Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Lessons Learned

"Results from the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2017 feedback survey coming soon!"

Remote Participation

 * 13 attendees filled out the survey form
 * As of now (a week after the summit) two of the main sessions: "Ward Cunningham- Has our success made it hard to see your own contribution?" and "Wikimedia Foundation Technology and Product Q&A" received 218 and 53 views on YouTube each.
 * 53.8% said they heard about the remote participation through an email received from WMF, 23.1% through WMF's social media channel, and 23.1% through other sources.
 * For 53.1% watching the YouTube video, for 15.4% reading the session notes, and for 15.4% participating in discussion on IRC channels were the most useful components of remote participation
 * 92.3% respondents said they would be interested in participating remotely in the future events and 69.2% opted-in to receive updates about the same
 * Inspiring quotes:
 * "'It was awesome to be able to watch all those sessions. And the notes were invaluable, saved so much time. It was great to have both, on some sessions I preferred reading the notes, on others watching the video'"
 * "'Keep doing this, if you can, for it opens up possibilities that would not otherwise be open'"
 * Things to improve for next time:
 * Audio quality
 * Camera placement (was more on the audience, and less on the speaker/ slides)
 * Check ahead of time what the formats for live-streamed sessions are going to be like. If a session is intended to be a breakout group style around whiteboards, it may not be that useful for the remote audience to participate
 * Some speakers were good at explaining the roles (such as note-taker, facilitator) at the beginning of their session, others were not. More efforts to recruit people for specific roles ahead
 * Streamed URLS changed (this happened as we made planned to and not to live-stream some sessions at the last moment). Maybe consider unique YouTube links for all the sessions
 * Backchannel for organizers and remote advocates to discuss things like YouTube link updates, additional conference sessions, and information for participants in one place