Submissions/How can we communicate better as a movement?

After careful consideration, the Programme Committee has decided not to accept the below submission at this time. Thank you to the author(s) for participating in the Wikimania 2015 programme submission, we hope to still see you at Wikimania this July.

Submission no.: 2077

Title of the submission: How can we communicate better as a movement?

Type of submission: Discussion

Author of the submission: Fabrice Florin

E-mail address: fflorinwikimedia.org

Username: Fabrice Florin (WMF)

Country of origin: USA

Affiliation, if any (organisation, company etc.): Wikimedia Foundation

Personal homepage or blog: fabriceflorin.com

Abstract

Join a roundtable discussion about Wikimedia movement communications.

As our movement has grown and diversified over the years, it has become harder for all of us to stay in close touch with each other. As a result, we sometimes do not communicate as effectively as we could: important messages get lost, responses don’t reach the right people, we fail to understand each other, and have difficulty making informed decisions as a movement.

How can we improve the way we communicate with each other?

In this session, we will start with an overview of how movement communications work now, with key findings from our research on our many different channels:

Banners (e.g.: CentralNotice, SiteNotice)
Community portals (e.g.: Village Pumps)
Discussions (e.g.: talk pages, RfCs)
Email lists (e.g.: Wikimedia-l, Wikitech-l)
Events (e.g.: meetups, conferences)
Hangouts (e.g.: metrics meetings, roundtables)
IRC (Internet Relay Chat, e.g.: #wikimedia-office)
Multimedia content (e.g.: videos, podcasts)
Newsletters (MassMessaging, This month in GLAM)
Notifications (Echo, Watchlist notices)
Publications (e.g.: Wikimedia Blog, Signpost, Kurier)
Social media (e.g.: Facebook, Twitter)
Surveys and consultations (now ad-hoc)

We will also aim to identify which of these channels seem to be most widely used by the many different user groups we serve:

Readers
Contributors
Active Users
Program Leaders
Developers
Donors
Chapters & Affiliates
Foundation

We will then discuss next steps for the movement communications, inviting suggestions from participants, with questions like:

Which communication channels seem most effective for different types of interactions?
How can we use these channels to make informed decisions as a movement?
What new tools might we experiment with?

This discussion will be facilitated by these WMF team members:

Fabrice Florin - Movement Communications Manager
Philippe Beaudette - Director, Community Advocacy
Rachel diCerbo - Director, Community Engagement (Product)

We look forward to learning from each other, and collectively identifying best practices for interacting more effectively as a movement.

Note: We also invite you to participate in these separate, but related sessions:

Track: WikiCulture & Community

Length of session: 90 minutes (if time is limited, we can turn this into a 30 or 60 minute session, but prefer 90 minutes for a more productive discussion)

Will you attend Wikimania if your submission is not accepted?: Yes

Slides or further information (optional): to be added later

Special requests: It would be great if we could move the chairs in a semi-circle, so participants can face each other during the discussion period.

Interested attendees

If you are interested in attending this session, please sign with your username below. This will help reviewers to decide which sessions are of high interest. Sign with a hash and four tildes. (# ~~~~).

Ocaasi (talk) 18:07, 3 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Varnent (talk) 22:02, 8 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 06:30, 23 March 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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