2021/Organizing teams

Like previous WikiConferences, this conference will be organized by a core team and focused teams or committees on various issues

• Core team: Pharos (Richard) (WMF Liaison), Econterms (Peter) (Budget/finance), and more to come

• Logistics team: (translations, broadcast, video, platforms, working w/ Event Manager): Platforms will include presentations (zoom/google meet/jitsi, social spaces like gather, and perhaps broadcast, like Streamyard/youtube; must choose and test these, and how to degrade/backup). Also real-world logistics for the picnics. Might have social time on Clubhouse, before or during the conference or during. So far includes Pharos, econterms, peaceray, jamaicaneditor, omar_sansi, and jfarman. We'll need input from others.

• Program team (running programming proposal process; selections; emails to all submitters; follow-up emails regarding position on schedule; training coordinator; editathon coordinator; academic coordinator; Lightning Talks coordinator): Kevin, BobCummings, Peaceray, Brandon, Richard, Peter, Rosie, Victoria

• Communications team (design logo; outreach emails; social media; Meta page; WCNA wiki page/subpages; pre-/post-surveys); includes Peaceray, jamaicaneditor, jfarman, pharos, econterms

• Scholarships (running scholarship app process, selections)
• Volunteer coordinators (identify roles, seek out volunteers, manage scheduling for them)
• Safe space (check registration, liase with WMF, monitor behavior, take complaints - keep small (2-3 highly-trusted members of the community); full time responsibility during the conference; they are the points of contact for the WMF event-ban list)
• Awards committee? Is that separate, or part of scholarships? communications? a grants committee?
• Fundraising committee - as opportunities present
• Games committee:
• WikiCommons committee (set up category/subcategories)

Early tentative decisions by program committee (April 26 2021)

• We'll model our call for presenters on this 2019 one: https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2019/Submissions -- that way all forms and submissions are simply on-wiki. That worked well for academic submissions too -- they'll go through a different evaluation process
• We'll want to have Spanish and French versions.
• Theme? We tentatively pick "glocal," with near alternatives: localize, decentralization, glocal, connections. (Yes, it's a word: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/glocal). Let's sound out these possibilities over Telegram, and make sure they are translatable. glocal is apparently a plausible word in Spanish and French too.
• Rosie: Let's prepare categories of programming, notably an academic track which we didn't have in 2020.
• In 2020 we had panels, training, individual sessions, plenaries, Coolest tool, video. Day 1 was mostly broadcast, day 2 was mostly zoom presentations and day 3 was mostly small groups and more interactive. Social time online was on Wonder. Overall the design worked and we could replicate that
• We'll figure out later when we see the submissions how many sessions and tracks we'll have
• We can plan time slots for lightning talks, perhaps an hour a day. People can sign up early or late.
• We'll plan to have a plenary session for presentations by affiliates, including pre-recorded presentations if they wish
• Before we can make available a submission form, we'll upgrade the MediaWiki on wikiconference.org.
• Submissions can be classified as academic-track, lightning-talk, panel, training, perhaps duration (long, short, or other time choices); adn by topic: Tech, Safety, Editing, Academic, etc
• Tentatively we'll announce our conference and launch of our call-for-presenters on June 1 (or thereabouts)
• Academic submissions can be due through August; they need extra time to consider and for the submitter to respond. Other submissions can perhaps be considered into September. We might have rolling acceptances, not one hard date.
• Are we a real organization? Or unreal? Or surreal?

May 3 2021 Logistics committee meeting

• Last year, every session had a different zoom link; an alternative design is breakout rooms
• Wonder was open 24 hours a day. We can consider spatial.chat, gather, or other social spaces this year.
• an alternative design: breakout rooms
• like Streamyard/youtube; must choose and test these, and how to degrade/backup
• Also real-world logistics for the picnics
• We note that the captioning by google meet runs smoothly. That kind of feature would help our conference.
• Might have social time on Clubhouse, before the conference or during

May 10 2021 Communications committee meeting

• For more see their page on meta.

May 17 Program team meeting

• Shall we ask for Beginners track category of presentations, or a Training track?
• Can we offer a session ahead of time, a week or a day before the conference starts, to show the platforms we'll use? Also a good time to accept questions and requests about accessibility and accommodations -- language, disability, transcription -- Peter consider outreach to deaf user of transcription -- how's Otter.ai work for him?

May 24 Logistics team meeting

• Likely platforms: ti.to?

Sun May 30 Program+Comms teams meeting

• We want to get our call-for-presentations ready now
• To do before we launch it: translation tool, finalizing the theme, focus areas, translations; we may want to offer presentation types, including recorded vs live, lighting talk, panel, workshop; reach to Bob and prep for academic submissions; watch Wikimania
• training or beginners-oriented sessions should be invited ; we might use the ten focus areas -- Rosie suggests letting people tag or classify into these, from the strategy recommendations: sustainability; user experience; safety and inclusion; equity in decision-making; coordinate among stakeholders; develop skills and leadership; manage internal knowledge; identify topics for impact; innovations in free knowledge; and evaluation/iteration/adaptation.
• Let's invite submitters who have to write an abstract anyway to also click/tag some of these themes ; and orthogonally to choose to offer something for a beginner's track

• Mon May 31: Wikimedia Canada Annual meeting

Tue June 1

Planned announcement of call for presentations

• soft launch occurred ; we will wait to announce in a big way until Wikimania submissions are done circa June 18

Logistics agenda

• Let's make a list of platforms to evaluate and compare for the conference itself:
• interpretation, transcription, and translation: otter.ai, ava.me, zoom? google meet/translate?
• registration: ti.to
• main conference sessions: ti.to, OpenWater, ...