Thanks for the initiative, @Elitre. I think it is definitely worth having a discussion about the future of the Wikimedia Developer Summit at the Summit, but I object on other points (and I took the liberty to edit accordingly):

• Forcing a decision point during the Summit is probably not a good idea, because that is an explicitly biased environment.
• The real decision point is provided by the Wikimedia Foundation Annual Plan FY2017-18 process, where the Summit either has owner and budget or it hasn't.
• Given the kind of event the Summit is today, I personally don't think it is the Technical Collaboration team who should own that decision, but the Technology department -- our role should be to support them, not to drive this event.
• ... and @Rfarrand as the event manager is the natural facilitator of this session, imho.

I would be happy to run this as an informal unconference session if there is demand for it.
Welcoming any help from co-organizers or people with further suggestions.

What I was thinking today is, just make it a part of the final wrapping session?

A discussion about the future of the Summit as part of a plenary session?

If it's a silly idea, don't do it and just make it a question in the after-event survey?

I don't think it is a silly idea. A BoF type of session during the Unconference with the people really interested has all the chances of being very useful, especially if we start the discussion here (there is no reason not to). Having a, say, 20 minute discussion as part of the wrap up with all the attendees in the room is a different story, that probably won't work.

Asking about the future of the Summit in the survey is a very good idea!

@Elitre Hey! As developer summit is less than four weeks from now, we are working on a plan to incorporate the ‘unconference sessions’ that have been proposed so far and would be generated on the spot. Thus, could you confirm if you plan to facilitate this session at the summit? Also, if your answer is 'YES,' I would like to encourage you to update/ arrange the task description fields to appear in the following format:

Session title
Main topic
Type of activity
Description Move ‘The Problem,' ‘Expected Outcome,' ‘Current status of the discussion’ and ‘Links’ to this section
Proposed by Your name linked to your MediaWiki URL, or profile elsewhere on the internet
Preferred group size
Any supplies that you would need to run the session e.g. post-its
Interested attendees (sign up below)

1. Add your name here

We will be reaching out to the summit participants next week asking them to express their interest in unconference sessions by signing up.

I have just suggested that this happens. I believe it makes sense for DevRel people to lead it eventually?

To maintain the consistency, please consider referring to the template of the following task description: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T149564.

@Elitre my bad! I missed the comments above. thank you for proposing this.

would anyone be interested in facilitating this session?

After thinking further... now I am not convinced about having this session at the Summit. It's a very good Annual Plan discussion that we will surely have, but the Summit might not be the right time and place.

Also, the way the proposal is made above puts a lot of pressure and it might create more tension than needed at the event.

I'd say let's organize and enjoy this Summit. Let's do surveys and let's distill lessons learned. And with all these experiences, let's discuss the plan for the next year starting with the basics: goals, ownership, resources.

This task will be assigned to @Rfarrand or @Qgil and discussed/agreed after the Summit, as part of the WMF Annual Plan FY2017-18 work.

Meeting with Maggie, Victoria, Wes, Quim & Myself schedule for Monday to discuss options. Will update this task afterwards.

In T149300#2978094, @Rfarrand wrote:

Meeting with Maggie, Victoria, Wes, Quim & Myself schedule for Monday to discuss options. Will update this task afterwards.

@Rfarrand: Any updates to share yet? :)

Before getting into details about the Summit, we are getting a common picture about the different events organized by the Foundation involving Technology, Product, and Technical Collaboration. The goal is to make these events fit together, with clear and complementary purposes for each.

one suggestion is to have the summit partially or entirely overlap a weekend. This would make it easier for volunteers and people with other obligations during the week (e.g. school) to attend, though I understand this might not be ideal for staff developers, etc.

the european hackathon and wikimania are very good, in this respect.

The current idea is to have all technical events promoted by the Wikimedia Foundation under the same program in the Annual Plan 2017-18. This includes the Summit, the Wikimedia Hackathon, the Hackathon in Wikimania, and any other hackathons or meetings we aim to organize. This program would be lead by Technology (meaning that Victoria Coleman as CTO would be the ultimate owner) and it would be shared with Product and Community Engagement (specifically the Technical Collaboration team). TC would keep organizing these events, no changes there. The change is that all the events will be under the same program, driven by common goals and owners, and organized around a common budget umbrella.

I took the action of drafting that program. It is expected to go through a basic internal review first to clarify the responsibilities of Technology, Product, CE and set basic expectations. I will publish the details as soon as we have a sensible proposal.

In T149300#3166374, @Qgil wrote:

Lowering priority of this task, which will remain open until the WMF Annual Plan is officially approved.

@Qgil: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_Annual_Plan/2017-2018/Final/Programs/Technology#Program_4:_Technical_community_building is available now and says

Outcome 5: Organize Wikimedia Developer Summit as a three day meeting of ~50 senior technical contributors focusing on one strategic theme announced before the call for participation and scholarship requests start.

Should this task get resolved, or is something missing?

Not quite resolved! Hopefully by the end of the month!