Speaking at developer events is a basic way to reach out to new developers. Currently we don't have any strategy or process to plan who could attend which event. What happens, happens basically thanks to the individual initiative, and many times only a small group know that someone is speaking somewhere.
This is a missed opportunity that we could solve to improve our outreach to new developers.
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Resolved | srishakatux | T164084 [FY 17-18] Program 12: Onboarding new developers | |||
| Resolved | srishakatux | T176487 Goal: Increase onboarding and retention of new volunteer developers | |||
| Resolved | None | T176850 Objective: A calendar of developer events where Wikimedia should participate | |||
| Resolved | Qgil | T153007 Technical Collaboration annual plan FY2017-18 | |||
| Resolved | Keegan | T131689 Second iteration of the Technical Collaboration strategy | |||
| Declined | None | T103057 Organize the participation of Wikimedia speakers in (non-Wikimedia) developer events |
See Also: T1035: Consolidate the many tech events calendars in Phabricator's calendar
Maybe start with a rough list of potential events plus when and in which area they are?
Looking at "Other events with MediaWiki developer participation" sections at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Events, the following ones have been mentioned:
What else?
I have added many of these events to our Wikimedia NYC calendar as well as to our chapter's planning committee. The Wikimedia NYC calendar is definitely shareable. I posted on the other thread in an effort to not duplicate this work.
To sign up, go to the light orange box at the top of our event pages: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Meetup/NYC
Wikipedia User:BrillLyle
Secretary, Wikimedia NYC
I also created a semi-complete calendar for all Art+Feminism events for the recent Art+Feminism initiative.
So I have added all of the ones on the Wikimedia Event page to our calendar:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Events
And will try to add more as I come across them. It helps our local chapter for event planning and could be used by others if they want to grab the event and duplicate it to their own google calendars....
– Erika
While T1035 is a proposal for a specific implementation that might or might not be the implementation we need, I believe that it would be useful to solve the calendar problem first (a primarily technical problem) and then try to solve this problem here (a primarily social problem).
@BrillLyle thank you very much for your ideas and help in this area! I plan to work on T1305 during this quarter, and having people like you contributing is very motivating. :)
Let me know if I can be of any help with this. Calendaring is a challenge, and WM NYC could be a beta test case if you need one.... :-)
– Erika
After all this time, this goal is still relevant. Quoting our Onboarding New Developers annual plan program:
Objective 7: A calendar of developer events where Wikimedia should participate in order to find new developers and improve collaboration with upstream projects we rely or other mission/technology aligned free software projects.
I don't see an assignee set, hence removing the quarterly tag.
As it's up to volunteers what they do or not, regarding folks working for companies involved in Wikimedia development, attending depends on the budget each company's team has to send their folks to propose and hold sessions? Is that where to start investigating, or what's the scope?
https://lwn.net/Calendar/ lists events.
https://lwn.net/Calendar/Monthly/cfp/ lists events' deadlines.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Upstream_projects lists software we use.
I'm blodly declining this task as I don't consider it actionable.
I neither see Developer-Advocacy in a position to tell or encourage others (volunteers? staff?) which events to attend nor see a plan for financing potential travel.
If you plan to work on this task, feel free to reopen this task and assign it to yourself. Thanks a lot!