Talk:Wikimedia Foundation/Communications/Movement Communications

Possible venue for discussions regarding the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan/2026-2027

Hello, would the Movement Communications team be interested in sending a WMF representative to present an overview of the WMF Annual Plan 2026-2027 at a future session of the Wikimedia Café, followed by a discussion with the Café participants regarding the plan's development process and contents? I anticipate that the AP may be a complex document, there may be complex discussions in the Café setting, and having similar meetings for different time zones may be preferable, so planning such meetup(s) may be a little complex, but I hope that WMF would find the meetup(s) to be worthwhile. Thanks, ↠Pine (✉) 03:15, 7 March 2026 (UTC)

• Hi @ELappen (WMF): hopefully I'm pinging the correct person with this request. Would you please check whether someone from Movement Comms has the above question on their list? There is some time sensitivity about having discussions about the Annual Plan happen in April, and a few weeks of lead time may be required for scheduling, so I'm hoping to see traction this week regarding this question. If there's a staff member who's the best consistent point of contact for requests for staff attendance at meetups such as the Café, please let me know how to contact that person, and in that case I can reach out first to them from now on with questions like this. Thank you, ↠Pine (✉) 01:30, 11 March 2026 (UTC)

  @pine Hello, thank you for the invitation and the interest in discussing the Foundation's Annual Plan at the Wikimedia Café. To help us plan better for it could you help me with some details?

  • When is the next meeting scheduled for? It would be great to do it in the next few weeks as we are actively discussing with the community the plan right now.
  • How many participants were at the last call?
  • Would you be open to some group work together during the call?

  If it helps with dates, we have about 14 calls with different regions and communities scheduled and a few more being planned and soon to be promoted. There are also several ongoing on-wiki discussions. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts and exploring how we can best coordinate this. Thank you again for reaching out! KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 10:23, 12 March 2026 (UTC)

• Hi @KStineRowe (WMF): thank you for following up. Here are responses to your questions, perhaps with more detail than you need.

• Scheduling: The meeting's start time is likely to be in April on a Saturday (most time zones) at 14:00 UTC. The objectives of having the meeting on a weekend day are to de-conflict the meeting from typical weekday work and school requirements, and to offer a solid alternative to the many weekday meetings that seem to happen in the Wikiverse. The exact date and time of the April meetup are negotiable. I'm open to offering a second time slot of a similar nature that's on a Sunday (most time zones) instead of a Saturday, including to facilitate participation from people who may have religious reasons for not joining meetings on Saturdays, but I want to prioritize having at least one Saturday meetup at approximately 14:00 UTC given that this time slot seems to work fairly well globally.
• Attendance metrics: As the Café page shows, there were 28 signups, of which 26 appeared to be genuine and eligible. I believe that we had signups from every continent except Antarctica. Actual attendance I believe peaked at 13 concurrent, and either 13 or 14 total unique attendees. Stickiness was strong; I believe we had 12 for almost the entirety of the session, which suggests that attendees found the meeting to be worth their time. Many attendees appeared to have backgrounds in technology, affiliate organizations, and/or grants, with diverse experience levels across those domains ranging from student to experienced professional.
• Format:

• Yes, collaboration and discussion are encouraged during the meetup. Perhaps it would help to think of the Café format as less focused on presentations and more focused on workshopping.

• By the way, User:MPourzaki (WMF) previously participated in a two hour Wikimedia Cafe session regarding the 2030 strategy. Unofficial notes from that session may be found here. You may wish to browse them to get an idea of what to expect.

• To maximize the value of the time together for everyone at the April meetup, I would encourage any WMF participants to share slides, video recordings, and/or reading materials at least two weeks in advance of the Café session so that all Café participants have ample time to pre-read them. By using the "flipped classroom" concept, the value of the time spent together can be maximized.
• Additionally, I would encourage WMF to analyze responses on the Annual Plan talk page and from meetings that have already happened, as I would guess WMF is already doing on an ongoing basis, and identify topics where WMF would like further public discussion, brainstorming, or feedback. By doing this the Café session would be not "more of the same" but an iterative step further along the path of the Annual Plan development which hopefully is helpful to all parties.

• Similarly, I can encourage people who sign up for the Café session to list out topics which they'd like to discuss during the session.

• Partly depending on how detailed WMF wants the plan to be this year (there are tradeoffs between flexibility, thoroughness, and time spent planning), perhaps more than one hour will be required to touch on all of the issues that WMF and Café participants combined would like to discuss. If this happens then I'm fine with having the conversation go beyond one hour, or split so that one session is on a Saturday (most time zones) and the other is on a Sunday (most time zones).

Please let me know how you would like to proceed. ↠Pine (✉) 06:28, 13 March 2026 (UTC)

Thanks for the context on attendance and format, this generally works for us! On timing and more details, I need a few days to coordinate internally but will get back to you later this week. KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 20:07, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

@Pine, I can confirm that @Samwalton9_(WMF) and I can come to the cafe on April 4 at 14:00 UTC. Can we coordinate further over email? I'm kstinerowewikimedia.org KStineRowe (WMF) (talk) 15:56, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

@KStineRowe (WMF): thanks, I will follow up in email. We'll need to find a date later than April 4. I ask for other people to give me at least 2 weeks of advance notice for Wikiverse meetings which they want me to attend, and similarly I want announcements for Café sessions to go out at least 2 weeks in advance of the selected date. Additionally, preparation is required on my end before announcing a date. Probably the earliest that would work at this point is April 11. We can discuss more in email. Thanks for being willing to attend a session. ↠Pine (✉) 20:04, 20 March 2026 (UTC)

Keen to attend if I'm around! Misaochan (talk) 15:05, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

Upcoming Wikimedia Café meetup regarding the the 2026-2027 Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan

↠Pine (✉) 03:42, 29 March 2026 (UTC)