Events/2022 Wikicamp

The 2022 Wikicamp is a yearly IRL gathering, organized by Wikimedia France, in an easy-peasy settings with the leading actors of the European Francophone community. (A larger, more formal yearly Francophone event is the WikiConvention, generally later in the year.)

• Objectives: Bring to upper decisional and funding levels of Wikimedia France 1) the criticality and urgency of technical issues, as gathered in meta:User:Adélaïde Calais WMFr/2022-2023 Lingualibre wishlist and :phabricator:Lingua_libre; 2) the confidence in our mission and its popularity ; 3) the need in a later outreach campaign.
• Dates: 2022.07.08-10
• Place: Domaine des Roches, Dieppe.
• Participants: 50 leading Francophone wikimedians. From Lingualibre: Adélaide, Poslovitch, Yug.
• Etherpad: none, open 2022 Wikicamp's wikipage for more information.

Actions: To increase awareness and synchronize visions, Yug and Poslovicth discussed left and right about Lingualibre with other leading contributors and board members. Adélaide also did so, among other tasks and projects she leads. We structured our argument on the following basis :

1. Technical core need upgrade → full time dev necessary: as devices diversified, core services have shown critical bugs, sharply degrading our community and recording activity. We, the community, vocally request a full time dev on a 4+ months mission in order to review and fix our core service up to standards.
2. Utility, popularity → 2023 outreach : despite a voluntarily reduced outreach, our service stays in demand as we have sleeping contacts with 60+ languages communities. As soon as the technical side is back on track, massive outreach is warranted.
3. Diversity, strategy → 1000s languages: Lingualibre has critical value for Wikimedia movement and Wikimedia France's diversity efforts. Languages of the worlds are in danger. We can be ambitious, dare to aim at 1,000+ languages solidly documented in 5~10 years
4. Sustainability : Following the requested late 2022 technical upgrade and 2023 outreach, there is an avenue for a lively and self sustained community with incoming speakers, field linguists and web developers.

Results:This event efforts were productive. In Sunday 10th Board meeting, Lili was discussed for 45+ minutes.

Adelaide

👉 Presented broad review "2022: Lili in bad position and possible solutions".

👉 Defended the need for a full time dev on a 4+ months mission

👉 Defended in-house and full right contract vision because: inclusion in the team, human respect, better for long term vision.

👉 Wrote job description (will be useful soon !)

Group photography.

Board

👉 Good willed, partially informed, learns in front of our eyes, gives opinions. (Not ideal)

👉 Solid consensus built "Wikimedia must finance a full dev for 4+ months, quickly".

👉 Materialization of a small camp "In fact, we need in-housse full time full-stack tech".

👉 Friction on salary : following grid / equity (2150€ net) vs salary of a developer (2500€ net).

👉 Friction on in-house or freelance, mostly due to timeline.

Actions decided by Wikimedia France's board

👉 Funding (23k€) of a full time dev on a 4+ months mission approved.

👉 Plans an emergency board meeting in 10 days, dedicated to open that Lingualibre hiring process, as freelance or in-house.

👉 Study of a 2nd salary grid for technical staff, to align with market competition.

👉 Creation of a mixed "Lili Working Committee" to improve strategic vision and synchronization with decision-making levels of Wikimedia France. Likely composed of (?): 2 board member + Adelaide Calais (staff) + Future Web Dev(staff) + 2 volunteers with tech understanding for orientation and synchronization with board.

Future

🌟 While core goals were achieves, the critical mission to audio document the cultural diversity of 7,000 languages via their vocabulary, which is at reach, requires as soon as possible 2 full time positions on Lingualibre: one full stack dev and one full time polycompetent supervisor for community, outreach, field linguistic, strategy and technical developments.