Strategic Planning/2018-19

Revision as of 08:56, 14 November 2018 by Samwilson (talk | contribs) (reorganise, make past-tense, and start adding notes as taken during the sessions)

WMAU is currently part way through a funded Annual Plan that runs from 1 July 2018 - 30 June 2019. The Committee meet in Melbourne on 9–11 November 2018 to review progress against this Annual Plan and to commence the next round of strategic planning to inform a 2019-20 Annual Plan. This page records the weekend's schedule and notes.

Facilitator
Asaf Bartov will facilitate sessions of the workshop. Asaf is a program officer at the Wikimedia Foundation, and works in the Community Resources team, in a program called Community Capacity Development.
Attending
Wikimedia Australia committee: Pru Mitchell, Gideon Digby, Tom Hogarth, Robert Myers, Caddie Brain, Sam Wilson, Steve Crossin
Apologies: Julian Singh (Accessing remotely when possible)
Noongarpedia: Len Collard (could not make it in the end)
New Zealand participants: Mike Dickison, Siobhan Leachman

Friday 9 November 2018

Agenda

5.00pm Happy Hour and dinner at Coffeehead, Railway Parade, Camberwell

7.30pm Session 1: Setting the scene

Julian via Skype

  • Welcome, introductions and getting to know you
    • What inspires you in terms of the movement?
    • What are your goals for the weekend?
    • What are your goals / priorities for your next 12 months work for Wikimedia?
  • Short presentations and discussion
    • WMAU (Pru)
    • NZ (Mike)
    • WMF (Asaf)

Review of program

Notes

Sunday 9/11. 8:13PM.


Pru welcomed the committee and introduced Asaf, and aknowleged that we're meeting on Wurundjeri land. As not everyone was present yet, we decided to skip the extended individual introductions and do a quick round of the room and then plan the following day and the capacity plan.

Robert
Three years on the Committee, ten in the movement.

Currently running a Wikipedia-based university course at Sydney Uni.

Asaf
It's pronounced 'Asaf'. Editing sice 2001, Wikimedia Israel board member from 2007. In 2011 joined the WMF and since 2015 has been working in the area of community capacity building. Helping to move the WMF's conception of the 'global south' (a problematic term originating within UN development concepts) towards what we're now calling 'emerging communities'. This gives more weight to the on-the-ground realities of the Wikimedia community and not individual countries' economic status. In this light, Australia is an emerging community, despite not being in the global south. The reasons for this are varied, and are both objective (e.g. distances between contributors) and subjective (e.g. WMAU's history and functioning). WMF employees have not often visited (even more rare when visits have not been added on to other events such as conferences) so his visit here is more focused and explicit than has been the case previously. WMAU is on a good path and is getting better than we've previously been. He's here to help and facilitate, in whatever way is most useful to us, and has not got any pre-determined solutions. Ideas from other chapters may fit well here, but we may not have been exposed to them before.
Gideon
Has been with WMAU since before it existed. Has worked on outreach all over WA and the rest of Australia, and initiated things such as the Quality Images process on Commons.
Caddie
Been in NT for eight years. Got into Wikimedia via journalism and seeing the low coverage of NT topics on Wikipedia. Has run meetups in Katherine, Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, etc. and these are ongoing and reasonably regular. Often people don't want to edit directly themselves, so has been acting as intermediary. Has also tried to work on coverage of indigenous topics, but it's hard. 2 years on committee.
Sam
WMF coder. On the WMAU for year, to help with tech things.
Tom
WMAU Secretary, coordinator of WikiClubWest. Wikimedian in Residence at Museum of Perth. We're never quite sure what WMAU's status is with the WMF (about funding, understanding, or acceptance), and our other big problem is the distances between community members in Australia.
Julian
Newest Committee member. Sorry for not being in Melbourne; would like to be but is at a GovHack event. Been editing Wikipedia for 10 years, with a passion around open data and interconnections with Government (and how it can fit with Wikimedia). Lives in the ACT and is hoping to get more local things happening there. ACT has the right demographics, with unis, the NLA, etc. and it just needs someone to kick things off.
Pru
(Excited about activities in the ACT. We're already on the Trove consultative committee, and more can be done there.) Current president of WMAU, and has a background as a teacher and librarian. Got into Wikimedia via Jimmy's visit in 2007 when she attended a breakfast with him as a representative of an education organisation. Been on the Committee for three years, two years as president. Been involved in WMAU for ten years and editing wikis regularly in the last few years. Keen to do more with Wikicite and work with educators around those topics. Wants to make tihngs better for Committee members, especially new ones, as the process of learning WMAU can deter people sometimes.

The New Zealand contingent had not arrived yet so we passed on to discussion of the weekend's schedule: Strategic Planning/2018-19, and what each of us have our highest priorities.

NZ are coming because we've got a common context and have many similarities, so even when they're here we can still talk of Australia-centric things. Len Collard was going to be coming for Saturday, but was unable to in the end.

  • Tom: indiginous content and inclusion. Committee face-to-face is different this year.
  • Sam: ICT, wikis, communication channels, etc. — is this something that benefits from Asaf's presence though?

Canada is in similar position to us. We might talk about some of this tonight, but probably not at all tomorrow.

  • Caddie: good to get to know people. It's easy to get a bit lost in the Committee, hard to participate. Passion is community storytelling (not movement-internal stuff so much). Sometimes our purpose and goals are not very clear, and our organisation focus can be lacking.
  • Tom: potential for Australian subject-level user groups has not been discussed enough.
  • Asaf: the SWOT analysis of capacity etc. exposes some of these things; we'll knead these into a plan/direction for the chapter as a whole. Other things: what can we offer volunteer initiatives? The chapter can take on a few big projects, and help smaller volunteer initiatives get off the ground without having to be the main leader.
  • Gideon: community's capacity. How to distribute activities etc. He's been fallback for most things for 5 years and wants to see others step up. It's a risk to rely on only one person for lots of things. If the usual suspects always do things then when they can't do them no one does. This has happened before, and it takes great energy to rebuild each time. We must get different people to chair meetings, build skills etc.
  • Asaf: capacity is a strategic problem for australia. Depends too much on single indiviuals, and no deputies are identified. Many core functions are only handled by one person. Institutional knowledge is lost when people leave (and take the keys with them). It's challenging to bring new people in, but more should be done to do so.
  • Robert: build membership, and get more people engaged with WMAU. eg. there used to be meetups in Sydney but are no longer. Other cities do not have so much activity. Do it in a way that doesn't depend on one person. Holding an event or running a project shouldn't be so fragile; new members will help with this.

[Your note-taker missed a few minutes here.]

  • A paid person can help with some aspects of this. Some members are probably willing to contribute more, but we need to have better ways to integrate them, without them actually being on the Committee.
  • Asaf: WMAU doesn't use the available advertising channels such as centralnotice, because we lack skills or just don't think of it. The skills can be learnt, and aren't overly technical. The greater art is in making good use of the channels. We wouldn't want to display more than one or two banners per year, to avoid "banner-blindness", but those one or two can be shown to "everyone who looks at Wikipedia in Australia". Other chapters do this, and we can talk to and learn from them; there's a big community of practice around this, but most of the members of that community don't think to share their knowledge with Australia. For example, the WMF does masses of work with banners as this is where most fundraising income comes from, and they perform extensive A/B testing in order to (among other things) show banners as little as possible. Even if the goal is not fundraising, the same science can help us. Another example is the Macedonian Wikipedia's use of a banner to 'like' their page on Facebook, and now they have 30,000 likes and can directly reach out to those people.
  • Gideon: people on the Committee do often make connections with other organisations, both within and without the movement — but then leave the Committee and there's no trace of the connections. We need to future-proof things.
  • Julian (remote): What's the purpose of the WMAU Committee and how will we measure our success over the next 12 months? Is it number of paid members? Number of edits in australia? Number of events? Can we have some goals by the end of this weekend?
  • Asaf: This is basically the strategy question! e.g. we don't know how many editors there are in Australia. The stats show editors per language, or edits per country, but editors per country is private and only available to WMF employees due to privacy concerns around data analysis. Perhaps one day will be made public, at least in some form. The WMAU Committee can get the annual numbers by requesting them (only at country level).
  • Tom: We've previously tried to identify editors in Australia, and had little luck as it's always been based on self-identification.

[more notes to come, here]

Close: 9:45PM.

Saturday 10 November 2018

Agenda

  • 9:00am start. The discussion will move thorugh in the order above with Asaf facilitating, the aim is to maximise the availablility of Asaf, Len, and Mike with ongoing committee discussions and break time are approximate only.
  • 8:00 -08:45 the gathering at coffeehead we'll meet up there in the morning
  • 9:00 start
  • 10:30 morning tea
  • 12:30 lunch
  • 15:30 afternoon tea
  • 6.00pm Dinner
  • After dinner: WMAU committee meeting.

Items for discussion:

  • membership
  • Followup and thoughts from Asaf regarding the current activities
  • meta:Community Capacity Map
  • Prioritising and Planning
  • Indigenous languages and cultural knowledge sharing
    • Len to speak about the Noongarpedia experience
    • Mike & Siobhan for insights on the Maori project
    • Asaf on the WMF plans and lexicographic developments
  • Reporting and infrastructure discussion and demos
    • Sam & Asaf on tools available through the WMF
    • Robert to answer any questions on WMAU account tools
  • Deciding, doing, documenting, and communicating


Sunday 11 November 2018 Remembrance Day

Agenda

8:30 am continue the discussions 10:00 head to Shrine of Rememberance for 11am service 12.30pm Meetup and lunch ACMI Cafe, Federation Square Melbourne 2.00pm Session 4: (Ross House, Mezzanine room at 247-251 Flinders Lane Melbourne) - SESSION OPEN TO PUBLIC

    • WikiCite presentation (Siobhan)
    • Technical walk through (Sam)
    • Critter of the week Museums work (Mike)
    • Indigenous languages (Len)
    • Asaf presentation

4.00pm Close -


See also

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