Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Updates/December 2019
Hi everyone,
I wanted to share an overview of what’s been happening in movement strategy and where things are at with the recommendations.
Synthesizing the recommendations, writing group meeting[edit]
The work to refine the recommendations is advancing well. Members of the writing group came together in person in Berlin last week and spent five energetic and successful days consolidating the 89 recommendations. They brought together overlapping ideas from amongst the previous thematic areas with the aim of creating a coherent set of recommendations.
A number of common areas for change were reflected in the 89 recommendations, and the writers assessed and clustered them around these areas. The goal is to outline the overall direction of the change and present one set that is clearly understood, implementable, and demonstrates the reasoning behind each.
The clusters also address issues identified in phase 1 as well as needs surfaced during the conversations with the movement between March and September of this year. These areas for change include improving coordination in our movement, skills and leadership development, distribution of power and decision-making, and enhancing user experience and infrastructure to help us move toward becoming the essential support system of the ecosystem of free knowledge.
Beyond this, the group also worked on building a narrative that outlines a common vision to see: where we’ve come from as a movement; what is driving us toward change; and where we want to get to as a movement – the recommendations will put forward a proposal for how we arrive there.
In a highly collaborative atmosphere, the writers are now busy refining their work and preparing a document with the synthesized recommendations and the narrative that can be presented to the movement. We are quite excited about this progress!
Movement conversations next year[edit]
The synthesized recommendations will serve as the basis for the upcoming round of movement conversations, which will run from mid-January through February. The facilitated conversations will take place on-wiki for the Arabic, French, German, Hindi, Spanish, and Portuguese language communities, on English Wikipedia, Commons, and Meta-Wiki, as well as through targeted outreach to additional language communities and affiliate groups. This will be an opportunity for the movement to review and respond to the recommendations before they are finalized.
We encourage you to take part and are looking forward to your input next year, so please stay tuned for more details about how to do so.
If you have any questions or feedback, please feel free to get in touch.
Best wishes,
Nicole
P.S.: One of our Resource Allocation working group members and writers, Daria Cybulska from Wikimedia UK, has written a wonderful post about her experience, insights and challenges from the last 1.5 years on the process. Please note that this is an externally facing piece, providing a very broad brush view of our movement. In line with this, the piece does not go into detail about the complexities of Wikimedia. Check it out! “Funding utopia when you’re already a free knowledge utopia.”