[Engineering] Platform Evolution post-TechConf update

Tue Nov 27 14:55:38 UTC 2018

Hi everyone,

It has been a month since the Wikimedia Technical Conference[1] and the
year is winding down, so it seemed like a good time to send an update on
the Platform Evolution Program[2]. Specifically, I wanted to let you all
know how the Core Platform Team will be following up on the great work
coming out the conference.

For those who didn’t attend, the primary goal of the conference was to
produce the building blocks to develop a 3-5 year platform roadmap, which
in turn will enable us to achieve our program goal: Evolve our technology
platform and development processes to empower the Wikimedia Movement.

Each session was designed to generate action items, decisions, and goals
that will become the building blocks of the roadmap. Session leaders,
scribes, facilitators and attendees worked hard to capture these outcomes
in notes on wiki[3] and in Phabricator[4] (thanks again to all who helped
with this process! 🙏)

Following TechConf, the Core Platform Team along with members of the
Conference Committee has been reviewing all of the session notes and
aggregating major outcomes into a single document. We are working to
publish this document on MediaWiki.org by the new year and will send out
another email when we do so that you will know where to find them. We will
also be asking attendees to review this wiki to ensure we didn’t miss
anything important.

There are also teams and attendees are independently following up on
TechConf outcomes alongside this formal process - this includes authoring
RFCs and planning projects. Once the initial review of the materials is
complete, we will be reaching out to individuals and teams to see how the
Platform Evolution Program and Core Platform Team can support their work.

In addition to guiding the 3-5 year platform roadmap, the outcomes from
TechConf will be used as input into annual planning and the Q3/Q4 work for
the Platform Evolution Program. The WMF officially begins the 3-5 year
strategy and annual planning in January, so we will have more updates as
that process kicks off.

On behalf of the the Conference Committee, Core Platform Team and the
Platform Evolution Program, I would again like to thank everyone who
attended and contributed to the conference. Your time, work and input were
essential to the success of the event and will be invaluable to the
development of the Platform Evolution Program.

Corey

[1] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Conference/2018

[2]

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Platform_Evolution

[3]

https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Technical_Conference/2018/Session_notes

[4]

https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/tag/wikimedia-technical-conference-2018/

-- 
Corey Floyd
Director of Engineering, Core Platform
Wikimedia Foundation
cfloyd at wikimedia.org
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