Wikimedia Foundation/Communications/Wikimania 2015 meet-up

At Wikimania 2015 in Mexico City, members of the Communications Committee came together to discuss communications across the movement. Topics included:

• How to improve the Communications Committee list
• Ideas for Wikipedia's 15th anniversary

Overview: this break-out group discussed how we could use the ComCom list to more effectively collaborate, coordinate communications efforts across the movement, share skills, and more.

Three main points emerged from this conversation:

• The ComCom list is not as effective as it could be and should be reevaluated to meet members' current needs
• The first priority is to gain a better understanding of who is on the ComCom list and what they want to achieve
• In addition to the ComCom list, we may need a space that better fosters discussion, coordination, and skill-sharing

The discussion resulted in clear next steps the WMF Communications team will take to begin making the list more effective for everyone.

Next Steps

The WMF Communications team will take the following next steps to strengthen the ComCom list:

1. Build initial database: spreadsheet of who is on the ComCom list
2. Map people on list: who are they, where are they, what projects do they work on, affiliations
3. Via Google Form: find out who wants to stay on the list, ask for needs / levels of experience

The group also discussed action items the WMF Communications would taking following the ComCom reevaluation to identify an off-email forum or space for coordination.

1. Collect forum options and survey ComCom list to identify preferred option (Slack, Wiki, Facebook, etc.)
2. Activate forum for those who are interested in participating
3. Long-term: as a group, think about additional ways to engage and build capacities-- meet-ups, conferences, etc.

Discussion

• Giselle: wants a way to share problems, tools, etc. with other people who do Communications
• [Explaining ComCom history]
• Juliet: How can we use ComCom more effectively? Or are there other ways we can use?
• Giselle: Space on Meta wiki, Facebook group
• Juliet: There are many different levels of experiences in the movement regarding Communication.
• Johan: If we want to have a constant communication Meta is not the best place. What do we want to do?
• Christophe: Before clarifying what we want to do, the question should be what we can do. How much time can we invest in that? GLAM group seems to be the only successful one continuing communications (and Education)
• Bence: you can go into many directions you can ComCom to take. You can write guides, hire trainers, etc. etc.
• Juliet: how do you make it relevant for everyone?
• Giselle: one of the problems is that we don’t know each other; need a space to meet each other in the web
• Axel: We’ve tried to make lists before but it’s been hard to keep up. Would be nice to put press release drafts on meta, ask people to comment on them, etc.; Pre-release press releases; this is what we’ll put out, what do you think?
• Christophe: If you could share your pre-release press releases earlier, movement organisations and the WMF could publish press releases together
• One good goal for annual planning: better communication from WMF to community and both; Remove non-active people, make it a trusted group
• For press releases, even a heads up is good so people can start preparing/coordinating
• Cornelius: need to figure out who is on the list, then ask for needs, then create processes/solutions
• Christophe: need a really strict policy, used to have to be approved by 2-3 people, was one of the strictest list
• Yearbook on meta with images
• Informal communication/way to get to know each other -- WMFR talking about moving from mailing list to forums
• Could have a provide wiki (used to use internal wiki) -- but question is if that's helpful. In Wikis, it’s not that easy to write collaboratively things like in a Google Doc.
• The group agreed on the next steps (see above)

Notes from the meet ups

• Archives
• Communications committee