Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Session Guidelines

Guidelines for Goal Setting
Theses guidelines exists to help each session at the Wikimedia Developer Summit meet the following goals:
 * Have productive discussion about topics that need face-to-face time
 * Make progress towards agreement on a solution
 * Document what was discussed, including areas of agreement and disagreement
 * Create written list of action items for follow up
 * Update or create Phabricator tasks as appropriate

Key Roleplayers
Session owner/ facilitator to assign meeting roles before the beginning of each pre-scheduled or unconference session.

Facilitator: run session to achieve specific goals.

 * State or build consensus towards meeting goal and style, referencing one of these meeting types:
 * Problem-solving: surveying many possible solutions
 * Strawman: exploring one specific solution
 * Field narrowing: narrowing down choices of solution
 * Consensus: coming to agreement on one solution
 * Education: teaching people about an agreed solution
 * Identify agenda items and guide discussion to stay on topic
 * Redirect participants who begin venting or discussing things that can be done online

Scribe(s): Document the session

 * Preferred scribe(s) per session: one or two. We do not want to encourage everyone to be multi-tasking during the sessions, and thus we suggest only one or two volunteers contribute to note-taking.
 * Copy https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/devsummit17-YourSession to https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/devsummit17_YOUR_SESSION_NAME
 * Add the above etherpad link to:
 * Session notes section (add if missing) on Phabricator
 * All Session Notes page on MediaWiki
 * Fill out the information in the template
 * Create new Phabricator tasks as needed
 * At end of session, copy meeting notes into Phabricator as appropriate

Gatekeeper: Actively manage participation

 * Interrupt people if they are dominating the discussion
 * Help people who are having difficulty being heard
 * If the gatekeeper is talking too much, someone else should interrupt them

Timekeeper: Keep track of time left and point out time passing to facilitator

 * If possible, estimate time for each topic written by scribes
 * Let people know when a topic has gone over its time
 * Give a warning when 5-10 minutes are left

Remote Participant Advocate: Moderate discussion on IRC

 * Communicate with remote participants on IRC channel #wikimedia-tech and moderate the discussion
 * Address remote participant's queries directly to speakers during the Q&A
 * Learn more about remote participation here.