Why are we here, and how can we make it a successful conference
In general, we provide the tools to multiply the impact of other people
People have various frustrations with the status quo
We want to move faster despite the difficulty of change - Everything can potentially be done, but only some things are feasible
We've been working separately so much, which causes frustrations. We’ve worked to make sure as many stakeholder perspectives as possible are represented here
Hence, Platform CDP, and this conference.
[Q. to audience] What is our platform?
[Daniel K.] Something that others build on
[Brion] Our platform is people
[many] MediaWiki!
Yes, it could be defined as:
[slide showing perspective options]
Besides MediaWiki and associated extensions and services, there are largely separate platforms for things like analytics, fundraising, content scoring, and search
Onwiki contributors tend to see the top-layer of technical aspects. The bots, the templates, the gadgets.
Content and Community
Everyone has a different definition, but this is one way of conceptualizing the platform
Slide showing overlapping venn diagram of platforms and audiences, and how much is shared
How should we evolve?
[discussing Focus areas slide] note that we haven’t even gotten to tech yet by the third bullet. There are many human problems to investigate and solve. We created this list by talking to you.
[Slide showing how Platform Evolution Program evolved from previous similar attempts] The first thing we realized we had to do is talk to as many stakeholders as possible.
[Slide illustrating topic clustering that reduces to the five focus areas]
While we want people to explore and build new and unexpected things, we also need a map and a destination so that we’re working in the same direction.
The goal of all of this is to arrive at a 3-5 year technical roadmap.
We’re not going to arrive at a roadmap here, but we are practicing collaborative roadmapping skills
Don’t clump: we have a lot of people here with a wide range of expertise, who probably have the answers to your questions. Meet them!
Help leaders make decisions, by clearly detailing the pros/cons for each option. It’s easy to assume that leadership has ground-level knowledge that they actually don’t
"No buts" - don't second guess your ideas, or shoot down other ideas too quickly. We need to know about challenges, but many can be resolved.
Wikimedia Technical Conference/2018/Session notes/Process and Action
