Feedback requested for pilot: Public Policy/Global Advocacy monthly conversation hours

Dear Wikimedians! The Public Policy & Global Advocacy is running a pilot of monthly conversation hours from June-October. These calls are 60mins via Zoom, at the end of every month, in multiple timezones and with varying topics. You can find all the details & updates on our MetaWiki.

Please share your feedback!
We highly value any constructive feedback you have for us throughout the duration of this pilot. With your feedback, we can adapt and improve the format and content of these sessions so that they are as useful as possible for you.

Our goal is to create a forum for our team to engage directly with volunteers, affiliates, and staff. These calls are an opportunity for us to answer questions about how the Foundation pursues advocacy work, or about your own projects and initiatives, and to connect, share, and learn from each other in a consistent manner. If they’re not working for you, or are working well, or could work better, then we want to hear it!

Thanks in advance for taking time to share your feedback.

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These conversation hours end after October. This series has been a pilot programme.
What can we do better? For example…

  • Are regular calls a useful way to interact?
  • How frequent should these calls be?
  • How can we improve the timezones in which regular calls are held?
  • Should there be a regional focus to calls?
  • How was the format of these calls (1/2 presentation, 1/2 discussion)?
  • Who should run these calls? Should it always be WMF staff? Should we rotate between staff, affiliates, and volunteers?
  • How can we collaboratively set the topics that will be discussed in advance? What can be done to encourage more folks to add items to the agenda?
  • What platforms and channels should we use to communicate information about the calls?
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Having attended several of these calls, I think it’s a good and useful pilot that have helped to raise awareness and became a learning source for Wikimedians on public policy and global advocacy topics. I appreciate having these calls in two choices of time zones, and how it is structured right now (a presentation followed by open discussion) is helpful as well.

Spreading the words about an event within the Wikimedia movement has always been a curious case. I think it would be really important to advertise and invite these calls prominently in the community avenues and noticeboards; the WM News template on Meta and Diff calendar came into mind as one of the most prominent examples. Curating a list of :“policy folks” that you can always send out MassMessages of the meeting invites would also be useful.

I look forward to more of these calls, of course with better attendance among us Wikimedians! :slight_smile:

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personally, I find the MS Forums to be the most ideal form of interaction for our community. I’m glad to hear about this set of calls; if some folks find that useful, then that’s great.