Submissions/Everything the Wikimedia Foundation does, in 25 minutes

This has been marked as a Withdrawn submission for Wikimania 2015 because it has been withdrawn by its submitter. The submitter is invited to consider trying again next year.

This is an accepted submission for Wikimania 2015.

Submission no.
2073
Title of the submission

Everything the Wikimedia Foundation does, in 25 minutes

Type of submission (discussion, hot seat, panel, presentation, tutorial, workshop)

presentation

Author of the submission

Tilman Bayer

E-mail address

tbayer@wikimedia.org

Username
Tbayer
Country of origin

USA/Germany

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.)

Wikimedia Foundation

Personal homepage or blog
Abstract (at least 300 words to describe your proposal)

This talk is primarily for Wikimedians who may already have heard and read a lot about individual activities and work areas of the Wikimedia Foundation, but would like a clearer picture of the organization’s structure overall, and a better sense of what its ~250 employees are doing every day. How is WMF organized internally? What are the mechanisms to ensure it works efficiently and achieves its goals?

The Foundation publishes a lot of information on its work, and every year, Wikimania offers many opportunities to learn about the many different projects directly from the teams that are working on them (last year in over 50 presentations by WMF staff and contractors). This rather preposterously named talk will instead present a concise overview over what the Foundation does as a whole, by attempting to:

  • give a quick overview over the departments and teams of the Foundation, and what they work on
  • explain how teams set goals, implement them, and check on what was achieved
  • give a glimpse at the normally invisible routine work that is behind the published outcomes

The presenter has been editing and publishing the Foundation's regular (quarterly, formerly monthly) activity reports since 2011, and in 2014 compiled a comprehensive overview of all teams' ongoing work areas (published as part of the 2014/15 annual plan).

Track

WikiCulture & Community

Length of session (if other than 30 minutes, specify how long)
30 minutes (including 5 minutes for discussion)
Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?

Probably

Slides or further information (optional)
Special requests

Note: I have also submitted a separate presentation about a related but different topic: "Failures that made us better: A brief history of the Wikimedia Foundation as a learning organization". In case both get accepted, I will probably present only one of them, deciding based on the feedback from interested attendees and the programme committee.

PS: Both got accepted and the feedback didn't indicate a clear preference: while this submission received a slightly higher score in the submission review (9.667 vs. 9.444), the other one saw somewhat more attendee interest (12 vs. 8 people signing up, with both posted around the same time). I'm now going with the other one; perhaps I will resubmit this "WMF in a nutshell" talk on another occasion. Regards, Tbayer (WMF) (talk) 02:09, 10 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Interested attendees

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  1. Salubrious Toxin (talk) 15:36, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  2. CT Cooper · talk 19:12, 1 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Ocaasi (talk) 17:55, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  4. -Another Believer (talk) 18:37, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  5. --L235 (talk) enwiki 19:03, 4 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Risker (talk) 02:30, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Varnent (talk) 22:02, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 06:24, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Add your username here.