my technical expertise in these topics is not going to help much with the job at hand - namely, managing communication.

That is one of the reasons why we request at least two facilitators per topic. While you could focus on the topics at hand and that will surely attract the usual suspects, the other facilitator(s) could help better with the promotion tasks.

We organizers of the Summit can also help, if you tell us what you need.

Since facilitating a main topic is real work, I have created phab:T147406 to track my work bootstrapping "How to grow our technical community". Feel free to copy/improve the model.

I have created Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Program committee in order to have all the information and discussions about Program committee members and facilitators in one place.