Content Partnerships Hub/Needs assessment/Research results/Wikimedia México

6 December 2021 | Time: 17:00 UTC

Video recording with Streamyard

Meeting with Pepe Flores / Wikimedia México

Participants: Pepe Flores, Axel Pettersson, Tore Danielsson

Questions:

Experiences and best practices from earlier work with content partnership?

What are the main needs for working with partners?

What could a good support look like?

Notes background:

WMMX works a lot with GLAM partnerships, both GLAMs, but also universities, gov agencies, civil rights organizations.

Change over time in who initiates partnerships. After Wikimania in 2015 there was a boom when orgs came to WMMX asking for contact and collaboration. Also the success in working with Museo Soroya(?) helped in getting collaborations going. In all collaborations the partner needs to learn about the movement and what Wikipedia is.

Collaboration with gender topics, edit-a-thona, with the focus on getting more content similar to Wiki Women in Red to the projects. Working with WMMX is a great and “cheap” way to get visibility and traction on releasing content.

Ways to work are not documented, but should be.

Starting out with a friendly meeting to find out what common goals there is in the partnership. Usually starting out with basics of the movement, 5 pillars and such. Later moving on to how to edit and how to upload images to commons and how to use Wikidata. Also including the political part of free and open knowledge to get partners onboard with teh bigger picture. After that forming longer projects looking at different languages or content that should be improved or released.

Needs:

A need would be to learn more about digitalization to be able to help partners. Smaller partners (outside of Mexico City) can use help with technical issues. Some partners rely on WMMX, but as they are a group of volunteers it’s hard to live up to the expectations. Partnerships among other free software organizations help as they help with tools and equipment needed in some projects.

WMMX is slowly but constantly growing with support from WMF. Adding more roles and getting more staff/people working. Would need to find a way to grow the community and to get staff and new people in from outside. Need to document and get learning patterns in place to not stop growing in a sustainable way. Capacity building workshop as a way to improve and grow. Money can solve some problems, but knowledge would help more and open up other doors. Support networks within the movement should be available to partners as a way to get them closer to us and to offer more than we already are.

Support:

Working with Open Refine in some collaborations, but lack of volunteers with knowledge is a bottleneck in getting bigger projects going. Great help is available from other movement volunteers and other chapters, both in getting work done and in training and learning new tools and ways to work. Sometimes “learning by doing” to move projects forward with partners.

Regional partnerships are great, and important to strengthen collaborations.

Building “readership” to get more people to actually see what the movement is offering. Following that building editorship will come.