The Wikimedia Futures Lab brought together 100 Wikimedians to collaboratively design ways to respond to global trends impacting the movement. The format was an “ideathon”, and the focus on varied experiments rather than one big solution.  I participated in the Lab as an expert, and asked myself afterwards: what if we read the Futures Lab’s experiment proposals not as isolated ideas, but as collective signals of various strategic directions? One of the goals of the event was to “propose and adapt strategies to stay relevant”. Each proposal for an experiment can be treated as a voice of support for a certain strategic direction. And the sum of these ideas can be analysed to reveal a theory of change that emerged at the Futures Lab. This post reverse-engineers this vision. Five pillars of a Wikimedia mission The Futures Lab wasn’t designed to produce a unified strategy, as each experiment was developed independently. There was no process in place to fit them together.…