weekly update:

• created first shortlist of potential PC members with ~140 folks. they were selected based on previous activities in Wikimedia research space (PC member for wikiworkshop/research fund in previous years, author of wikiworkshop in previous year, applicant/fundee research fund, showcase presenter, wmf-ray awardee, author of papers on wikimedia research etc)

weekly update:

• Scheduled meeting with co-chair next week to revise shortlist of PC members and prepare invitiations

weekly update:

• onboarded @Ptbeytia to the task; we coordinated how to proceed
• we are in the process of finalizing the shortlist and defining a prioritization of who to invite to the program committee (until next week)

weekly update:

• finalized shortlist
• defined target size for program committee and decided who to invite
• prepared invitation email with timeline for review process (bidding period, etc)
• next step: sending out invitations on openreview (coordinating with @KinneretG to set this up efficiently next week)

weekly update:

• checked contact details for potential reviewers
• set up a co-working session with Kinneret next week to learn about using openreview reviewer invitations

weekly update:

• figured out how to do the reviewer-recruitment in openreview; sent test invitation to myself and solving some smaller issues (avoid visibility of submitted papers to reviewers before submission deadline)
• preparted and formatted list of first batch of invitees. I will be waiting for Monday next week to send invites in order to be able to answer to potential questions without delays

weekly update:

• sent first large batch of invitations to join program committee
• after 1 week, we have 40 accepts (target size of PC is 50)
• response rate is 50% so far, so we will send a reminder next week to those who havent responded yet.