Content Partnerships Hub/Needs assessment/Research results/Wikimedians of Cameroon User Group

Notes from meeting with Wikimedians of Cameroon User Group

Date: 2021-10-07

Participants:
Egbe Eugene, CMW
René Bile, CMW
Tore Danielsson, WMSE
Axel Pettersson, WMSE

How do you work with content partnerships today?
New project with cultural institution, oral cultural partnership. over 250 ethnical groups with their own language but almost nothing on the Wikimedia platforms. Working with collecting languages and words to build up a memory and communities. Involving other language organizations. Planning to partner with other organisations in the future. Running some Wiki Loves campaigns. Planning to restructure the user group to work with universities. Started work with museum to build a project in listing all museums in Cameroon to set up a list, https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mod%C3%A8le:Palette_Principaux_mus%C3%A9es_au_Cameroun.

What is your normal work process in collaborations with partners?
Work with WMDE for a wikidata project. Having discussions with Goethe- institute to reorganize and reshape the process. Talking to WMF to get projects up and running and also request support with project management.

Are you having a work plan for new partners and collaborations?
Working with Lingua Libre and WMFR. Moving gradually to not try to take too big steps for the UG at one time.

What are your desired content partnerships in the future?
More with Languages project and Museums project.

What are your needs for a successful work with partners?
Lack of infrastructure (computers, internet) at home limits the participation from volunteers. Most need to come into the community centre in order to contribute. Volunteers need to travel to be able to join events. That is a major challenge.

What does the best support look like for a successful partnership?
Learning and working with Open Refine and Pattypan to help and provide support to GLAMs and the community. Some helpful tools exist, but more support is needed to help better on how to use them. Setting up community support packages with recorder and computer to allow for recording languages for Lingua Libre. Also need to find a quiet environment to get good audio when recording. Combining recording with getting photos of the environment when also travelling and visiting other areas and institutions.

Other questions or suggestions for people who would be interested in discussing these issues?
Support in building partnerships is needed from other affiliates. Project management, help with technical parts of projects.