#wmcon Wikimedia Strategy – making it impactful, measuring impact, and thinking about tech and localisation

Since Wednesday I’ve been at the Wikimedia Conference (wmcon) 2014, in Berlin.The event is a movement wide conference for those engaged in Wikimedia organisations including chapters (sort of…it’s evolving right). This actually makes for an interesting mix (and dilemma) around movement-board based groups (i.e. with no paid staff, and all operational and strategic matters adopted by a lead-group or board), and ‘professionalised’ orgs (i.e. with paid staff and, in theory, boards focussing on strategic matters not operational). In any case, it was a great opportunity to catch up with some of the few I’ve met before (mostly through EduWiki), and the many others in the movement. It was also nice to have some positive feedback and interest in our strategy work. It was on that work I was asked to talk, and rather than give a blurb here I’ll just embed my slideshare. I will, however, note that one of the things I’ve become very interested in is how as a movement we can develop shared frameworks which respect (and support) localisation. One important factor here is the role of the Wikimedia Foundation, who we need to support e.g. a shared space for strategy models, translation mirrors (or whatever they’re called on Wiki), alongside ‘forking’ support, on meta, etc.  As part of this I’ve got an Idea on Idea lab [(idea lab idea lab) here]¹. You can also view: * the [strategy session etherpad]² * The [programme evaluation and design day etherpad]³ * The [metrics brainstorm session etherpad]⁴

Wikimedia Strategy – making it impactful, measuring impact, and thinking about tech and localisation from Simon Knight

Session questions

•How do you make use of external consultants

•how much time did you take, and what stakeholders do you work with

•how do we do strategy inclusively

•How do we collaborate across chapters, etc.

•What level of strategy do you work with – a framework (WMUK) or a planning doc, etc.

•Strategy pre/post ED employment

•What do we do with annual plan activities which don’t fit into our (or WMF) strategy

•What points do we set targets for

•How and when do you engage community

•What question should we ask to get people t o participate (not “what should our strategy be?”)

•What is the experience on ^^

•How do we relate overall, and technical/educational/GLAM, etc. strategy?

I got some nice notes (as well as lots of useful conversation):

Some other useful links *

[ https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Dialogue]⁵ * [https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Learning_modules]⁶

• • e.g. someone suggested pagerank might be interesting, well, there’s a tool for that: intrawiki pagerank project e.g. * [https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/A_framework_to_evaluate_entities_impact:_wm_metrics_and_friends#Interested_attendees]⁷
• Pipelining tools

Footnotes

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Idea_lab_idea_lab ↩

2. http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/wmcon14-6 ↩

3. http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/BerlinPE&D ↩

4. http://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/Berlin_Metrics_Brainstorm_Session ↩

5. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Chapters_Dialogue ↩

6. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Learning_modules ↩

7. https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/A_framework_to_evaluate_entities_impact:_wm_metrics_and_friends#Interested_attendees ↩