Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Program committee

The Wikimedia Developer Summit Program committee is responsible for the organization of the Summit's call for participation, program, and Unconference. They also advise on travel sponsorship cases upon request from the event organizers. The main goal of the Program committee is to assure that the right topics and the right people make it to the event.

The Program committee is conceived as a large group of specialized contributors who provide a diverse collection of backgrounds and skills. Some committee members facilitate a main topic, while others bring cross-topic expertise. Some members are expected to be more involved than others, depending on their role and the activity in their areas.

The team, created in 2016, is formed by Quim Gil (chair), Brion Vibber (ArchCom representative), Runa Bhattacharjee (Language), Greg Grossmeier (Release Engineering), Bryan Davis (CommunityTech, Tool Labs), Sherah Smith (User Experience), Aaron Halfaker (Research / Artificial Intelligence), Chase Pettet (Technical Operations), C. Scott Ananian (Wiki content beyond plaintext), Derk-Jan Hartman/TheDJ (Volunteers and Frontend), and Birgit Müller (WMDE Technical Wishes).

Checklist for committee members
How do we assure that the right topics and the right people make it to the event? What follows is a recommended default path, open to personal adaptations.

Main topics
Anything related to "the evolution of MediaWiki and other technologies supporting the Wikimedia movement" is within the scope of the Summit, but some main topics might be more relevant / opportune than others every year. Pointing to main topics helps focusing the collective discussions. Summit participants can still propose other topics in the context of the Unconference.
 * Contribute to the definition of main topics of the Summit.
 * Contribute to a page about your preferred main topic assuring that these sections are well covered:
 * The problem. Why is this a relevant main topic at the Summit?
 * Expectations. What can the Summit do for this main topic?
 * Proposals welcome. Which kind of discussions or other activities are you willing to see happening?
 * Learn more. Useful links for anybody interested in this main topic.

Defining main topics beforehand also helps prioritizing our outreach and travel sponsorship budget toward the persons and groups specializing in these areas.

Join the committee and the event
Help yourself before helping others.
 * Make sure you are listed as a member of the Program committee above.
 * Watch this page and its discussion.
 * There is also an optional Hangout chat used for quick heads up and social tidbits. Feel free to request to join.
 * Register to the event.
 * If needed, sort out your travel plans.

Become a facilitator
If you facilitate a main topic,
 * Identify yourself as facilitator in the main topic page.
 * Recruit at least one additional facilitator to pair with.
 * Optionally, create a task in Phabricator to track progress of the facilitation work (example).

Invite the right people
Send invitations to the people that can make great contributions to your main topic or areas of interest. Increasing the diversity of participants beyond the Wikimedia Foundation members is a goal of the event.
 * Think especially about volunteers possibly requiring travel sponsorship, because they will need time to prepare their request before the deadline (2016-10-31).
 * Think also about volunteers, partners, or third parties who are either based in the San Francisco Bay Area or would be able to cover their own travel.
 * If you need help on promotion and outreach, contact the Summit organizers.

Promote the right topics
As soon as the call for participation opens,
 * Encourage the submission of proposals related to main topics before the deadline (2016-10-31 - drafts are OK).
 * Watch for new submissions related to your main topic or areas of interest.
 * Help improving the quality of the proposals that you want to promote before the deadline (2016-11-14).
 * Help activating discussions in the proposals that you want to promote before the deadline (2016-11-28).

Pre-schedule sessions
At some point the Program committee takes all the proposals that have made it through the quality and interest filters and creates a draft schedule.

More information about this step will come soon.