Hello Marc, I was not on the planning team for this part of the program at the last Wikimania, but I volunteered to facilitate several sessions and also participated in several more.
There are key difference from having a topic interest group hold a session to talk informally among themselves, and the way that the critical discussions are done. Both are important ways for people in our movement to communicate at a wikiconferences. The first approach...BoF...will happen with or without assistance from the organizers doing much to help. The approach is dependent on the conference organizing team providing space, a facilitator, note taker, and a process to select topics that are of interest to the broader wikimedia movement. The critical discussions that I attended were well attended, well facilitated, and had a better wrap up conclusion than less formal discussions. So, I hope that the next Wikimania will include a track for these more formally organized discussion sessions. Warm regards, Sydney Sydney Poore User:FloNight WikiConference North America https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2016/Main_Page Facebook https://www.facebook.com/sydney.e.poore On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 11:56 AM, Leila Zia <[email protected]> wrote: > > On Wed, Aug 10, 2016 at 6:35 AM, Marc-Andre <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hey Leila, >> >> On 2016-08-10 01:08 AM, Leila Zia wrote: >> >> Are we considering to not continue the support for the Discussion Rooms >> idea as suggested >> <https://wikimania2014.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions/Discussion_Room> >> in Wikimania London and explored in London, Mexico City, and Esino Lario? >> If so, can you expand why? Quite a few of the Discussion sessions in Esino >> Lario were very well attended, the participants took active role in these >> sessions, and the general sentiment that I got from these sessions was that >> they were helpful. >> >> >> I'm not sure how you get to that conclusion - BoF sessions are a more >> general concept that encompasses discussions neatly; I'm not sure why you >> feel that does not provide support? >> >> Perhaps there is an aspect I didn't understand. What's missing? >> > > > From the point of view of an audience of these sessions, I see few > differences: There is a specific structure to Discussion Room sessions that > is described in, for example here > <https://wikimania2016.wikimedia.org/wiki/Discussions#Outline>. There is > also a process regarding call for proposals/abstracts, reviewing them, and > accepting them. This level of freedom for a subset of people (Discussion > Room organizers) to control the outline and processes around Discussion > Room sessions may be in contrast with what you said earlier regarding the > conditions that you would like to define for discussions happening under > BoF: " They are generally more specialized or aimed towards a more precise > public, and are not selected by the programme committee nor curated beyond > a simple set of criteria[1] so they are more free-form." and "[1] They need > to be directly related to the movement or an allied movement.". I want to > specifically emphasize "nor curated beyond a simple set of criteria". > > If you see a way for allowing/having the kind of structure and process > that Discussion Rooms require under BoF, then I have no more questions. :) > If not, I'd appreciate if you help me understand this better. > > Thanks, > Leila > > >> >> -- Marc >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Wikimania-l mailing list >> [email protected] >> https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimania-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l > >
_______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
