Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Session Guidelines

Guidelines for Goal Setting

These guidelines exists to help each session at the Wikimedia Developer Summit meet the following goals:

• Have productive discussion about topics that need face-to-face time
• Make progress towards agreement on a solution
• Document what was discussed, including areas of agreement and disagreement
• Create written list of action items for follow up
• Update or create Phabricator tasks as appropriate

Key Roleplayers

FACILITATOR

• Your job is to present the topic and keep the discussion moving forward
• Assign meeting roles: Note-taker(s), Remote Moderator, Advocate (optional)
• Choose a meeting type:
  • Problem-solving: surveying many possible solutions
  • Strawman: exploring one specific solution
  • Field narrowing: narrowing down choices of solution
  • Consensus: coming to agreement on one solution
  • Education: teaching people about an agreed solution
• Identify agenda items and guide discussion to stay on topic

NOTE-TAKER(S)

• Your job is to record agenda items, areas of agreement and disagreement, action items, etc
• Take notes using Etherpad. Copy the template into a new Etherpad file with "YourSession" replaced with the name of your session:https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/devsummit17-YourSession 
• Fill out the information in the template
• After the session, DO NOT FORGET to:
  • Copy relevant notes and add a concise summary of the session into a new wiki page with "YourSession" replaced with the name of your session: Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Your Session
  • Add any useful action items into the Phabricator task
  • Add the Wiki and Etherpad link to 'Session notes' section (add if missing) on Phabricator task description and All Session Notes page on MediaWiki
• Note: Preferred number of note-takers: 2(min) & 3(max). We do not encourage everyone to multi-task during the sessions

REMOTE MODERATOR

• Your job is to facilitate discussion among remote participants via IRC channel #wmhack ^connect or #wikimedia-tech ^connect (different for concurrent sessions)
• You will interject on behalf of remote participants and address their questions directly to speakers during the session Q&A
• Learn more about remote participation here

ADVOCATE (OPTIONAL)

• Your job is to actively manage participation and keep people aware of time and help them use it productively
• Periodically step into the discussion and see if people who haven’t said anything yet would like to
• Politely interrupt people who have been talking too long
• Redirect discussion back on-topic if it gets derailed
• Estimate the time needed for each agenda item and tell people if they are going over the time
• Give a warning at 5-10 minutes left
• At the end of the session, interrupt and tell people the session is officially over
• If people want to continue the discussion, ask them to move out of the room