User:Sonkiki/Hackathons/handbook/Stakeholders

Stakeholders: People who work with Open Source MediaWiki Software in their own organization, company or business. There is an active MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group. Stakeholders are more power-users than developers, and they can be a great addition to your participants list at your hackathon. They also can help you build a network of potential sponsors.

Strategies to reach out to Stakeholders
This chapter takes from the Outreach and Community Building Strategy around the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017.

For the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017 we need to reach out to two new groups to which WMAT has no well-established contact yet in order to build a sustainable tech community around Wikimedia projects in Austria.

We identified two main target groups with different needs, therefore we needed different strategies to reach out to them.
 * Like-minded communities (LMC):  Tech-savvy communities or individuals who already are or could be interested in FOSS and are potential new Wikimedians in Austria. A special focus lies on female developers. For this info, see Chapter: Newcomers


 * Stakeholders (STH):  (Commercial) MediaWiki user outside of the Wikiverse, who have a mainly professional interest and are potential sponsors for tech events in Austria.

What do Stakeholders want?

 * STH have an interest in the further development of the software, they benefit financially (directly or indirectly, because it is part of their business model or their internal infrastructure) from the development of the software.
 * STH are potential sponsors.
 * They want: Contact to developers. Be seen in their industry.

1. Find out who’s using MediaWiki and actively seek them out
Since there is no registration for when you’re using MediaWiki, and since it’s often used as an internal knowledge-management tool, there is no official list of MediaWiki users. We need to actively seek them out with own web-research and the help of network-partners such as the MediaWiki Stakeholders Group (https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki_Stakeholders%27_Group), the Open Source Experts ( http://www.opensource.co.at/ a lobbying-group in the Austrian chamber of commerce).

Issue a call-out
We will draft a press release / article/ text that invites all the users of the MediaWiki software to make themselves known to us.
 * 1) This can be spread via news-portals, such as heise.de or golem.de (with the help of Markus Glaser and Richard Richi Heigl from Hello World/ The MediaWiki Stakeholders Group).
 * 2) Will also be spread to network partners such as above expert groups internal mailing lists etc.
 * 3) Regular PR / press work

2. Accommodate them into the Wikiverse, make them want to be seen
Set up the network: We will set up a website (landing page) where they can register / enter their contact details, company details.

Ideas for the website: “Proud users of MediaWiki”,  their company logos and maybe pictures/faces / testimonials, with a brief statement why they like MediaWiki and how they use it in their business model.

During this whole process, we establish personal contact (not an office@ or welcome@ address, but an actual person) and show that we appreciate them.

3. Let them participate and create opportunities to be actively involved
Idea: We will set up a special track at the hackathon for them.

The goal is to extend our network to these people who have access to more resources. When they see / experience / become part of the community, they will be much more inclined to support Wikimedia – with money, in-kind donations, and their knowledge and contacts.

They will get to know some of the developers personally, and when we ask them e.g. to sponsor the pizza-party, they will have a personal connection to our community and will much more likely help out than if we had approached them “cold”.

With this database we will establish a long-term network of business-contacts. They will need some tending to, so while the organizational matter (invite them to events, make sure they are up to date with current infos, etc.) will be handled by the WMAT team, the involvement of our experts such as the WikiMedia Stakeholders Group is crucial for all their content-related (i.e. MediaWiki software-related)  questions.

Stakeholders' Track at the Wikimedia Hackathon 2017
in collaboration with the MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group, we set up a special conference track.

It was especially interesting to sponsors.

https://www.wikimedia.at/hackathon/fantastic-mediawikis/