Technical Community Newsletter/2020/January

Coming Soon

Features
Technical Conference 2019 took place 12, November 2019 - 15, November 2019. The conference focused on developer productivity. Its goal was to help address all of the issues — large and small — that will make all parts of our engineers' lives happier, healthier, and more productive.

Read more about the sessions and outcomes on the event's Phabricator board.

Conferences and events

 * Wikiconference NA took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts 8, November 2019 - 11, November 2019. This year's main themes were reliability and credibility. The conference included 3 full days of sessions and presentations.

Cool tools

 * Book reader based on Internet Archives Open-Source book reader provides a new level of functionality for scanned books in PDF or DjVu formats: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T240178

Internships and outreach

 * Google Season of the Docs wrapped up in early December 2019. Thank you and congratulations, Pavithra Eswaramoorthy for participating and successfully completing Google Season of Docs project. It greatly improved resources contributors to technical documentation on Wikimedia projects and made it easier for individuals to find the resources they need.
 * Google Code-In 2019 began December 2019; ran through the end of January 2019.
 * Outreachy Round 20 has started. Outreachy pairs individuals from around the world with technical mentors for internships on Open Source projects. Learn more: https://www.outreachy.org/alums/

Technical Talks
Wikimedia Technical Talks provide Technical Community members and opportunity to share what they know. Talks take place monthly. You can view this past quarter's talks here:


 * How to compare text across multiple languages, Diego Saez-Trumper, Research Scientist
 * ResourceLoader tips and tricks, Roan Kattouw, Principle Software Engineer
 * Wikidata, behind the curtain, Amir Sarabadani, Software Engineer
 * Structured data on commons, Cormac Parle, Software Engineer

Wikimedia Technical Talks will return in February 2020. You can find the schedule and learn how to participate here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Talks

Community Metrics
Have you ever wanted to know:


 * the number of Gerrit patches written by volunteer authors in a year?
 * who are the most active patch authors in a Gerrit repository?
 * who are the latest new patch contributors across Gerrit?
 * who are the most active reviewers per Gerrit repository?
 * how long it takes on average until Gerrit patches get a first review?

You can explore community metrics from the biterg.io dashboard


 * XXX people wrote patches in Wikimedia Gerrit (XXX of them being volunteers)

Technical Improvements

 * Python 3.7 available in Toolforge Kubernetes
 * Cloud VPS Openstack cluster upgraded to Newton version

Wikimedia

 * Add Wikimedia conferences and workshops
 * Wikimedia Hackathon 2020 (May 09–11, Tirana, Albania) (Get it on the radar, for planning and scholarships)

Open Source

 * Add Open Source conferences: Note dates and regions
 * FOSDEM (February 02–03, Brussels, Belgium) + CopyleftConf

Get involved!

 * Volunteer for GCI through January 21, 2020
 * Get involved with Friends of the Docs
 * Review Technical Documentation