Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2017/Track A/Advisory Group

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The Wikimedia movement is really good at self organizing. It is organized into groups, into Affiliates, into committees, Chapters, and other collaborative groups. They all have different needs and they all have diverse input to contribute to our strategy process. To help ensure participation and perspective from groups that are often underrepresented, we have convened an Advisory Group with members from different regions, genders, languages, projects, and types and sizes of affiliates and groups. The “Strategy Advisory Group Organized Groups” works with Movement Strategy Track Lead Nicole Ebber to help steadily review and iterate the ongoing process, to be a sounding board for the design, implementation and sense-making as well as a linker to as many diverse groups as possible.  

What participation in the Advisory Group entails

  • Advisory Group members are asked to participate in meetings via phone or videoconferencing on a bi-weekly basis (depending on the current stage of the strategy process), kicking-off mid March throughout the end of the calendar year.   
  • For those who will already be in attendance at Wikimedia Conference 2017 in Berlin, and/or Wikimania 2017 in Montreal, we will convene for in-person meetings during those events.
  • On those calls, we will ask for your recommendations and discussion on how to best reach out to people, how to ensure equal participation, and how to create good, achievable approaches to meaningful discussion and development as we further design the process. As the process emerges, we will also ask for your input on the sense-making and analysis of the answers and contributions in each of the discussion cycles to prevent bias.
  • For those not able to attend the calls, we will make it easy to contribute via shared documents and email conversations.
  • We will also solicit additional thoughts and feedback through public on-wiki discussions of the process and progress incrementally as it emerges.
  • We may ask this group to do some outreach to other members of organized, particularly underrepresented, groups and will provide support in doing so.

How the Advisory Group operates

  • We aim to provide some information or questions in advance of those calls and expect to provide anonymized summaries of these calls on Meta-wiki.
  • We are committed to working with you to ensure participation of all our organized groups.
  • The premises of the Strategy process do also apply to the conversations of the Advisory Group.
  • Working language of the group will be English.

Timeline

  • March 13: First constitutive call; share process and expectations, get feedback on the process, provide insight into the WMCON strategy track program.
  • March 24: Second call, review current process, gather last input for WMCON.
  • March 29-April 2: In person meeting at WMCON, to socialize and generally feedback and help shape the process.
  • April-Wikimania: Bi-weekly calls; sounding board for the process steps and sense-making; help iterate and improve along the way; monitor the different cycles and discuss solutions for outreach to underrepresented groups.
  • August 10-13: In person meeting at Wikimania (for those who attend Wikimania; call-in via video-conf optional).
  • Wikimania-end of the year: Bi-weekly calls; sounding board for the process steps and sense-making, help create new discussion cycles, advise on different forums for conversations around roles, resources and responsibilities, and discuss solutions for outreach to underrepresented groups.

Design Considerations

  • Engages our organized groups from all over the world with a process that is diverse, inclusive and robust, within the overall timeline and constraints.
  • Process is highly participatory across languages, geographies and projects, with active facilitation through a variety of methods, potentially including online (synchronously and asynchronously) and in face-to-face discussions, which includes significant data to drive ultimate decision-making.
  • Facilitates inclusive representation of all voices, without the loudest voices dominating.

Members

Meetings

2017 Movement Strategy Track A Advisory Group notes/minutes: