Talk:2012 Five Year Plan/First draft

Tango's comments

First of all, I'd like to say how fantastic it is that work has started on a 5 year plan. I remember the board meeting just over a year ago when we agreed the 2011 budget and we were just making it up as we went along trying to come up with something vaguely sensible that made the books balance (and I think we actually did a pretty good job, under the circumstances). Now we are seriously thinking about what we're going to be doing not just next year, but in 5 years. This is a really big step for the chapter and I'm really pleased to see it.

I am also really pleased to see how many of the items in the first draft have specific, clearly measurable targets ("SMART targets", as they are known). That is something we have historically not been very good at (both in WMUK and in the wider Wikimedia movement). It is really important that, in a year's time, 3 years' time and 5 years' time, we can go through and say "Yes, we succeeded in that." and "No, we didn't quite manage that, what went wrong?". The way this draft has been set out, that will be really easy to do. So, thank you, staff!

Now for the criticisms! I see two potential problems with this draft plan. Firstly, it looks too ambitious. Each individual target is realistic and achievable, but I think if our attention is split between so many different things we'll end up not managing any of them. I think we need to come up with a relatively small number of priorities (4 or 5, say), each with one or two targets (at each time period) to measure success against. Off the top of my head, inspired by the targets already in the plan, I think good priorities would be: "Financial stability and sustainability", "A large and engaged membership", "Strong and transparent governance (as measured by the PQASSO marks)" and "Large scale member-led activities in GLAM and education".

Secondly, I'm concerned by the financial growth you are projecting. WMDE may have been able to achieve that kind of growth, but that was a very different time in the movement. I think we need to clearly separate out funds raised through the annual fundraiser on the WMF sites from funds raised elsewhere (the plan already says we should be diversifying our revenue streams, but it doesn't give any numbers for that yet). We then need to make sure we're not intending to spend more than our fair share of money from the fundraiser. (I suggest we not worry about how much we're raising in the fundraiser and how much we're sending to the WMF, since that is very much up in the air at the moment - let's just focus on how much we actually spend. Once the future of Wikimedia fundraising is a little less foggy, we can figure out the details.) I would advise against any plan to get more than 15-20% p.a. growth in the amount we spend from the annual fundraiser. I think we will struggle to justify any growth higher than that at the expense of other chapters and organisations (who mostly have budgets less than 10% of ours at the moment). I'm not sure what growth is intended by the numbers in the current draft, because it isn't clear where that money is coming from or how much (if any) of that money is intended to go to the WMF. It may well be that the intention behind those numbers doesn't involve more than 15-20% p.a. growth in the amount we spend from the fundraiser, in which case please just clarify the numbers. --Tango (talk) 19:33, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the really useful starting comments Tango. Very helpful and I look forward to everyone else's.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 10:46, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Timetable

What's the timetable for writing and agreeing this plan? The page says it will be discussed at the board meeting in late April. Is the plan to then agree it at the AGM in May? Or will it be discussed at the AGM and then agreed at some later date? I think the latter is preferable - planning 5 years in less than 2 months is a big ask! I'm not quite sure how we would agree it, though - waiting until the next AGM is too long, written resolutions require 50% of total membership to actively support it, which might be difficult to achieve, and EGM sounds like a lot of hassle, and anything which doesn't involve formal approval by the membership sounds like a bad idea to me. What thoughts have the board and staff had on this subject? --Tango (talk) 19:48, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

As long as it takes to get it right is my feeling and even then we revisit it every year.

To be sane I would like to get it 90% finished before the AGM. Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 10:43, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Harry's comments

These are specific things that jumped out at me and that I felt it worth commenting on, rather than an analysis of the whole plan.

• 1 year:
  • "ensure integration with the community" is crucial—the chapter only exists to support the community, and staff (even those with more back end jobs if we hire more in the longer term) should make every effort to make themselves part of the community, as the the current four have done and are doing.
  • "Regular wikimeets established in five locations"; we've already done this—London, Cambridge, Coventry, Manchester, and Liverpool. I know four of those are outside London, but they still count! ;) Monthly newsletter is long overdue and a good way to encourage greater participation, so great to see this included.
  • Training—YES, YES, YES! Especially for volunteers who do a lot of teaching, a mix of professional training and workshops where we can learn from each others experience would be invaluable, and would hopefully encourage more people to do that sort of volunteer work while giving us a core group who can train other interested volunteers.
  • GLAM—small-scale GLAM events are very easy to set up, and don't need much support from staff. The key (as with other types of outreach) is to build local Wikimedia communities and set them to work. This is best done by people 'on the ground' (even if they've been parachuted in).

• 3 year
  • Staffing: as long as we're very careful that we're not expanding the bureaucracy to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy. Consideration should be given to whether a given role can be performed by temporary or part-time staff, and obviously it must be remembered that the staff and the chapter exist to support volunteers, not to control them. If we get up to eight staff in three years, that, in my opinion, would be the time to consider basing staff outside London—with all the staff living and working in London, we risk turning what is already arguably Wikimedia England into Wikimedia London.

• 5 year
  • Regular wikimeets within 20 miles of 90% of the population is almost impossible, and not especially wise, imo. The most obvious issue is sparsely populate areas like most of Scotland, Wales and South West England. Even excluding them from consideration, we'd have to hold wikimeets at motorway service stations to fulfill this, and there would be large overlaps in the communities—for example, we'd be having meetups in Coventry and Birmingham (and probably Wolverhampton), or London and Watford, for example. 50 miles would be more realistic, or perhaps one in every city or conurbation.

I'd like to see more priority given to education outreach—the plan is very thin on this, and is basically "let's get some more contacts and put the odd WIR in place", compared to GLAM, where there are firmer ideas for progress and the plan seems to have staff falling over themselves to support it. It's not just about getting contacts at universities—there's a lot we can do ins schools and FE colleges, and where we have contacts at a university, we need to build a relationship and hold events to make it mutually beneficial. Expert outreach is not mentioned at all, and yet having recognised experts involved in Wikipedia is crucial to it being taken more seriously by the academic community (and, even more importantly, to it being an even more reliable tertiary source). Harry Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 20:32, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

90% of the population isn't that difficult to reach. According to Wikipedia, 83.8% of the UK population lives in England. If we have regular meetups throughout England and in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Cardiff and Belfast, that ought to be enough to meet the 90% target (I'm not saying we should ignore everywhere else, just that the target isn't unrealistic). --Tango (talk) 21:46, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

At my last Charity (a self-help one where face-to-face was utterly crucial) I set this as a target and did a very dinky map. In effect you can do this with fifty groups and we achieved that in three years from a starting point of 20. It is doable. Most difficult was Aberdeen.

Great comments Harry.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 10:52, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Comments by Charles Matthews

• Wikimeets are not WMUK activities, and in the past Mike Peel has said something along those lines, the nuances of which probably matter; but in any case they are not run by the chapter. They are emphatically not "membership" activities. The point came up recently, also. The distinction is actually important, and slurring it is a very bad idea.
• Education. Yes, we were once going to have materials for teachers and so on.
• GLAM. The three-year estimate is reasonable, but there are factors that may cause some "saturation"; and the calendar is going to need to be taken in hand.
• There is nothing concrete in the plan about grants, online journal access, that kind of thing. Where is the direct relationship of the plan to content in the projects?

86.6.26.208 21:00, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Are you objecting to WMUK getting involved with meetups or just with them being classified as "membership activities"? I think the chapter can and should do a great deal to help support and encourage meetups. We should be careful to distinguish between "community" and "membership", though. The chapter should serve the entire UK community, whether they choose to join the chapter or not. Something like a meetup is a community activity, not a membership one, you are correct. --Tango (talk) 21:49, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Any implication at all that meetups are "members only", however slight, should be resisted as deleterious. It is complete misdirection.

It is much more likely that those who are casually interested in WMUK activities would come to a meetup, just to encounter other Wikimedians, than that they come in with a definite interest in what the Board are currently up to. Meetups are not dominated by chapter politics, which would be something just as likely to put off newcomers as motivate them. I.e. it matters that meetups are seen as "first contact" for those who have never seen another Wikimedian in the flesh, and are in no way cliquey.

All that said, if WMUK has ways to support meetups appropriately, that is to the good. But I'd be much happier if the whole area were reclassified as "outreach".86.6.26.208 06:16, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Fair points. 'outreach' or whatever we call it I think the office's job will be to identify a geographical gap, e.g. Aberdeen, contact local members and supporters. Make a bit of a fuss in the local press and media and host a first meeting and possibly a second with sarnies and Pepsi Max. Then find the local people who will commit to run them and offer whatever suport (e.g. cost of room hire) they need. At my last job this is exactly what I did. We had no branch in Manchester. Myself and a colleague hosted the meetings in a pub every other month for about fice months. After that it took off by itself and became a strong independent branch.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 10:58, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Filceolaire's comments

This looks good to me. Things that could be added:

• Grants programme
• Software development
• Major project
  • Updated Wikipedia for schools;
  • Video interviews/recordings/
  • Language teaching courses

The 5 year plan doesn't have to specify what these are - just that WMUK wants to have a grants programme, do software, support a major project. Filceolaire (talk) 22:41, 28 March 2012 (UTC)

Thanks - keep the ideas coming. We do need to be realistic (pace Tango) but let's be ambitious as well. There will be opportunities to work with other organisations who can support broader initiatives.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 11:00, 29 March 2012 (UTC)

Comments from Chris K

Thanks for this plan, Jon. It is great to see us developing this kind of thinking for the future. Most of the detail is very good, but there are a few things I'd change, or think about further...

• Staffing - are these figures for staffing growth based on analysis of what additional posts we would need to implement the rest of the plan, or are they finger-in-the-air estimates? (We currently have 4 FTEs in post, one more FTE budgeted for, and a proposal for another one in the pipeline. So 8 by 2015 strikes me as on the low side if we are continuing to grow).

Totally finger in the air and probab;y not an aspect we should put in the front of our considerations. We need to think about the 'what' then the 'how'. If we need staff or contractor resources then so be it.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Membership - interesting thought about "considering a members' council or other participation as part of governance" - obviously members have a very strong role in governance at the moment, but that shouldn't stop us thinking about how to develop that if we are heading towards having thousands of members. Are there any examples of what you have in mind?

Many charities have such things but sometimes they are completely token. We have such good communications through the lists etc that perhaps we have one de facto? Germany have members councils twice a year - a good model?

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Membership activities - there are a number of things here that are great, but don't need to be associated with "membership". Wikimeets and GLAM activities will obviously remain open to non-members. We could restrict some training to members only, but I am not sure why we'd want to. Equally I'm pleased to see "membership activities other" putting a focus on community-driven projects.

Important to see non-members as just members-in-waiting and excluded no-one - good point. There may be some member-only moments but few I suspect.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Fundraising - I think we can be more ambitious here, I think the goal you've identified for 3 years time is probably doable within a year.

Go on then put your money....

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Income - only note here is that I doubt we will ever get to the ability to project income within 5% over a 5-year timeframe!

Have a stab!

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• Digitization - I'm not sure how far we ought to make digitization a goal. It clearly has a place in our work one way or another, but I'm not sure we know how much of a place.

I have to ask then why is it so prominent in our programme - to discuss.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• AGM - am not sure we should specify "prestige location". We have a lovely location for this time, but I don't think we should define it as an expectation for next year!

Discuss but seems sensible.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

• International work outside the community - International work is going to be vital so agree entirely about the "synergies" point. However, if we started doing outreach work directly in other countries, we would have to take great care to work with the existing Wikimedia communities in those countries, so much so that it's probably worth subsuming this point into the previous one in the document about WMF and chapters.

Perhaps - from my observations so far some bilateral work could be very good and Asaf at the Foundation very relaxed about it.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2012 (UTC)

Many thanks, The Land (talk) 19:26, 1 April 2012 (UTC)

Some more comments from Jon Davies

I was reflecting on our plan at the Chapter's Conference and actually getting feedback from other chapters who see us as a useful source of information!

1. We should put in some ambitions around sharing equipment (cameras, scanners etc) between volunteers.

2. Put something in about our work with the PR industry? (let's get the discussion going on May 12 at the AGM and see what kind of view emerges from the Community 77.98.156.27 15:29, 3 April 2012 (UTC))

3. Set everything against the Foundation key goals which we are in full agreement with.

Jon Davies WMUK (talk) 14:52, 3 April 2012 (UTC)