Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20/Working Groups/Partnerships/Minutes

This page contains summaries of meeting minutes for the Partnerships working group, one among the nine working groups involved in the Wikimedia Movement 2018-20 Strategy process. The full versions of these minutes are accessible on Google Drive, but given their extensive length and detail, only their summaries are being shared here for the time being.

September 2019

4 September

The call was initiated with two brief presentations: one from Abbad on community input, and another from Kaarel on structural levels. Most of the call, afterwards, was dedicated to debriefs on the status of each recommendation and to assigning review roles.

The recommendations were updated by John to add references on how they align with the Strategic Direction. The Heat Map (still updated and relevant) is being used as a useful directory to track imoprtant changes in documents, such as mergers. The recommendation were then individually reviewed on basis of propsoing structural (as opposed to programmatic changes) and to them having integrated community feedback.

Each recommendation to be assigned to 2-3 of the members for review and finalization:

• Rec. 1: John & Alek (merge with no. 20)
• Rec. 2: Shani & Alek (review for balance). Shani to provide input on the content.
• Rec. 3: Jack & John (resolve Andrea’s concerns)
• Rec. 5, 15 and 21: John, Andrea & Jack. Not exactly the same but can merge 15 and 21.
• Rec. 7: Abhinav & Alek (resolve comments)
• Rec. 8, 9 and 10: Abhinav & Alek
• Rec. 11: Shani, Stuart & John. None of the original material of any of the merged recommendations (11 and 16) was lost.
• Rec. 12: John & Alek (rewrite as Strategy/structure-oriented). Related to Capacity Building, but not necessarily mergeable.
• Rec. 13: John & Alek (rewrite and check with rec. 9)
• Rec. 14: Jack & Stuart
• Rec. 16: John & Shani
• Rec. 19: John (to check) & Shani (to review). Won't be merged with any others.

Wednesday’s meeting (September 11th) to be cancelled. Next meeting to be held on Sept. 25th

August 2019

21 August

Wikimania: Positive impressions of Wikimania and meeting with other WGs. Won't be going through the session in detail during the call.

Vision Statement: The Vision Statement will be made public. It doesn't need to be controversial. The current statement doesn't refer to Wikimedia becoming a driving force or organization, neither does it refer to how the Movement can reach out to those who are still not connected to it (partners can help reach out to that part).

External/internal partnerships (already a topic handeled by other WGs), but may not need to be on the Vision Statement. The idea of internal partnerships is already there in the Parnterships recommendations, and thus is ure to be included in the harmonization. R&R model will also reflect on the topic of internal partnerships.

The goal isn't to get to perfect recommendations, but to reflect a general directoon. Let's tkae a moment to celebrate this vision.

Streamlining recommendations: Care with the word 'like minded organizations'. Recommendations 9 and 19 are repeated. Don't make assumptions about the content of recommendations baed on where they were aligned (e.g. with Capacity Building). The Heat Map can function as a sheet to track overlap.

• Rec 6: The 'single point of entry' is controversial because it suggests centralization.
• Rec 7: Abhinav working on it along with #8 and #9.
• Rec 11 + 13: Not agreed upon due to lack of clarity and/or need to merge.

Recommendations should be reviewed to reflect structural changes in the Movement rather than programmatic or operational ones, and also to help build the future we envision.

Members are to form small teams of 2-3 people to finalize recommendations by revising them, by integrating feedback (from Wikimania and the community survey) and by defining any potential overlap with recommendations by other WGs.

7 August

All Partnerships members are to comment on every recommendation in detail and with a long-term perspective. All to finalize their own recommendations, as well as to review feedback from others and to follow up on it.

Wikimania: The session at Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm will be led by Alek and John, who will also be in touch with the Strategy Design Team for more clarity. There will be a 90 minute session allocated for the working group, while the rest of the time will go towards other WGs or for community interaction. A faciltiator is requested for the 3 hour in-person meeting.

The WG needs to conduct 1-2 surveys to gather research evidence. It's suggested to hire an external expert to lead the research with a contract lasting until the end of August.

There are four weeks remaining to improve the recommendations, in which some sort of conesnsus needs to be achieved (Wikimania can help). Recommendations 3, 6 and 9 to be further re-worked, wile #1, #3, #5 and #6 are in need of some more feedback. All recommendations are to be submitted by August 9th.

Draft recommendations are ready for Wikimania, a milestone reached.

July 2019

30 July: Self-organized Session

There's some unclarity about Question #3 in the recommendations template (suggested to be made more coherent). The key focus is substance. As of now, Question #1 and #2 are not perfect, while #3 is not done yet.

• Question 1: Will be revised to integrate the feedback from the call.
• Question 2: Is to incorporate feedback from the Product & Technology recommendations and to add more about an internal knowledge base.
• Question 3: To address institutions (e.g. GLAM) and their role in partnerships.

C omplete draft recommendations for question #1 to #4 to be sent to the Core Team.

24 July

Update from other Working Groups

Resource Allocation, Roles and Responsibilities, and Community Health Working Groups shared their own recommendations and in-person meeting updates with Partnership Working Group members, who will keep overlaps in mind while developing partnerships final recommendations.

Wikimania (Stockholm, Sweden 16-18 August, 2019):

• All partnerships working group members were requested to indicate their arrival/departure to determine common availability for team activities.

Harmonization Sprint: (Tunis 20-22 September, 2019)

• Working Group members agreed to have at least one of the representatives to be a long term member of the group who has knowledge of the process and has been involved in developing recommendations to represent the Working Group at the harmonisation sprint. Further discussion to be held offline.

Recommendations timeline and review

• Draft recommendations need to be ready for translation and preparation for community input at Wikimania on July 31..
• Second draft of the recommendations to be ready end of August/early September for harmonisation sprint preparation.
• Core Team will support the Working Groups to refine the recommendations post Wikimania for harmonisation sprint preparation, by early September as a hard deadline which will include input from Community Conversations and Strategy Salons.
• Most of the Working Groups are using the recommendations format, with close attention till question 6 and 7 in the format for a detailed approach.
• The Working Group received comments from the reserch consultant, which included
  • Ideas on tools for effective partnerships,
  • An active management of the products and tools that are created for partnership work
  • Ambitious technical desires and capacities for projects like cross-platform organisational API integration.
• Working Group members created small groups which came up with content for the recommendations

10 July

Introducing Mehrdad Pourzaki, a new member of the Core Team with a background in Strategy at UNAIDS.

Security breakage issues with Zoom.

Membership: Ben will not be joining future calls until September 4th for paternity leave. Abhinav and Andrea will be joining in advisory roles or as full members, following the group's decision. Advisors are an already defined role that can help diversify with expertise, new perspective, etc., but without prticipating in decision-making. Stuart from Wikimedia UK will also join. CT will arrange for the onboarding logistics.

Events: Community Health will be meeting in Amman, Jordan later in July, and Jack has been asked about how he could participate. Other WG members are to come up with a list of questions to be asked during the in-person meeting.

The location and logistics of the Harmonization Sprint are not finalized yet, and will be provided by the Core Team before the end of July.

Recommendations: WMF+Wikimedia Sweden initiative for tehcnical infrastructure in GLAM is pretty similar to what's being proposed in Question 2, as in the Center of Excellence/Expertise. The point of contact for such issues on Ben's team will be Sandra Fauconnier (Ben recommends that she reviewes recommendations for feedback).

A template is to be used when draft recommendations. The steps will be to choose a theme, brainstorm around it, summarize ideas and come up with a work plan. These recommendations will be on a high level (structural) rather than operational.

Questions: In Grup A, Question 1: two problem categories identified, 1. thing that are known (e.g. working with partners) that need a centralized support, and, 2. Program and events dashboard with new tools for reporting, organizing, content campaign, etc. Open opporunities for AI and big data around partnerships.

Question 2 will have more clarity and solidity after Wikimania.

In Group B, assumptions include that: partners are not feeling valued, increased recognition increases retention and having a system that will not be abused. The next steps are to arrange for research and to draft recommendations based on experience.

Recommendations are to be drafted before the end of July in order to allow time for translation and community sharing before Wikimania. Give perspective going to the Strategic Direction and start working.

June 2019

26 June

Abhinav and Andrea introduced as new members of the Partnerships WG.

It's challenging to work on the recomendations without having the research completed on the questions addressed by the WG members. 3 types of research briefs are shaping up, which are:

• Question 1: How to build Wikimedia to perform impactful partnerships in a framework similar to the "Big Pne"?
• Question 2: How to develop technical infrastructure, capacities and supprot to be an effective partner in sharing the sum of all knowledge?
• Question 3: How to empower the people and organizations working on partnerships in the Movement?
• Question 4: How to create a Movement-wide culture of sharing knowledge, skilsl and practices around partnerships?

• Question 2: Still in draft form. Partnerships that focus on growing content, some technical gaps in contribution of multimedia content. Porvide human-centered support to orient allies towards Wikimedia.
• Question 3: Adressing the need to capture the institutinonal memory of the Movement with its various best practices and success/failure sharing.

Recommendations should be based on evidence rather than experience. The research needs to be developed and conducted by September. The recommendation template is advanced and may need professional input to complete.

The Core Team offered to provide support in drafting briefs for the research rather than in conducting it. Need to identify methodology, have a timeline, gather results and synthesize them. The WG members are to create a suvery as a strarting point to research.

Update on Brief 1: Hoping for the contract to be finalized within a week, The researcher is good and, along with one recommended by Orla, can provide support for questions 3 & 4. Anther contract is being finalized, thus giving ten days worth of desk research. Anothe rcontract to potentially prepare for. Identify what we want to get done from research and file task, dates and task owenrs.

12 June

Proposed request for additional expert:

The Working Group discussed having a research expert with ideas on structures and familiarity with Wikimedia to carry out a wider research basing on the current work of the Partnership Working Group and other sources of academic research for scoping questions #3 and #4.

• There will be a need to clearly define the expert’s role, resources required and interaction with the team, as some of the members are volunteers, staff serving in their professional capacities, and board members, as per the design of the Strategy process.

Status of other Partnership Working Group members: Some of the Working Group members committed more to asynchronous work. One of the Working Group members can no longer continue to participate in the Working Group.

Update on research briefs: Asynchronous work on the research questions was carried out during the call.

• The interviews and questionnaires for the research might need to be conducted in different languages.

It’s helpful to understand how different partnerships work, don’t work, and looking at some organizations that can help in understanding the various aspects of Partnerships, new structures or programs that can help and support people with tools and methods for content uploads. “How do we develop technical infrastructure, tools and working with partners who support content to support our Strategic Direction?”

May 2019

29 May

John will be going to Wikimania, the other WG representative is still undecided. The members would like a regular facilitator (Kayla can possibly cover the role).

• Question 2: To add about the connection between technical infrastructure, the platform and the readers. Also, how to be competent partner and to provide accountability.
• Research debrief: Due to a shortage of time, the debrief is not very detailed. Welcoming feedback or changes. The debrief received generally positive impressions.
• Question 1: Each WG member is to be asigned the lead in at least one scoping question. There are problems of clarity around the definitions and different approaches around partnerships, as in the "partnership vs. collaboration" or the "internal vs. external". Jodi can be reached out while deveoping the research questions.

There's a need for a way to engage properely with Lisa. Shola and May haven't been removed from the membership list in spite of being continiously inactive.

23 May

Wikimania: A representative of the working group should be selected to attend Wikimania 2019 in Stockholm. John confirmed his availability. Shani will be there as a Space Leader, but the representation role requires full commitment. Jack might make it bus is unsure. There will be a dedicated Strategy space at the conference, but some WGs are also submitting relevant sessions in other spaces.

Question 1: There's a need to make the outside world more aware of the Wikimedia Movement. The "Big Open" phrasing is causing quite a bit of controversey, as it was removed by Stuart, others thought it should be re-considered and others find it vague. Evaluating the internal partnerships within the Movement. Discussing the three layered model instead of the binary (internal vs. external).

Meetings: WG meetings are to be held on a bi-monthly basis during June and July 2019 (regularly on Wednesdays), with the aim of reaching clarity on what research is needed before the end of May.

15 May

Wikimania Space: Nikki and Alek are to lead the official Partnerships space at Wikimania 2019 (separate from the WG session in the Strategy space). The working group is also encouraged to submit a session on relevant topic (e.g. the Big Open) in a different space at the conference. It's proposed to have a co-sponsored suession with Liam, and Capacity Building is also happy to have a joint session.

Wikimania representation: Those representing the WG at Wikimania should go only as working group members, without wearing other hats simultaneously. The representatives are not expected to simply engage during their 90 minute strategy session, but also by informal engagements, meet-ups, documentation, etc.John Cummings (in spite of leading a space) agreed to represent the group. Lisa's support may also help, but she may have other commitments to the Board of Trustees. The names of attendees have to be locked down by the end of May.

New members: Consensus was reached in a Telegram (in-depth) discussion over who should join the group. Hakan is an interesting addition but is already being interviewed by Capacity Building. Tom Hograth is also being considered for Advocacy. It's recommended to recruit an unpresrented voice, Athikhun represents a new region. It's possible to set up a half hour interview with the applicant to evaluate their potential contribution to the group. All three applicants will be approched, with the aim of completing any onboarding process by the end of May.

Cynefin Analysis: There was a meeting to further understand the complexity of Q10 (in the recommendation template), and the scoping questions need to be broken down into sub-areas of inquiry. Consider separating internal and external partnerships. The Cynefin network can highlight the larger research questions in internal partnerships.

The feedback from CC Summit shows a clear need for an easier mechanism to collaborate internally in the Movement. "What needs to be researched?" is a new topic for the analysis. There's a slight delay in the timeline but it's still followed. Ben's remaining time should be carefully used. The question of "internal vs. external partnerships" doesn't need to be binary but can be analyzed within a layer model.

April 2019

24 April

Scoping document review: The spreadsheet was shared to allow for simaltenous work. Members are to review the feedback from the community conversations and to incorporate it into the nexts steps (not the past docuemnts). The objectives of the research should be identified, with desk research seeming like a plausible option.

Working together: An outline of responsibilities within the WG was created. Working remotely can be challenging, which is why coordination through Telegram and conference calls is necessary. Facilitagtors can use a preparatory planning brief before the main call. Assinging tasks and deadlines is to be done through a platform other than Asana. Calendar invites will be sent out weekly (through Google Calendar) with a reminder, and members should specify their attendance status about 48 hours in advane.

Reviewing the Timeline: The biggest task in the timeline is completing the research. The Core Team will support with the project management of research.

Other business: The Core Team is sharing about five applicants who are interested in joining the group, and whose applications should be reviewed. It's not the easiest time to onboard new members but could be important to replace those taking time off (John, Jack and Ben). May and Shola may still be interested in joining. Each WG is suggested to have five horus with Whose Knwoledge. The recommendation template is there. Kayla will help with the facilitation of the next meetings.

9 April

Post Wikimedia Summit updates and support requests

A document was shared for the Partnership Working Group to outline all of the support needs to work towards recommendations needs to be completed by Friday 12 April 2019.

• Working Group members plan to find answers by mid May, and would not be able to come up with the answers by the 12 April deadline.
  • However, an outline of the responsibilities will be helpful regarding the contractual obligations and process.

Scoping feedback

The Working Group will need at least one in-depth conversation about feedback regarding scoping, and the research, looking ahead.

March 2019

25 March

Preparation for the Wikimedia Summit 2019

The Working Group members to attend the summit will not need to prepare a slide deck, but to familiarise themselves with their scoping document.

• The Working Group meeting on day 1 is crucial to move work forward in light of internal and external capacity for the final scope.
• More community members can be recruited to be part of the Working Group.
  • Talking to other Working Group members, identifying problems faced and having community representation for community consultation would be a plus for the Partnerships Working Group.
• Partnerships Working Group needs to be able to give feedback for the other Working Groups, and asking the generic questions of how the Partnerships Working Group can help them can be a good approach.
• It might be a good idea to keep the Working Group members informed about the other thematic groups and other meetings for better coordination.

4 March

Agenda: Scoping document and next steps.

The focus was on combining and reducing the number of questions, without missing out on areas that are not represented, and at the same time maintaining the objective of producing recommendations from the research path that the group can take up for now.

• Scoping questions and area of scope can be adjusted and calibrated at a later stage as well. The majority of the members agreed to split into the 3 question format, while reviewing the scoping document per section to replace questions that will require a lot of work for community members.
• The Core Team provided clarification on the questionnaires that will be circulated among the communities, which will be according to the interest of the participants of the conversations, who can go with themes that they feel strongly about.
• Once the document is submitted, the Core Team will later, provide feedback if the content is not compatible with the plans for translation.
• The appendix section can take the links from the earlier strategy process.
• Section 7 is not just research but any other expertise that the Working Group would require to take forward questions that have been identified.

February 2019

25 February

Agenda:  Finalising the scoping questions

• The scoping document will be shared with the community for review and translation two weeks before the Summit. The deadline for submission of final Working Group scoping documents has been extended from 28 February to 3 March 2019.
• Working Group members will base the scoping questions on documents from earlier meeting discussions and content on meta to avoid repetition. Members who are not on the call will provide feedback.
  • Scoping questions are to be ordered with internal and external questions being asked respectively.
  • Scoping questions that needed expansion, cross-working Group reference, and clarification with a focus on Knowledge equity and knowledge as a service, were revised.
  • The maximum number of scoping questions are 10, which will be used to guide the conversations at the Wikimedia Summit.
  • The Core Team is available to support the Working Group members in these discussions to conduct interviews, research, external consultations, and other needs but the analysis needs to be handled by the Working Group members themselves.

18 February

Agenda: Questions on the scoping deadline and process/Review of the current work/Evaluation of the overall draft structure and next steps

Summary:

The scoping documents are due on 28 February 2019, the Core Team will review and make them available for Community conversations and for participants of the Wikimedia Summit. In March, the Working Groups will start deliberating about methodologies, resources and the next steps to answer the questions raised in the scoping document, the Working Group can ask up to ten  questions to make the Strategic Direction a reality.

• The extra three questions to the communities are aimed at providing community perspectives, review and insight to the Working Group, the Core Team will take the effort in engaging the community to answer these questions via Strategy Liaisons.

Each of the Working Group members can formulate two initial questions that can be discussed, if they capture our vision and the intention of the scoping work. From these questions a new set of questions that can be asked to the community can be formulated.

• Working Group members who have completed the work will refine the two questions, and the people who did not participate in the call will select a topic and come up with their own two important questions, the scoping work has been moved to this new Partnerships document.

The overall draft structure needs to cover what we want to achieve as per the scoping format, the recently shared criteria for scoping questions and what could be missing (looking at Section 6 in the scoping outline document)

• Practical constraints among the team members need to be reviewed to determine what still needs to be done and what needs to be assigned as homework by now and how to get there.

11 February

Agenda: Document Review/Group Work at the end of the meeting/Action points

Summary:

The meeting focused on compilation of information for the scoping document outline and updating the different sections for scoping from the brainstorm document on key themes for partnerships, collected references and what large organisations are doing for partnerships.

• Section 3 (Diversity and Alignment), 4 (sharing and learning) and 6 (which is a repository for the scoping) were reviewed, and assigned to members who will format content into the scoping outline document and/or use the scoping template and slide deck for scoping which was provided by the Core team.

The next meeting will review progress, emerge with clear assignments of who is building out different sections so that the next facilitated meeting refines and develops a scoping draft with an indication of how the Strategic Direction relates to Partnerships.

4 February

Meeting facilitation options

Orla will observe the meeting to understand discussions and observe the process. A working Group coordinator was requested to be available at regular intervals for hours or a few days before the calls to refine and finalise the Working Group agenda.

• The Working Group has sketched out a process till the last week of February to get the scoping document prepared.

Working Group coordinators

One of roles of a coordinator is to be point of contact with the core team, other Working Groups and responsible for sharing updates in the ongoing process, some of the roles can be delegated to other members of the Working Group.

Updates from the Wikimedia Foundation All Hands meeting

The Core Team led some workshops with Community Engagement, Audiences department, participated in the mid term planning with the Foundation, whose focus is on existing communities and new communities.

• There was an urgency to answer the questions and the frustration of asking the same questions (from different working groups).
  • The recommendations will be aligned to mid-term planning as some of the answers to the ‘enduring questions’ as framed by the Chief of Community Engagement.
• A summary of the Working Group discussions which are gathering pace was provided to all the participants at the all hands meeting.
• Being clear to people how will this work is the key for more engagement. Volunteers would like to know how the Strategy discussions will affect the Wikimedia movement, and how the Foundation will take up the recommendations.
  • The Board (WMF) has also issued a statement in support of the Strategy Process.
• The Movement Strategy discussions are for the movement and an opportunity to socialise the recommendations.

Synthesis of major themes from Phase 1 partnerships group

Members noted scoping questions and comments to discuss overlaps with other Working Groups and identify synergies in a defined process or other suggestions by the virtual facilitation team.

• Some of the questions were broad and needed to be fine tuned (wording and framing) to achieving service and equity with partnerships, among the missing terms were
  • Definition of partnerships
  • Why we need partnerships

January 2019

15 January

The Working Group discussed themes and future visions of Wikimedia Foundation partnerships at Global, Chapter and Usergroup levels, and a plan for Community / expert survey about (external) partnerships, as some of the topics that need to be done before Wikimania.

December 2018

19 December

Introduction

Shani Evenstein was welcomed by all members (in the call) to the Partnerships Working Group. Alek provided a brief update to Shani on the current phase of scoping which answers basic questions and defining the work of the Working Group.

The major item on the agenda of the call was to discuss steps forward on the task that was provided seeking input to the guiding questions from each Working Group member. A guiding document that provides an overview of the partnership principles was prepared to be used as another resource/reference as this task is being executed.

Housekeeping

The majority of the Working Group members in the call confirmed that the current timing of the call was suitable for them, although there are differences in time zones: incase some members can not participate, asynchronous work was recommended to be done so that collective feedback and participation can be achieved.

• Inactive members can be directly reached out to via email to find out what’s limiting their commitment to the Working Group that they signed up for.
• It is a primary role for the Core Team (Information and Knowledge Management) to take up administrative tasks like note-taking, summaries, scheduling calls, e.t.c so that Working Group members can focus on the content.
  • Working Group members have an option to work on the above administrative tasks if they wish.

Homework Assignment

Suggestion were made on the assignment which might need to be consolidated in one page, with a common response to

• What we want from partnerships. Which partnerships are good examples
• Patterns on existing partnerships and any other needed bigger ideas for partnerships.
• Commissioning a case study with interviews and surveys to review past, and important partnerships globally to determine what went well, and other findings that can help when making recommendations/guidelines to the Movement Strategy Process and goals of the movement.

The big level picture needs to be done with a topology of a workshop to distinguish levels of global, continental, regional and national approaches, synthesising the information and taking it forward to determine prerequisites of a “good” partnership.

• There’s need to be cautious and perform to the level of our capacity in terms of Geographical location (thematic, chapter, usergroup): most user groups do not have a legal status and structures to make feasible partnerships.
• Once we have sorted out operational details for the Working Group discussions, we would have to move towards formulating big ideas, define the work for who will do specific tasks, make a “kind of” concept note and new possibilities for the Wikimedia Movement.

The guiding guiding document was compiled with various documents containing the highest principles, highest goals, FAQs, definitions, guidelines, how to select partners, a list of existing partnerships and what they look like from a Wikipedia point of view.

• Recommendations regarding: technology partnerships, financial partnerships are already available, the Working Group members can take a look at these documents, fill in the gaps, identify a range of partnerships and give their opinions about it.

Some of these partnerships are broad, twenty crucial ones can be selected in respect of the strategy, there are people who are currently (experts) in partnerships and we can get some input from them.

There is a no link, central place or repository on the WMF website regarding partnerships. WMF has not always taken ownership of partnerships: they have mainly been the work of the local chapters with very few exceptions, the idea of mapping the partnerships ( existing and potential, linkages between the Foundation and around our communities is a good idea.

• Developing a global overview of who does what, what does the Foundation do, will be beneficial in our scoping.
• It would be a good idea to have smaller teams and realistic to have this completed mid January next year.

Other announcements

• Stacey Allan sent an apology e-mail that she will (reluctantly) not be able to continue with the group.
• There were guidelines shared on the Group chat that require Working Group members to take a look and decide about:
  • Replacement of Working Group members.
  • Protocol for people who are not active.

Wikimedia Summit

A final decision on who is representing the Partnerships Working Group needs to be made. Most of the Working Group members were to be at the summit via another ticket: Alek and John seemed not to have other ticket options for representation, and they were nominated to represent the Partnerships Working Group.