Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Steering Committee/2010-11-11

Ambassador Steering Committee, 2010-11-11

Members present:

• PJ Tabit
• Alex Stinson
• Fletcher Commons
• Cheryl Moy
• Annie Lin
• Sage Ross
• Frank Schulenburg

Agenda

• Update from Alex on plans to expand ambassador program to UK
  • Possible focus on student clubs
  • Plans for active involvement with Wikimedia UK
  • Final form of UK version of program still up in the air

• Campus Ambassador Recruitment
  • Update from Annie:
    • About 20 verbal commitments now, with more being added day by day, Annie is scheduling calls with professors firming things up
    • By next week, we should have a good idea of who will participate for the next term

• • Signups to coordinate campus ambassador recruitment - mostly done for previous version of list, but more have been added in the meantime. Keep checking back through next week.

• • What next? One on one checkins with Annie about recruitment of campus ambassadors. Connect with current campus ambassadors for help recruiting more where needed.
  • Timeline
    • Recruiting starts the day after the phone chat with Annie, at the latest

• Campus Ambassador Selection Process
  • Feedback
    • Perhaps we should have a direct way to gauge teaching ability, such as a brief instructional presentation / sample lesson ideally in person, or alternatively during the Skype interview. However, that may be uncomfortable over Skype, and not completely analogous to in-person teaching.
    • Recommendations and teaching experience are helpful, but not foolproof for weeding out bad teachers.
    • Perhaps the criteria / requirements are too harsh, and inhibit growth and international spread of the ambassador program? Regional selection boards that can deviate from the guidelines may mitigate that.
    • Stricter selection criteria may be desirable for teaching fellows, since the fellows will be more deeply involved with Wikipedia and have more need for high quality support.
    • Eventually, we want to move to regional selection of new campus ambassadors, rather than having the steering committee making all the decisions. But can we do that for the spring, or is the time crunch too short? Maybe we can have the point person on the steering committee consult local campus ambassadors by email about applicants, similarly to what we've done with online ambassadors recently between Sage, Alex and Fletcher.

• • Changes
    • We should maybe tweak the application so that it doesn't give the impression that some of the listed skills are requirements, since people can easily learn them in many cases and we don't want to chase people off from applying. Application isn't great for measuring quality of skills, but that's what later stages of the selection process are for.

• • • On the whole, everyone seems to agree that the process and the application are in good shape, and the application can be shared with potential campus ambassadors now.
    • We may want something more elegant than sending office documents, such as a Google form.
    • Frank will set up an OTRS queue for ambassador applications; initially, the members of the Steering Committee will get access to that queue. We will test this technical solution for seven days and then decide if want to go with it.

• Online Ambassador Selection Process
  • Amendments
  • Notify the community/solicit feedback
  • What is the relationship between the Online Ambassador Selection Team and the Steering Committee?
    • The steering committee would be informed in the number and who are the online applicants accepted
    • We're recommending this proposal to the ambassador program