Co-creating platforms and products: how the Wikimedia Cloud Services team works with the larger Wikimedia technical community to build and maintain Cloud VPS, Toolforge, Quarry, PAWS, and more
08-18, 02:20–03:00 (UTC), Room 311
Language: English

Did you know that volunteers are involved in planning, building, and maintaining the Cloud VPS and Toolforge projects as co-equals with paid staff from the Wikimedia Foundation? Since the start of the "Labs" project in 2011, one of the guiding principles for Wikimedia Cloud Services projects has been improving collaboration between Foundation staff and technical volunteers. Learn more about some of the policies and practices that are used to make this collaboration possible.

Panel discussion among WMF staff and volunteers either currently or previously involved as administrators for the Wikimedia Cloud Services Cloud VPS and/or Toolforge projects. Audience should leave the presentation with a basic understanding of how Phabricator, mailing lists, wiki pages, IRC, and video calls are used to enable collaborative decision making by a mix of staff and volunteer participants.

What is the experience level needed for the audience for your session? –

Everyone can participate in this session

 How will you deliver this session? –

Hybrid, live: Some speakers will be onsite in Singapore and some will dial in

 How does your session relate to the event themes: Diversity, Collaboration, Future? –

Discussion will be focused on collaboration, specifically the collaboration between WMF staff and technical volunteers that makes the Wikimedia Cloud Services projects function.
See also: Google Slides to accompany panel discussion
Bryan Davis / BDavis (WMF) / bd808

Bryan Davis is Principal Software Engineer working at the Wikimedia Foundation. Bryan has worked professionally creating web websites and related technologies for nearly 30 years with the last 10 spent at the WMF. Since 2016 Bryan has focused on finding ways to celebrate and support technical volunteers in the Wikimedia movement.

Profile picture: [[commons:File:Davis, Bryan Jan 2020.jpg]]
Taavi Väänänen

Taavi Väänänen was the 2022 Wikimedia Tech Contributor of the Year. Taavi is a Toolforge and Cloud VPS administrator, a MediaWiki core developer ("+2'er"), and a system administrator for the Wikimedia production wikis. He's also a Debian Maintainer, maintaining MediaWiki and other free software in the official Debian repositories.

Personal site and blog: https://taavi.wtf
Profile picture: [[commons:File:Wikimedia Hackathon 2023 - Closing Ceremony - 6.jpg]], TiagoLubiana, CC BY-SA 4.0
Andrew Bogott

Long-time WMCS operator and SRE, even longer-time FOSS engineer, frequent contributor of out-of-focus wildlife photos to wikimedia commons.