Wikimedia Developer Summit/2017/Lessons Learned

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

Remote Participation
This information is from the feedback survey that went out to people who participated remotely at the Wikimedia Developer Summit. "'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'"
 * 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:
 * 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 last minutes plans to stream and not to stream some sessions). 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