Wikimedia Developer Summit/2018/Lessons Learned

The Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 feedback survey was sent out to participants on 6 February, 2018.

We will close the survey on 20 February, 2018.

Results / summary of the feedback survey are being posted here, currently this page is incomplete.

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Feedback survey background
rfarrand created the feedback survey. Many members of the Organizing Team made edits or suggested changes.

The feedback survey was sent to participants / wikitech-l, Engineering@ & WMFAll@ on 6 February, 2018.

A reminder about the feedback survey was sent out to all participants who had not filled out the survey (and those who choose to remain anonymous) on 13 February.

The feedback survey closed on 20 February.

The feedback survey received 47 responses

Privacy Statement for this survey

Considerations for next time
This section is based on the fill-in-the-blank/comment sections of the feedback form. Some of these comments will be contradictory. We are mostly trying to include common themes and issues that were felt by groups of people. This section is a bit more subjective than the #Data section below and suggestions may be paraphrased and combined with each other.

Questions for Participants
Please provide ideas for how we can improve the event session format

Please provide ideas for how we can improve the pre-event engagement of participants.

Any suggestions on how to improve session facilitation?

Any suggestions on how to improve topic leader preparation?

Process Questions
Ideas for improvement (related to 2018 participant selection process)

Please suggest topic ideas for 2019 position statements

Documentation Questions
What did you find helpful or confusing about the way we used Phabricator/wikipages/etherpads for organizing the work before and during the summit?

Other
Do you have a suggestion for a specific keynote speaker for 2019? (Please provide their name, and affiliation / background)

Do you have suggestions for specific topics you’d like the keynote speakers to cover for 2019?

Do you have suggestions for specific topics that you would like to hear about from WMF management at the 2019 summit?

Anything else you would like to tell the Program Committee or Organizing Team?

Are there other things that we should be measuring that we are not asking about?

Data
Did you attend the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018 in Berkeley?

Yes: 61.7%

No: 38.3%

Have you attended any previous Wikimedia Developer Summits and/or Architecture Summits organized by WMF in 2017 or earlier?

Yes: 87.2%

No: 12.8%

Questions for Participants
Omitted: How useful for you were the keynotes? Because these answers might negatively reflect the contribution of one individual they are not included. The answers were helpful to the organizers.

Omitted: How useful for you were WMF management keynotes? Because these answers might negatively reflect the contribution of one individual they are not included. The answers were helpful to the organizers.

How useful was each session for you?

Response options are ranked in order after giving 2 points for every "very useful" response, 1 point for every "useful" response, 0 points for every neutral responses, -1 points for every not useful response and dividing by the number of responses.
 * Growing the MW technical community: 17 responses
 * Supporting 3rd party use of MW: 16 reponses
 * Embracing open source software: 20 responses
 * Knowledge as a service : 16 responses
 * Research Analytics and Machines Learning: 11 responses (tied with next steps for language)
 * Next steps for language and cross project collaboration: 11 responses (tired with research and analytics)
 * Advancing the contributor experience: 15 responses
 * Evolving the MW Architecture: 22 responses

Please tell us how much you agree or disagree with the following statements

Attending this event was worth my time

Strongly Agree: 10

Agree: 10

Neither Agree or Disagree: 5

Disagree: 1

Strongly Disagree: 3

The opportunity to meet fellow developers was valuable to me

Strongly Agree: 17

Agree:

Neither Agree or Disagree: 2

Disagree: 2

Strongly Disagree: 1

I would like to attend this event again next year

Strongly Agree: 14

Agree: 7

Neither Agree or Disagree: 5

Disagree: 2

Strongly Disagree: 1

Process Questions
Based on your understanding of the process, do you think asking participants to write a Position Statement was fair?

Yes: 29.8% (14)

Indifferent: 8.5% (4)

No: 31.9% (15)

I don't know: 6.4% (3)

Other: 11 participants

Based on your understanding of the process, do you think the participant selection process was fair?

Yes: 21.3% (10)

Indifferent: 8.5% (4)

No: 14.9% (7)

I don't know: 46.8% (22)

Other: 4 participants

Documentation Questions
Please rank these tools in order of how helpful they were to you and your topics of interest in following the actives and outcomes of the Wikimedia Developer Summit 2018

Phabricator

Very helpful: 18

Moderately Helpful: 0

Not Helpful : 4

Etherpad

Very helpful: 18

Moderately Helpful: 0

Not Helpful : 4

Wiki

Very helpful: 14

Moderately Helpful: 0

Not Helpful: 5