Project:Calendar/How to schedule an event

The instructions you want to follow to organize a successful community meeting.

Required

1. Add your event to the Calendar and make sure to list yourself as a contact in case anyone has questions.
2. Types of events (see Specific Events for more details)
   • Videoconference - send an email request to Quim Gil, Guillaume Paumier and Rachel Farrand; they will schedule a Hangout-on-air connected to the MediaWiki Google+ page. Your recording will also be saves to the MediaWiki YouTube account.
   • To reserve #office-wikimedia for an IRC meeting please use this link.
   • If you have an idea for a tech talk or meet-up and would like to host it in the evening WMF offices please add your ideas to the wiki pages at the bottom of this page and email Rachel Farrand and Quim Gil.
3. Upload to Commons any free materials used in your presentation. Categorize them properly under e.g. Category:Wikimedia_presentations.
4. Contact Rachel Farrand for help publicizing your Event.
5. Arrive on time. Ready.... set... go!
   1. If you are going to share your screen, increase the font size of your browser or terminal.
   2. More tips coming soon!
6. Link your entry in the calendar to the video, IRC log, or blog post of the event.

Promotion

• Guillaume and Quim can distribute the announcement through Tech News and the MediaWiki social media channels. Send them your short text, URLs, and optional free image.
• They will also create an invitation in the Wikimedia Foundation Engineering calendar (visible to employees only).
• You are in charge of announcements in wiki pages, mailing lists, and other channels of your choice. If regular editors are a target audience, you should send a notice to wikitech-ambassadors, in addition to other lists.
• After the event, consider writing a post for the Wikimedia blog.

Event management checklist

• Hangout on air
  1. Go to MediaWiki Google+ page Hangouts.
  2. "Start a Hangout on air".
  3. Fill title and description, "Starts: Later" (set time and duration), "Audience: Public" + add speakers. Save.
  4. You will get a new page. Click "Links" to get the URL to use when advertising the event.

Specific Events

RFC Discussions

• Agenda is finalized by Architecture Committee: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment
• Send announcement to wikitech-l/development
• Add meeting to https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Project:Calendar
• Reserve IRC channel during meeting time: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/IRC_office_hours

Tech Talks

Tips

• Past tech talks and future proposals. Nominate new talks here.

• Ideally we will have two tech talks each month
• Anyone can volunteer to hold a tech talk or nominate a specific topic.

Tech talk set-up instructions

1. Find a topic and a willing presenter
2. Find a date and time that works for the presenter. Reserve a conference room (R31, R37, R67 or the 6th Floor Collab space) at WMF beginning at least 15 minuets before the tech talk starts through the end of the tech talk.
3. When using the collab space, submit support request ticket to IT: techsupport@
4. Obtain a tech talk title and a paragraph+ summary or abstract of the tech talk/information about the presenter(s) to publicize.
5. Using the MediaWiki Google+ Account create an on air broadcast for the date and time of the tech talk. Invite presenters to the on air broadcast.
6. Create a named event on TimeAndDate with the correct time in UTC to distribute internationally
7. Add the tech talk to Project:Calendar and include a links to the on air google+ broadcast and the TimeAndDate event.
8. Reserve #wikimedia-office on IRC for questions
9. Add the tech talk to the WMF engineering calendar. Include IRC details and youtube link.
10. Email engineering, wmfsf and wikitech-l with details about the tech talk. This should include your TimeAndDate link, a link to follow along on youtube, a link to join the live hangout, a description of the tech talk/presenters, the meeting room. If the tech talk will be taking place in one of the collab spaces, also send a heads up to wmfsf@.
11. Tweet from the MediaWiki twitter account about the tech talk
12. Create a facebook post about the tech talk on MediaWiki's facebook page
13. Add speakers, project members & IT support to to calendar invite
14. Reply to your previous email on wikitech-l and wmfsf and send reminders out about the tech talk: 1 week in advance, 1 day in advance and 15 min in advance or whatever you think makes the most sense for your tech talk.

Day-of instructions

1. Arrive to the meeting room and/or hangout 15 minuets before the tech talk starts. Ask the presenter to do the same.
2. Double check that your google plus youtube and hangout links are working properly.
3. Double check that your microphone and speakers are working properly
4. Make a plan with the presenter before you go live. Who will watch IRC for questions? Who will introduce the tech talk? Who will regularly check the google+ page in case anyone has trouble joining.
5. Change topic in IRC channel and announce meeting in IRC channel at least 5 min in advance.

Meet-Ups

• Past meet ups and future proposals
• Add meet-ups to WMF internal calendar

Hackathons

Post Hackathon

• Hosting chapter should publish budget/$ spent. Examples: Zurich, Amsterdam, Berlin.
• Public lessons from hackathons. Examples: London

WMF Engineering Team Off-sites

• Add offsite to Engineering Calendar
• Email Engineering @ (and possibly wikitech-l) about the offsite.