How Wikimedia is scaling open source innovation

Wikipedia and its sister projects are the fifth most accessed web sites in the world. Remarkably, both the content and the platform were developed through an open, community process. How can Wikimedia continue this process while also meeting the challenge of scale?

We’ll give an overview of the Wikimedia universe and identify challenges and opportunities that have emerged from the Wikimedia Foundation’s year-long strategic challenge process. We’ll then dive into two specific case studies. We’ll describe the Wikipedia Usability Initiative’s work to make its user experience process more participatory. We’ll then discuss how the Wikimedia Foundation is grappling with the unique challenges of building business relationships between telecommunication companies and the open source community in the mobile space.

The presentation will be followed by a rousing, round-table discussion with the audience.

Presenter(s)

Tomasz Finc is Engineering Program Manager for Fundraising, Mobile, Offline, and Business Relationships at the Wikimedia Foundation. He has more than eight years of experience as a systems and software engineer. He previously worked at Amazon.com, where he administered and supported the Amazon.com A9 search engine. Tomasz speaks fluent Polish and English.

Trevor Parscal is the Lead UX Software Developer at the Wikimedia Foundation. He began his career as a user interface designer in 2000. He's been an active open source contributor in the D programming language since 2004.

Eugene Eric Kim is the cofounder and principal of Blue Oxen Associates, a consulting firm focused on improving the ways we collaborate. He's currently leading Wikimedia's year-long strategic planning process, a completely open, collaborative process for developing a five-year movement-wide strategic plan. Past clients have included the CIA, NASA, Sierra Club, and the World Economic Forum.