Grants:APG/Proposals/2020-2021 round 1/Wikimedia Sverige/Progress report form
Metrics and results overview - all programs
editWe are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Grant Metrics. We understand not all Grant or grantee-defined Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and
- Next to each required metric, list the outcome/results achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
- Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
- In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs' success
For more information and a sample, see Grant Metrics.
Metric | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
1. Number of total participants | 2,465 (out of the yearly goal of 1,600) | Breakdown by gender: Women: 861 Men: 497 Non-binary: 7 Un-known: 1,100 The majority of the participants either took part in the WikiGap events across the world which we supported, at events about Structure Data on Commons, or in the photo contests Wiki Loves Earth or at different membership events we organized to increase involvement and long term support from our members and donors. |
2. Number of newly registered users | 51 (out of the yearly goal of 600) | Breakdown by gender: Women: 32 Men: 19 Non-binary: 0 Un-known: 0 Our two ongoing programs GLAM and Wikipedia in Education has a focus on bringing new writers to the platforms. As we have not been able to have physical events we took this as an opportunity to refocus our efforts in the first half of the year towards developing training material. We hope that we will be able to make up for it with more events in the second half of the year and that we will also have more digital editathons. |
3. Number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects | 102,798 (out of the yearly goal of 295,525) | Breakdown by project: Wikipedia: 16,081 Commons: 86,187 Wikidata: 311 Other: 219 This represents a new record for Wikimedia Sverige. For the first time we have surpassed 100,000 improved content pages in a year. With 6 months to go we have good hope to reach the audacious goal of nearly 300,000 improved pages. The focus is on contributing with improvements on Wikimedia Commons media files to make them more searchable and accessible by adding structured data. This work will continue and we will also continue our efforts to improve the coverage of built cultural heritage and GLAM institutions on Wikidata. |
4. Diversity[1] | 922 (non-unique) (compared to 270 in our Progress report from 2020) | This year we have included WikiGap in the Progress report and in comparison with 2020 we actually have a lower number at this point during the year as there were fewer participants in the WikiGap events in 2021. |
5. Reach[2] (new grantee defined metric) | 2,621 (non-unique) (compared to 1,735 in our Progress report from 2020) | When planning for the year we intended to apply for three different grants where presentations, seminars, etc. were a key piece. However, at this point it seems like they will all take place in 2022 instead and this number is therefore not expected to increase compared to 2020. |
Introduction
editAs the pandemic continues we have in many ways been forward-looking and we continued our preparations for the future.
The four programmatic areas developed in 2016—Access, Use, Community and Enabling—have continued to form the base of the project structure. This year has in many ways been a time of stabilization, continuation and finalization of the long-term efforts we have worked on during many years. Some major trends so far this year are that:
- We thought and planned for the future
- As the chapter’s current 4-year strategy came to its end in 2021 we formed a number of working groups to build consensus about the strategy for the next 4 years. The strategy was unanimously approved by the Annual General Assembly and the organization has a clear path forward until 2025.
- We refocused our hub plans based on the changing opportunities and are in the process of adjusting the ideas we worked on in 2020 to fit the new 4-year strategy. We will refocus our efforts with a more limited focus on the software development as we, in the current environment, see fewer opportunities. Instead we will pivot and work to develop our capabilities around international partnerships, investigate the needs around content partnerships from Wikimedia affiliates and GLAMwiki volunteers, support affiliates with technical support, e.g. batch uploads, and capacity building etc.
- The WikiGap campaign have successfully been organized since 2018. We have seen it expand and refocus due to the pandemic, and many great ideas have been developed by the communities across the world. We are constantly thinking on how we can further refine the WikiGap campaign and as we are approached by a myriad of organizations that are interested in contributing to these efforts we are planning to expand and experiment even more in 2022. We are in the process of applying for external grants to experiment and scale up and to form interesting new partnerships. We are also aiming to combine the strength of WikiGap with the content donations we are working on as part of the thematic hub we hope to form.
- Preparatory work has been done to allow for an expansion of the volunteer engagement with the development of a long term plan and new training material. We are in the process of applying for a major grant to hopefully scale this work with a dedicated team in 2022-2024.
- We are finally launching some of our key initiatives
- Wikispeech has been under development since 2015 and in June 2021 we finalized the software so that we could launch Wikispeech on Swedish Wikipedia. Now starts a period of feedback and refinement before we can continue to scale.
- Our plans for a future thematic hub around content partnerships in Sweden has been developing since 2019. However, our intentions and plans with the hub has not been possible to communicate in the way we would have preferred because of a number of ambiguities and uncertainties. When we now – finally – have funding secured for the following year, and we know that any future funding will be through the soon-to-be-established Grant Committees we can actively start communicating in a more direct way. We look forward to dozens upon dozens of interesting and challenging discussions with affiliates and volunteers in the movement as well as other stakeholders.
- In 2020 we started experimenting more seriously with a national fundraising initiative. We have analyzed and processed the results from the early experiments and are keen on scaling the work in late 2021. The major thing currently holding us back is the pandemic which might have us postpone the launch to 2022.
Financial changes
editThe funding we already have secured is, with our current costs, lasting until early 2023. However, that is including our reserves and we will need to raise significant funds in the later half of 2021 and 2022 to keep the organization stable long-term.
The major change this year from our expectation is the continued uncertainty and unclarity about long-term funding for the thematic hub work. The promises in the beginning of the year around significant multi-year funding were not fulfilled, but instead a large single grant was provided in June 2021. This will hopefully allow us to continue to prepare for the hub until a structure for the funding is established in 2022.
We will also increase our work with fundraising in Sweden. We will continue our experimentation around face2face fundraising. We also intend to organize an online fundraising campaign on social media. Applications of close to 1 million USD are expected to be finalized in late Q2 and Q3.
Access
editTarget | Last year (if applicable) | Progress (at end of Q2) | Projected (end of year) | Comments | |||
Access | A.1.1 Enrich the Wikimedia projects,[3] with 25 new resources, through the creation and distribution of materials and by providing support and performing batch uploads. | 9 | 14 resources out of 25
|
On target: 25 | We have a few more datasets lined up and will ask the international community for datasets they would like to have uploaded. Even though they do not get reported as new datasets we will also invest significant resources into the continued effort to improve earlier batch uploads with Structure Data on Commons. | ||
A.1.2 150 identified[4] subject experts contribute to the Wikimedia projects with at least 1 productive edit each, through the dissemination of information, maintaining relationships or arranging thematic edit-a-thons. | 129 | 25 experts out of 150
|
On target: 150 | We are investigating how we can scale activities in the area for the later half of the year and are likely to refocus efforts around Structured Data on Commons and parts of our national GLAM activities to reach this goal. We will also organize an event with the aid sector to introduce them to editing Wikipedia. | |||
A.1.3 Involve 10 courses in the Wikipedia Education Program,[5] through educating motivated teachers and providing expertise on the Wikipedia tools for education. | 3 | 3 courses out of 10
|
Below target: 8 courses | The last few years we have seen more courses work with Wikipedia in the autumn and we are expecting the same this year. However, as we are planning to develop digital course material and an international exchange program this autumn the time available is more limited than previous years. We have hoped to hand over the support of teachers to volunteers to allow us time for these initiatives without falling short of the goal. However, this has not yet materialized the way we intended to. | |||
A.2.1 To increase the use of free licenses ensure that 50 organizations[6] are reached with information on free licenses. | 145 | 92 organizations out of 50
|
Above target: 175 | We expect to inform many organizations about Structure Data on Commons this year, and also start more discussions both in civil society and with aid organizations in Sweden. We will also actively reach out to intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs). | |||
A.2.2 Work actively to nurture and develop the relevant networks and contacts with people who can influence license choice of material in order to safeguard the topicality of the issue. This is achieved, in addition to regular activities, through active participation in or the organization of at least 10 new events and at least 10 new direct contacts with content owners, organizations and politicians. | 16 events, 39 contacts | 17 new events out of 10
103 new direct contacts out of 10 |
Above target: 25 events
Above target: 250 contacts |
Our definition of someone belonging to our network is when they have met a representative of the association and staff has some way of contacting them, they have received information about what we do as an organization and how they can reach us. The external projects we received funding for allowed us to reach far more people and organizations than expected. As we have similar initiatives prepared also for the second half of the year we expect this number to increase even further. |
Our Access program focuses on improving the free content on, or available to, the Wikimedia projects both short and long term. This continues to be our largest program, both in number of ongoing projects and initiatives, and in budget. Preparations to further scale this program in 2022 and onwards are taking place. However, it is worth noting that some larger projects in this program also contribute significantly to other programs in the organization. For example a lot of work around the development of the organization happens as an integrated part of the program – e.g. in the Tools for partnerships project we worked to develop our fundraising capacities.
We have over the years established strong practices around expert engagement, partnerships and technical support and we have successfully continued to build upon them this year. We are now hoping to find ways to support the global community with hands-on help around content partnerships. To not just receive financial support, but expertise, technical support and more was something highlighted numerous times in the Wikimedia 2030 strategic process. We also hope to use our experience to form new content partnerships with intergovernmental organizations (IGOs) and international non-governmental organizations (INGOs).
We also see new exciting opportunities around structured data and will work on developing our skills around both Wikibase and Structured data on Commons. However, we are very aware that cutting edge technology around data processing is not the current need for GLAM institutions and other potential content partners in many parts of the world. Instead, more foundational needs have to be fulfilled first, such as digitization and openness policies. Wikimedia Sverige is in this for the long run. We aim to change the way organizations and society think about knowledge dissemination and production. Creating that kind of change in attitudes will allow for the full impact of free knowledge. By convincing decision makers to adopt different forms of policies around openness we are laying the foundations for accessing new material in the future.
We know that we need to deepen our understanding of the different needs across the Wikimedia movement to be able to provide support the best way possible. Therefore we are intending to start a series of interviews and surveys to investigate what type of hand-on support would be needed.
Story: A structured effort on Structured Data on Commons
editIn this Story, we give an overview of our large-scale work with Structured Data on Commons, which included data uploads, outreach and documentation.
Structured Data on Commons (SDC), a modern, structured and machine-readable way of describing the millions of pictures, audio clips and videos on Wikimedia Commons, has gone a long way since it was first implemented in 2017. SDC makes the files easier to view, search, edit, organize and re-use, in many languages. It has become something of a household name among the Wikimedia Community, with more users actively adding data to the files they upload.
But there is still a lot to do. Out of the 74 million files on Wikimedia Commons, 5 million have a depicts statement and 1.7 million have a creator statement. Many community members have been diligently chipping away at these numbers, but what we really need are tools and workflows to quickly and efficiently work with large amounts of files – both for the Wikimedia community and for our GLAM partners, who can benefit from SDC making their collections easier to find and analyze.
That's why at the start of our project Tools for partnership 2020, we committed ourselves to uploading 250,000 SDC statements to files on Wikimedia Commons. Our goal, apart from contributing with valuable data to the Wikimedia project, was to strengthen our skills in the related areas in preparation for further work as a hub, as well as to test the available tools and develop efficient workflows for processing and uploading large amounts of structured data to Wikimedia Commons. The work happened to coincide with WMF developing and releasing MediaSearch, a new search engine for Wikimedia Commons. MediaSearch makes use of SDC, so that all users of the platform can benefit from it. This was an additional incentive for us, and hopefully also for community members involved in SDC work. It's great to see all the structured data actually used to deliver better search results to everyone!
We focused our efforts on two types of files: Wiki Loves Monuments photos and files from some of our earlier GLAM partnerships, such as audio recordings of folk music from the Swedish Performing Arts Agency. Each of the collections came with their own challenges and reflections around data modelling and the necessary technical infrastructure. We have collected them in a white paper, so that others can learn from them, and hopefully get inspired.
In order to further share our experiences and networks with others interested in SDC, we participated in several events, such as conferences and workshops, during the first half of the year. We hope that this will help spur some interest amongst the participants to contribute to the data in a more active way. The workload is enormous and we need to work together to create significant value.
Structured Data on Commons is still developing. While the technical side is in place – anyone can add and edit statements – the best practices in regards to modelling, tools etc. are a living process. Participating in this process, learning from other community members and contributing to it at the same time was a very rewarding experience. It has also given us a lot of ideas for further work as we develop into a thematic hub focusing on supporting the Wikimedia movement around content partnerships. For one, we hope to set a much more ambitious goal than this year's 250,000 new statements, making the files on Wikimedia Commons easier to discover and analyze.
Story: Crowdsourcing names in WikiGap
editIn this Story we are focusing on the crowdsourcing campaign organized as part of WikiGap in 2021. Several partners took part in attempts to get examples of women missing from Wikipedia. So far, a few thousand names have been proposed.
WikiGap is organized each year, with the long term goal of closing the gender gap on Wikipedia. The WikiGap method, attempting to lower thresholds for writing new articles for Wikipedia, has proven very successful, with more than 50,000 new or improved articles.
But the further the campaign has come, the more we – as organizers – have realized the difficulty of knowing which women are actually missing. Writers need to know who they should write about, before they can contribute towards the closing of the gap. Wikimedians try to build a global encyclopedia covering all notable aspects, but in many areas – geographically and thematically – there is a lack of knowledge on women who would be relevant, but who still have no article.
Initiatives such as Women in Red have made tremendous progress on this issue, and have built large sources with missing women. Their lists of missing women is valuable material for anyone that wants to help close the gender gap. But the lists are of course incomplete.
For the WikiGap campaign in 2021, we – as WikiGap organizers – tried to contribute to a partial solution to this problem. We teamed up with global partners such as UNESCO and UNFPA, and used our and their social media channels to crowdsource names on missing women for Wikipedia from the general public.
The campaign started with a tweet from the Wikipedia account, developed by us, Wikimedia Foundation and in communication with partners. The tweet was retweeted by partners such as UNESCO. UNFPA and Global Citizen also partnered for the initiative, and opened up a platform for proposing names that ran through July 2021. At that point, close to 4,000 names had been proposed. This will be a substantial source to build upon and use, when Wikipedians want examples of missing women to write about.
The crowdsourcing is the first part of the campaign. Many of the names might lack good references or notability, or might even already exist. That is one of the obstacles to overcome when it comes to crowdsourcing. Still, we think that we can turn this into an opportunity rather than a problem. We aim to solve the problem by organizing a WikiGap Wikidata challenge, to encourage new communities, specifically on Wikidata, to take part in and helping out with the WikiGap campaign, to improve coverage of women on the Wikimedia platforms.
In this way, we are inviting both new Wikimedia communities, such as the Wikidata community, to the WikiGap campaign, and external audiences with little or no experience of contributing to Wikipedia. In this sense, we are widening the WikiGap campaign, and opening up for people to take part, no matter their capacity or previous level of experience.
Detailed project overview
editBelow all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories have been presented more in depth as case studies above.
For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).
We are also outlining where the project will have an impact in the Wikimedia universe and who we are partnering with to deliver the best possible result.
We also include information about the importance of each project, e.g. if the project is core, essential, one-off or experimental. In this context, a project is considered to be core if it is part of our identity as an organization. The project will be organized even if impact is less in the short term and will only be cancelled after a consensus has been reached amongst our community. A project is essential if it actively contributes to one or many of the goals that have been outlined for the year or the long term strategy. Most projects should belong here. A project that is considered a one-off is organized because it is delivering a specific benefit to the organization but it is unlikely that we will repeat it in its current form. The type of project might continue over the years, but the content will intentionally change significantly over time. The experimental projects are testing a new idea, method or technology and are often externally financed. They might be a one-off or if successful become an essential project.
Free music on Wikipedia 2019
editWhat is the project: To make Sweden’s historical music treasure available, we focus on including structured information about music and audio files on Wikimedia projects. This includes making available collections that are digitized which contain material that has an extinguished copyright, or high quality contemporary recordings performed by professional musicians that release their work. The project has been extended until June 30, 2021.
2021: The focus will be on describing and analyzing experiences from the various processes surrounding the work with music on Wikimedia's platforms, how to engage new volunteers, how to improve searchability and connect different types of material connected to music. The possibility of organizing an online contest, called Wiki Loves Audio and Music, will be investigated.
As part of this project dedicated modules directed to musicians will be created and connected to the educational package (outlined under the project Wikipedia in Education 2021).
What’s been done: We have continued and expanded our collaboration with the Swedish Performing Arts Agency with uploads of both audio files and metadata, and have also been running a number of edit-a-thons with their staff. We have also, with help from the Swedish Performing Arts Agency, found new partners in some regional music library archives and groups for folk musicians who have participated in training and editing articles. At the end of the project our work was summarized in a report.
What's next: The project has ended, and we are looking for ways to build on our experiences and continue working with free music in a new project.
Size of project (small/medium/large): Large
Importance: Experimental
Project impact: Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia
Partners: Swedish Performing Arts Agency
Link to the project: Fri musik på Wikipedia 2019
Wikipedia in Education 2021
editWhat is the project: This project aims to engage the educational sector in contributing to free knowledge and to develop ways for us to work together.
2021: The previous work has laid a strong foundation with many established partnerships and good knowledge about Wikimedia amongst educators the project will now shift focus. Work will be aimed at forming long-term strategic partnerships, affecting policies, developing insights through research and building capacity for other actors (non-staff) to work with educators across the country.
One area that we want to continue expanding is our work with Open Educational Resources (OER). We will continue the work within our new network Mötesplats OER, including possibly organizing a digital conference on OER. We will also try to get more people to become involved in the network, increase our outreach and continue the work of implementing UNESCO’s OER Recommendation on both the strategic and operational level in Sweden.
Furthermore, we will continue to support educators to implement Wikipedia based assignments where students improve Wikipedia as part of their curricular activities. We will actively highlight and communicate Wikipedia in classroom settings. Less staff focus will be directed to support educators to organize events, but instead focus will be directed to support peer-to-peer learning and to empower educators, volunteers, students and WiRs to work with the courses.
A key part of the project is the development of a modular digital educational package where the basic material is the same, but where additions can be made to different target groups. A number of projects will this year include funding to cover the costs for a module for the specific audience or use case the project is trying to reach or achieve. These target groups include e.g. the interested public, different expert groups, teachers/trainers, volunteers and staff.
To increase reach we will educate university teachers and folk high school teachers as part of their official educational programs (where we have well established contact).
What’s been done: Preparations for a OER conference in November have been done to focus on the issue and bring in more people to the OER network we have worked to organize.
We have identified a few courses and classes that have been strategically prioritized. We are focusing extra efforts on students studying cultural heritage, as we are interested in bringing together our educational and GLAM programs, and on translations as we see a potential possibility to support smaller language versions of Wikipedia that way.
Significant efforts have been put into developing a set of digital learning material about the Wikimedia platforms. We have also developed a joint application for an Erasmus+ project together with our sister organizations in the Czech Republic, Poland and Slovakia. If the project is funded we will jointly be developing a multilingual MOOC.
What's next: We will support a few strategically important partners to engage with the Wikimedia platforms. This includes the folk high school teachers in one of the regions in Sweden and with staff responsible for research communication at different universities. The OER conference will be organized and work to onboard new members into the network will be a priority at the end of the year.
If funded the Erasmus+ project will start at the end of the year and this project might support it with some preparatory work.
Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium
Importance: Core
Project impact: Wikipedia
Partners:
Link to the project: Wikipedia i utbildning 2021
GLAM 2021
editWhat is the project: This project maintains continuous interaction with GLAM partners and seeks out new collaborations. It also serves as an umbrella for projects funded by individual GLAM institutions, where they want help with a certain task within a limited time period.
These projects are usually aimed at making a particular collection of images or data available through the Wikimedia projects, at increasing the Wikimedia competency of an institution by having a staff member embedded at the institution over some time span or by building bespoke tools to facilitate the interaction, or the analysis thereof, between the GLAM and Wikimedia.
2021: Staff will continue to support our existing partners and organize outreach to new potential partners. During the year we will work to re-energize our strategic partnerships with central and strategic actors. We will look into how linked open data (LOD) and Wikibase can create interest. We will develop a series of educational activities for the GLAM staff across Sweden. The National Heritage Board and the National Historical Museums are Swedish GLAM institutions that have been identified as very likely candidates. We are also involved in an application for EU funding where, if funded, we will act as a subcontractor.
We are also planning a collaboration with four museums in Gothenburg. We will develop teaching materials that focus on tools that facilitate large uploads of image files with associated metadata to Wikimedia's platforms. The ultimate goal of this project is to equip the museums with tools and skills to contribute to the Wikimedia platforms on their own.
When we are working on new types of collections or with a new type of partner we will develop a case study and share the learnings with the GLAMwiki community.
The situation with the pandemic has shifted our focus to work through digital solutions for communication with the Swedish GLAMs and we will continue to develop the digital training material we started with in 2020 to allow for asynchronous preparations of the participants. We are planning for training with e.g. library staff, with working life museums and with the major museums in Sweden. As part of this project dedicated modules directed to these target groups will be created and connected to the educational package (outlined under the project Wikipedia in Education 2021).
A few different volunteer teams will be formed to support the work, e.g. to identify important collections to batch upload, with online engagement of the material, with training for GLAM staff etc.
Our partners will be invited to engage in the thematic hub as experts and stakeholders. We will also start the work to create material that can be internationalized to spur GLAM activities abroad.
What’s been done: Outside the ordinary GLAM work we do, as support to previous partners in their writing and uploading of images or recurring courses with the working life museums there are some activities that stand out this year.
One is the LGBT project started last year by some of the librarians who were part of the training earlier. With minor support from us, they are running edit-a-thons, planning weekly writing contests and adding Wikipedia training modules to Digiteket (e-learning platform run by the national library).
The next one is a survey conducted to find out what GLAM institutions need and want in their work with open and free knowledge. With the results of the survey as an excuse we can approach new partners and offer training, help with uploads or basic discussions about copyright to have them open up their collections.
The last two, our cooperations with a group of museums in Göteborg and a group of tourist companies and local heritage organizations are similar as we have prepared training material and had some start up meetings and the actual work with training, for uploads with Göteborg and editing with Kalmar, will resume after the summer and if the pandemic allows with in person meetings.
What's next: Continued support to partners and in the LGBT project. Ramping up the projects with Göteborg and Kalmar as the training sessions begin. More outreach to organizations who responded to the survey to see what new partnerships we can build. Support our expansion to becoming an international content partner to the movement.
Size of project (small/medium/large): Small
Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata
Importance: Core
Partners: Nordic Museum, Swedish National Heritage Board, Swedish Performing Arts Agency
Link to the project: GLAM 2020
Wikidata for authority control 2021
editWhat is the project: The aim of this project is to develop and evaluate methods of linking museums' authority data to Wikidata, with the ultimate goal of making it easier for researchers and other users to find, understand and analyze relevant information distributed across different museum collections. The learnings from this project will be shared with other GLAM institutions in Sweden to demonstrate the benefits of Linked Open Data.
The project is a collaboration between Wikimedia Sverige, Nationalmuseum, the National Historical Museums and Digital Humanities Uppsala and Department of Information Technology (both part of Uppsala University). It is financed with a grant from the Swedish National Heritage Board.
What’s been done: This project puts a heavy emphasis on the two museums' staff acquiring new skills and applying them to their institutions' databases. That's why our role has focused on providing training and support while the team members do their work independently. We have held regular meetings throughout the year, during which we have provided training on Wikidata, SPARQL and, most importantly, OpenRefine.
The team members at the two museums have gained skills to use OpenRefine for internal work with their authority datasets, such as getting more insight into the data and discovering and rectifying errors and duplicate entries. They are happy with the power and flexibility the tool offers, even admitting that it makes some internal tasks easier than the software they used before. In this blog post, one of the team members at the National Historical Museums gives an overview of their work.
The team members have also become more comfortable using and editing Wikidata. For example, they have successfully created a new property, National Historical Museums of Sweden agent ID, and populated it with over 2,000 items.
At the end of the first half of the year, we had a lightning talk about the project accepted to the 2021 LD4 Conference on Linked Data, which will take place in July.
What's next: In the second half of the year, we are going to focus on visualising, analyzing and, if necessary, correcting the data that has been uploaded to Wikidata. We are going to create complex queries that provide deeper insight into the data, such as interconnections between artists and their works in the museums' collections. Furthermore, we are going to spread the results of our work and share our experiences with other GLAM institutions, with the aim of inspiring them to share their data on the Wikimedia projects and equipping them with the necessary tools and knowledge.
The project is expected to span over the years 2021–2022. In September, we are going to apply for funding for year 2. Our ideas include working with more datasets from other GLAM institutions, possibly internationally, data roundtripping and expanding our training and communication work to other actors in the Swedish cultural heritage sector.
Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium
Importance: Essential
Project impact: Wikidata
Partners: Nationalmuseum, the National Historical Museums, Digital Humanities Uppsala and Department of Information Technology (both part of Uppsala University)
Link to the project: Wikidata för auktoritetskontroll 2021|
Presentations 2021
editWhat is the project: This project includes different one-off presentations by WMSE staff, that are paid for by an external organization. The project exists to simplify taxation of our work.
2021: We will increase our efforts to create packages that are suitable for different stakeholders about areas of our expertise and proactively contact them about it, e.g. through our networks, through social media posts or when we approach e.g. companies to become supporters of our work.
What’s been done: A couple of presentations have been given during the year.
What's next: The main focus will be to develop a small flyer with information about what type of training we provide towards a specific target group and share that flyer with relevant stakeholders.
Size of project (small/medium/large): Small
Importance: Essential
Project impact: -
Partners: -
Link to the project: Föreläsningar 2021
Advocacy 2021
editWhat is the project: Through this project we ensure that the Internet user perspective and the free knowledge perspective are heard in the legislative process and by politicians. The project is funded by donations and membership fees to keep them separate from FDC funded projects.
2021: During the first half of 2021, focus will be on the implementation of the Copyright Directive of the European Union into Swedish legislation, and our work to defend the user perspective in this implementation, while pushing for Freedom of Panorama. As a positive long term outcome of this work, we will aim to create a network of Swedish organizations that have a stake in these issues to work together. The copyright societies are already highly coordinated, and a similar coordination among defenders of a user perspective would be important in the long term. Furthermore, the implementation of UNESCO’s OER recommendation into Swedish legislation will be carefully monitored, and decision makers will be approached as needed.
Support will be given for the work done by staff in Brussels in this and other legislation, financially but also by providing insights and contributing with insights and experiences. We will aim to support the coordination of policy work with the cultural heritage sector among issues relevant for both parties. There is currently a lack of coordination which limits the effectiveness of our work. Such a model, if successful, will be valuable to scale to other countries as part of the efforts in the Thematic hub.
What’s been done: Most of the time in the advocacy project 2021 is dedicated to the final part of the implementation of the EU Copyright Directive in Swedish law. The deadline from the EU Commission was on 7 June. Due to the fact that the EU Commission guidelines on implementation on some of the hardest parts of the legislation was delayed until about the same time, there is still not a Swedish draft implementation, in turn meaning that the process is delayed by more than a year. The responsible government agency hopes to propose draft legislation by early fall.
In the meanwhile, we were also invited to the formal consultation on the proposed EU regulation on the harmonization of AI rules. As the proposed regulation touches upon a few of the projects we are running, such as the speech synthesis Wikispeech, we decided to give our views. We were one of just a very few civil society organizations that replied to the consultation, probably due to its high complexity and extensive scope – the proposed regulation exceeds 100 pages of complicated legal text. That, however, also meant that our responses got even more important, as sole representatives of an important perspective.
What’s next: We are still waiting for the draft proposal for an implementation of the EU Copyright Directive in Swedish law. When the draft proposal is published, we will need to spend a substantial amount of time analyzing and further responses. Depending on the proposal, we might also need to start and maintain contacts with lawmakers, especially when it comes to our prioritized question on freedom of panorama.
We have also applied to become partners in the Right to Research in International Copyright project, which might affect the work we are doing on copyright and advocacy during the fall.
Size of project: Small
Project impact: All Wikimedia projects
Importance: Essential
Partners: Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU, Swedish cultural heritage sector
Link to the project: Påverkansarbete 2021
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During a workshop with the Swedish Performing Arts Agency, an article was written about the first fiddler competition in Sweden in 1906. A few weeks later, a nice suitable photo on a local history page was found, and they agreed to share high-resolution versions of the photo to add to the article.
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As part of Content partnerships support, we experimented with several uploads. In this case, the publication Fataburen, the yearbook of the Nordic Museum. This upload made Fataburen, which is of large cultural historical interest, much more accessible online. The photo shows a pair of traditional gloves from Värmland County in western Sweden.
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In order to make the files on Wikimedia Commons more easily accessible, easier to find and more advanced and exact queries are possible, Wikimedia Sverige has worked with large scale improvements of Structured Data on Commons. This map shows the location of creation of photos uploaded by the chapter from the UNESCO Archives.
Use
editTarget | Last year (if applicable) | Progress (at end of Q2) | Projected (end of year) | Comments | ||
Use | U.1.1 To inform the public about Wikimedia projects and free knowledge, good media relations are central. This is achieved through active work with press releases, op-eds, commentaries, newsletter and presence on social media. Based on the key figures identified as metrics by the office the measured media activities for November 2021 will increase by 10 % compared to November 2020. | 1 out of 1
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To date the numbers look promising compared to last year. Especially Facebook and LinkedIn have seen an increase in activity. |
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U.1.2 To increase awareness of the usage and trust, clearer measurement methods for how the Wikimedia projects are used, in general and by specific user groups, will be developed during the year. | No work was done | No work was done
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Below target: 0 | We had negotiated with a research group to conduct the work, but we lacked certainty about funding and had to postpone the work until next year. | ||
U.2.1 To decrease the number of bugs in the software and increase clarity all identified and verified bugs shall be reported on Phabricator within one week of being encountered and critical system messages will be translated.[7] The result is monitored annually. | 100% (5 new bugs and 0 translation messages) | 50% (5 new bugs and 0 translation messages)
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On target: 100% | We have reported all the bugs that we have encountered in the MediaWiki software. We have not included bugs that we have reported in external Wikimedia related tools. 50% indicates that we are halfway through the year. | ||
U.2.2 In order to make content available for more people the Wikispeech extension shall be activated as a beta function on three language versions of Wikipedia</ref> before the end of the year, and supporting functionality/tools will be developed to add more languages. | 0 of 3 languages activated | 1 of 3 languages activated
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Above target: 3 languages | We have gone through all the feedback from the initial code review and have activated Wikispeech as a gadget on Swedish Wikipedia. English, Arabic, Basque and Norwegian are all ready to be activated as well. However, as Wikispeech is not integrated as a MediaWiki extension Wikimedia Sverige is covering the costs of the servers instead of the Wikimedia Foundation. Therefore, we probably will not be able to activate Wikispeech on Wikipedia in Arabic or English as the costs would be too high. We are however looking for funding opportunities to cover the costs.
We are hopeful that we will receive funding to finalize the Speech Data Collector tools we have worked on since 2020. Many of the functionalities are close to ready and with 2-3 months of development they should be possible to activate. If not in 2021 we expect to finalize them in 2022. |
The focus of the program is to make the platforms and activities known, appreciated and trusted. It also includes our work to make the platforms easy to use and both our platforms and activities accessible to everyone.
Making the platforms and activities known and appreciated
editPreviously, with more limited resources invested, we have targeted different expert groups etc. in our communication, e.g. Facebook groups for GLAM professionals. In 2021 we have invested resources to develop our presence on social media so that our activities and messaging will reach a significantly larger audience. This is part of our preparations for an increased focus on fundraising in the second half of the year. We had great support from our social media intern Anna.
We started experimenting with engaging our followers to do small tasks, with the idea that this will get them “hooked” and engage more over time.
We believe that more communication will, amongst other things, improve our possibilities for increasing participation at our events, help us to find more partners, increase funding opportunities and avoid misunderstandings about our work and the Wikimedia platforms.
Our goal of reaching 5,000 members in 3 years is dependent on developing clearer communication that highlights the value of the work we do. In October we hope to launch a fundraising campaign and are spending much time to prepare the messaging needed for it.
Making usage easy and accessible to everyone
editThrough our efforts we hope to make the platforms easier to use for our readers. We focus both on our in-house development, mainly through the ambitious Wikispeech project, and on informing other developer teams about issues that we encounter during workshops and other events that we organize.
Story: Usage of MediaWiki amongst Swedish authorities
editIn this Story we are focusing on the inventory we made, on how Swedish authorities use MediaWiki. It turned out that several authorities either used, had used, or were interested in using MediaWiki for their internal work.
One of the major projects of Wikimedia Sverige is the development of Wikispeech, a speech synthesis for MediaWiki. EU legislation requires that all public authorities make their platforms accessible also for people with disabilities, and it was our hypothesis that Wikispeech therefore could make MediaWiki more interesting as software for public authorities in Sweden.
Thus, we reached out to all public authorities in Sweden, and asked if they knew of MediaWiki, and if they had used it, used it, or would be interested in knowing how to use it. While many public authorities had never heard of MediaWiki, it turned out that several public authorities either use it today, or had used it previously. Several also expressed their interest in using it in the future. As a consequence, we are planning events to cater for this interest.
It also turned out that Wikis in general is an appreciated tool for authorities to use. The lack of interoperability between MediaWiki and other platforms used by agencies made, however, a few authorities move from MediaWiki to proprietary solutions. This is also relevant information, as it affects how we can work ahead in order to get more authorities interested in using MediaWiki.
Another learning from the inventory was that amongst the authorities that use MediaWiki, most of them use it for internal purposes. No authority explicitly answered that they used MediaWiki for communication or interaction with an external audience.
We will use this inventory to develop a series of events in the future, to compile, if possible, case studies for increased usage, and to see if there are possibilities for applying for funds for this kind of development. The report can be found here.
Story: Wikispeech is activated!
editIn this Story we are focusing on how we, after 5 years of development, finally were able to launch Wikispeech on Swedish Wikipedia. By doing so we have increased accessibility to the content for people that have a hard time reading for different reasons. It was not a straight path at all and the initiative was close to fall apart at the very end.
In 2015 we started conceptualizing a future software solution to make Wikipedia accessible for millions upon millions of people for which it is hard to access written text, such as people with visual impairment or dyslexia, or those who simply prefer listening to reading. But how could such a tool handle the quickly changing texts on Wikipedia covering all kinds of topics? How could we build a tool that was possible to improve by the volunteer community so that it would be really useful and possible to scale to different languages over time?
What we ended up with was Wikispeech, a text-to-speech solution that is built on a computer voice that is created with machine learning (when people talk about Artificial Intelligence (AI) they are often thinking of machine learning). However, back in 2015 the focus on machine learning was not as clear-cut a choice as it is today with the rapid improvements that we have seen.
After researching the topic for some time we realized that the international Wikimedia movement, jam packed as it is with tech and linguistic savvy volunteers, would be able to not just help to improve the Wikispeech solution but that our movement could help solve a major problem with unethical AI – that is the lack of data available from non-white English-speaking men which prevent AI solutions to work equally good for everybody. Collecting data at scale from a massive amount of people is hard but needs to be tackled.
So we started the development of Wikispeech with the clear intention to identify paths for the volunteer community to contribute with this data. The first step, which has now been achieved, was to develop a fully functional text-to-speech solution so that people can listen to Wikipedia. When they hear mistakes they will be inclined to provide solutions and by doing so helping to improve the available data. In June 2021 the solution was presented to the Swedish Wikipedia for early feedback and in the coming weeks the bugs identified were solved. On the 22 July 2021 Wikispeech was activated as a gadget on Swedish Wikipedia. Testing will continue for a few more months when we will measure performance, solve reported bugs and add more requested features. Later this year we will officially launch it and start scaling to more language versions of Wikipedia.
We are also continuing with the development of the tools needed to contribute with speech data so that AI over time will work for everybody, regardless of your gender, if you have a dialect or an accent, a speech impairment, the darkness of your voice etc.
In time we hope that Wikispeech will be added as an official extension of MediaWiki, as was our original intention. The code has already gone through a security review by Wikimedia Foundation so we are hopeful that this will be achieved in time. If you would like to test Wikispeech in Swedish you can visit sv.wikipedia.org, log into your Wikipedia account and in the user settings activate the gadget. Then you just pick a page you want to listen to and press play!
Detailed project overview
editBelow all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories have been presented more in depth as case studies above.
For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).
We are also outlining where the project will have an impact in the Wikimedia universe and who we are partnering with to deliver the best possible result.
We also include information about the importance of each project, e.g. if the project is core, essential, one-off or experimental. In this context, a project is considered to be core if it is part of our identity as an organization. The project will be organized even if impact is less in the short term and will only be cancelled after a consensus has been reached amongst our community. A project is essential if it actively contributes to one or many of the goals that have been outlined for the year or the long term strategy. Most projects should belong here. A project that is considered a one-off is organized because it is delivering a specific benefit to the organization but it is unlikely that we will repeat it in its current form. The type of project might continue over the years, but the content will intentionally change significantly over time. The experimental projects are testing a new idea, method or technology and are often externally financed. They might be a one-off or if successful become an essential project.
Wikispeech – Speech Data Collector 2019
editWhat is the project: The main aim of the project is to develop a MediaWiki extension to make it possible to collect speech data through crowdsourcing, and to connect this to the Wikispeech extension. This can be used to improve the quality of the text-to-speech software and to extend it to more languages in the future. Furthermore, it will be a resource and a service to the entire FOSS community. The project ends in 2021.
2021: The final components of the tool will be built with the assistance of Wikimedia Deutschland, who will also be involved with code review and technical feedback throughout the project.
In 2021 we expect to have a demo of the Speech collector ready and to wrap up the development of the Text-to-Speech component developed in the original Wikispeech project so that it can be launched as a Beta feature in Swedish, English and Arabic.
Resources are dedicated for communication about the launch of the Beta and for volunteer engagement in the initiative.
The learnings gained and processes developed to work together from developing this MediaWiki extension will be used to further the work with the Thematic hub.
What’s been done: In 2021 the focus in the project was adjusted to focus on finalizing as many parts of the text-to-speech solution as possible. As WMF unexpectedly limited their commitment to only conduct code, security and performance reviews, but not to launch the extension (as was previously expected) the focus had to be adjusted to ensure that as much of the software was ready for the review.
This meant that the development of the Speech Data Collector had to be halted, even though an early version of it was reaching completion.
At the end of the project the text-to-speech solution was well functioning and we really wanted to activate it for feedback from real users. As WMF was unwilling to activate it as an extension, we re-developed it into a so-called gadget for Wikipedia, which allowed us to launch Wikispeech as a standalone tool on our own servers. A gadget is a program that can be enabled simply by checking an option in the user preferences. Due to limited resources we decided to only launch it for Swedish Wikipedia initially to be able to evaluate the needs and to solve the most pressing issues when the volunteers started testing Wikispeech and reported bugs.
What’s next: The project ended on 30 April 2021.
Size of project: Large
Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Importance: Core
Partners: The Royal institute of technology (KTH), Södermalm Talteknologiservice AB (STTS), The Swedish Dyslexia Association
Link to the project: Wikispeech – Talresursinsamlaren 2019
Wikispeech for AI 2020
editWhat is the project: The aim of Wikispeech for AI 2020 is to act as a reference and tester for a larger project aiming to use AI to create a free text-to-speech voice suitable for reading longer texts.
2021: Investigate how speech data collected through Wikispeech – Speech Data Collector 2019 can be used to train AI to create a better voice and to test if such a voice improves the Wikispeech experience. During the year Wikimedia Sverige will support the project by sharing insights into the content created through Wikispeech – Speech Data Collector 2019.
What’s been done: The focus has been on investigating if and how the Wikispeech software could use the new voices developed by the Royal Technical Institute (KTH).
What’s next: We will support KTH around text corpuses from Wikipedia that they can use for their machine learning efforts.
Size of project: Medium
Project impact: Wikipedia
Importance: Experimental
Partners: -
Link to the project: Wikispeech för AI 2020
Trust Making 2021
editWhat is the project: We will continue to gather data on the trust of the Wikimedia projects in general and Wikipedia specifically, among the general public as well as among specific target groups.
2021: We will look into three different ways of organizing the work:
- We will coordinate with the team at the Swedish Internet Foundation who will write the next yearly report about “Svenskarna och Internet” (The Swedes and the Internet).
- We will investigate our participation in the SOM Surveys facilitated by Gothenburg University, in order to retrieve sufficient data on questions concerning trust in Wikipedia and related topics, among the general public. This would create valuable insights that will have a good reach and visibility, however the report has an upfront cost and will be prioritized if the finances of the association allows it.
- We will establish a process on how to work with the university sector and engage their researchers and students to research the trust of the Wikimedia movement and projects.
What’s been done: As we had to postpone our participation in the SOM Surveys facilitated by Gothenburg University we shifted our focus to identify ways to engage the university sector to research this.
What's next: We will restart the discussions with the SOM Surveys and continue the discussions with researchers across the country. We will also discuss the possible inclusion of Wikipedia in the “Svenskarna och Internet” report.
Size of project (small/medium/large): Small
Importance: Core
Project impact: -
Partners: -
Link to the project: Förtroende 2021
Visibility Making 2021
editWhat is the project: This project aims to coordinate our communication work and build up the platforms that we use. Much of the actual communication efforts (social media posts, blog posts and press releases) are developed as part of the projects that they cover. This project coordinates the publication of the material and ensures that it is consistent in quality and design.
2021: We will keep our blog and social media accounts active with general communication to ensure awareness about our work. This includes increasing the amount of people we reach through our channels, reporting in line with the digital communication reporting guidelines. The content on our websites will be updated regularly through the work in this project. We will work more proactively in our digital channels, using the capacity of the entire staff. We will therefore have a special focus on how visibility is an integrated part of the other projects with this project coordinating the work across the organization.
By updating and giving our portal wikipedia.se a new design with closer connection to the chapter, including links to projects, donations, membership and social media channels we aim to increase the visibility and awareness among visitors entering Wikipedia through the portal.
One of the areas where we will focus our communication is the 20-year anniversary of Wikipedia. This will be used to highlight the impact of volunteers. We will also focus on communicating what Wikimedia is, increasing the knowledge among the general public of who we are and what we do in order to gain more members and donors.
What’s been done: We have scaled up our activities on social media over the last year. In 2020 we increased reach and now engagement has been the key focus. We did an experimental campaign in connection with Swedish Wikipedia turning 20-years of age. This was considered successful, but we also learned a lot and will continue to experiment and organize similar activities on social media.
We had support from Anna, an intern that is studying social media communication, for a few months with content production and with a social media strategy.
What's next: Anna will come back and support our work also in the autumn. We expect to launch a couple of large social media campaigns to increase the chapter's visibility.
Size of project (small/medium/large): Small
Importance: Core
Project impact: -
Partners: -
Link to the project: Synlighet 2021
Wikidata for genealogy 2021
editWhat is the project: The aim of this project is to provide consulting services to a Swedish startup, Trackuback, as they develop a platform for hobby genealogists with an emphasis on visualization. They are interested in using the data on Wikidata, such as the dates and places of battles, locations of graveyards lists of monarchs, as well links to relevant Wikipedia articles, to provide added value to the users of the platform. Furthermore, they are interested in the multilingual aspect of Wikidata as a possible tool to translate the platform to other languages and reach an international user base.
As this is the first time WMSE is working together with a startup, we will use this project as an opportunity to evaluate this form of collaboration.
What’s been done: In the first half of 2021, we focused on providing training and support on Wikidata. We organized two training sessions, a general one on Wikidata, aimed at the project group at Trackuback, and a more technical one, on Wikimedia's API's and SPARQL. Its goal was to provide the participants with enough knowledge to start ingesting data from the Wikimedia projects using the various tools available and implement it in their own applications. The API workshop was an open event, and we invited members of the Swedish Wikimedia and open source communities to participate. The workshop was recorded and shared on Wikimedia Commons (part 1, part 2).
We were also available for regular check-ins and answered questions from the Trackuback developers as they implemented the new functionalities.
What's next: We are continuing to provide our expertise to Trackuback and investigating how their platform could be used as a starting point for genealogists to learn more about the Wikimedia projects and start contributing to them themselves.
Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium
Importance: Experimental
Project impact: Wikidata
Partners: Trackuback
Link to the project: Wikidata för genealogi 2021
Bug Reporting and Translation 2021
editWhat is the project: "This project aims to coordinate our communication work and build up the platforms that we use. Much of the actual communication efforts (social media posts, blog posts and press releases) are developed as part of the projects that they cover. This project coordinates the publication of the material and ensures that it is consistent in quality and design.
2021: We will keep our blog and social media accounts active with general communication to ensure awareness about our work. This includes increasing the amount of people we reach through our channels, reporting in line with the digital communication reporting guidelines. The content on our websites will be updated regularly through the work in this project. We will work more proactively in our digital channels, using the capacity of the entire staff. We will therefore have a special focus on how visibility is an integrated part of the other projects with this project coordinating the work across the organization. By updating and giving our portal wikipedia.se a new design with closer connection to the chapter, including links to projects, donations, membership and social media channels we aim to increase the visibility and awareness among visitors entering Wikipedia through the portal. One of the areas where we will focus our communication is the 20-year anniversary of Wikipedia. This will be used to highlight the impact of volunteers. We will also focus on communicating what Wikimedia is, increasing the knowledge among the general public of who we are and what we do in order to gain more members and donors."
What’s been done: So far, a total of 5 bugs were reported by staff members. The planning for the first translate-a-thon since 2014 has started.
What's next: The reporting of bugs will continue and we will organize a translate-a-thon later this year.
Size of project (small/medium/large): Small
Importance: Core
Project impact: -
Partners: -
Link to the project: Buggrapportering och översättning 2021
Knowledge in Crisis Situations 2021
editWhat is the project: Through previous collaborations, the value of free knowledge in crisis situations has been identified as an interesting area for the association to operate within. Both to take part of the enormous amount of material that various aid organizations and the like develop, and also to provide people who, for various reasons, are in a crisis situation with freely licensed material. At present, the knowledge of those working in the sector is low. In this project the methods and material needed to change this are created. The current COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of this project.
2021: The focus will be on:
- Maintaining and developing relations with relevant actors within the international humanitarian aid sector;
- Developing and improving basic material on how aid organizations can use Wikimedia and freely licensed resources in their work;
- Organizing or taking part in events to strengthen our network and to convince aid organizations of the value of releasing their own material under a free license and contributing with their expertise;
- Organization of events to produce content together with the respective aid organizations, by using the developed processes and means;
- Investigating how we can work with researchers in this area.
What’s been done: We have discussed the possibilities of a new round of work on COVID-19 related issues together with UNFPA. This would mainly look into more long-term issues, and try to identify what setup of articles would need to be in order for any upcoming or future epidemics or pandemics.
We have also started working together with Statistics Sweden, who recently marked all of their open data with CC0, on data relating to Agenda 30 and the Sustainable Development Goals. We will conduct a few pilot studies to identify ways of modelling such data on Wikidata. These pilots can hopefully pave the way both for a more extensive import of SDG data to Wikidata from Sweden, and inspire similar work in other countries.
We have also started preparing for a more strategic approach to work with this project, setting goals and frameworks for what we want to achieve and how. This work will continue during the fall.
What’s next: We hope to organize some events around COVID-19 and Wikipedia during the fall. We also plan to continue working with Agenda 2030 and SDG data, and build upon the work done with the pilots.
We will also start to work according to the goals and frameworks developed during the first half of the year.
Size of project: Small
Project impact: Wikipedia
Importance: Experimental
Partners: UNFPA, Statistics Sweden
Link to the project: Kunskap i krissituationer 2021
Wikispeech Maintenance and Support 2021
editWhat is the project: The main purpose of this project is to maintain and support the Wikispeech software and initiatives which were built using external funding. The project will ensure that the software is functioning, that security concerns are addressed, and that community feedback is triaged independently of the availability of external funding.
2021: The main focus will be responding to WMF concerns around the deployment of the Wikispeech extension as well as responding to community feedback to the initial release. Any core functionality identified to be missing is also covered by this project should no external funding cover it.
What’s been done: The project got off the ground directly after the Wikispeech – Speech Data Collector 2019 project ended as the Wikispeech text-to-speech solution was launched as a gadget. We needed to act fast and respond to the issues identified by the community out of respect for their engagement and to gain support for the next steps. The quick improvements we provided to the major issues identified led to the community supporting that the gadget was fully activated on the Swedish Wikipedia on the 22 July 2021.
What’s next: We will monitor feedback that arrives from the community and try to solve the issues. We have limited resources left and will have to save any development of new features for a later project.
Size of project: Medium
Project impact: Wikipedia
Importance: Core
Partners: -
Link to the project: Wikispeech – Underhåll och support 2021
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Wikispeech has become a gadget on Swedish language Wikipedia. Logged-in users can activate it in their settings, and start listening to the articles in Swedish. The menu is shown at the bottom of the page.
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And the menu works as follows.
Community
editTarget | Last year (if applicable) | Progress (at end of Q2) | Projected (end of year) | Comments | |||||
Community | C.1.1 To make work easier, support will be given, by the office, 365 times to at least 100 Wikimedians (or others who advocate for free knowledge) through expertise, financing or other resources.[8] | 93 occasions to 52 Wikimedians | 140 out of 365 occasions
33 out of 100 Wikimedians |
Below target: 250 occasions to 65 Wikimedians | The COVID-19 situation has limited the type of support we can offer. Our technology equipment is also getting old, which makes it less relevant for our volunteers to borrow it. | ||||
C.1.2 To strengthen the community the chapter will support at least 75 recurring meet-ups[9] for Wikimedians | 34 | 27 of 75
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Below target: 60 meetups | The meet-ups continued online, but the frequency has been reduced. If society opens up at the end of the year we expect the amount of meetings to increase substantially. | |||||
C.1.3 To facilitate the use of new technical solutions on Wikipedia, a project shall be carried out around implementation, based on the Community's needs and desires. | 0 | 0 technical wish implemented
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Below target: 0 technical solutions activated | Due to staff changes we no longer expect to be able to work on a new technical solution but will instead invest part of the time into updating and improving upon the solutions we activated in previous years. | |||||
C.2 To increase participation from Wikimedia's underrepresented groups[10], targeted initiatives organized by the association shall result in one productive edit from 365 unique users belonging to one or more of those groups. | 99 | 548 out of 365
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Above target: 750 unique users | The GLAM and educational activities are still an efficient way to engage people from underrepresented groups.
We also expect some more WikiGap events to take place across the world. Based on previous years we have estimated that ⅔ of the participants were women, but not all have been editing. |
Supporting existing community
editWe work to support our wider community in a number of ways, which is possible thanks to staff members with a wide variety of skills and because of the infrastructure we have built up in the last few years.
We see the Wikimedia movement needing two different sets of volunteers, that to some degree overlap: 1. The online contributors that, for example, are editing Wikipedia, that photograph for Wikimedia Commons or add data to Wikidata. 2. The volunteers that are interested in supporting free knowledge offline in different ways, such as organizing events, giving lectures, soliciting new members or forming new partnerships. We have historically focused on the first group but now we are aiming to create resources needed to grow the second group.
This year we have therefore focused on building a stronger foundation by developing communication tools, developing a strategy and by developing training material.
We still continue to create meeting spaces, cover associated costs with the volunteer work and we have provided technical support to create tools (requested solutions for long-standing technical problems) for the most active volunteers.
The work to support the volunteer community with requested technical solutions have been slowed down by a number of hard deadlines from externally funded projects and the focus has been adjusted to maintenance of previously developed tools.
Due to COVID-19 these efforts have however been hampered as events have not been able to be organized by the volunteer community, e.g. the yearly Wikimedia camps we have organized had to be cancelled. Other parts have however been possible to move online, at least partly, e.g. the regular edit-a-thons hosted by some of the volunteers.
Fail fest: An extra AGM adds complexity
editIn this Fail fest we are focusing on the extra Annual General Meeting (AGM) we held in May 2021, and what led us to the decision to have two, and not one, AGM during the same spring.
Wikimedia Sverige is currently experimenting with how to involve volunteers and members to a higher degree in the work of the chapter. A strategy was developed, by and for the members, and several working groups have been put together to develop parts of the chapter, to identify new areas for development, or discuss possible solutions to identified problems. An important motivation behind this is to get support for larger changes from the members, and to listen to their views and opinions.
In the first quarter of the year there still remained uncertainties of the outcome of some very large grant applications, which would affect the work done by the chapter for years to come. This would affect the activities and budget of the year, but also a number of key documents needed for the AGM. This was a challenge, as all members were to be informed about both the activities plan and the budget during the AGM, which, according to the statutes, is to be organized before the end of April each year.
It would have been possible for the board and staff to write a schematic budget and activities plan for the first AGM, but chances would have been high that we would have needed to revise these documents almost entirely just shortly after the AGM.
Our solution to this problem was to divide the AGM up into two parts: the first AGM was held in late April, and the second in late May, when the required documents for the AGM had been prepared. This setup was not ideal, but still, it made it possible for us to focus more on the reporting and closing of the previous year in the first AGM, and more on the future in the second. In a sense, the ordinary and the extra AGM thus got relatively clearly defined aims and themes.
This split needed to be accepted by the members. There was initially some skepticism towards the approach from some members, but the reasons behind it were in the end generally well understood, and approved at the first AGM. The board was open with the difficulties and problems beforehand, and informed about the wish for this setup already in the summoning to the first AGM. Even though a few members were unhappy with the split, and the extra meeting that took place just a month afterward, most members accepted the reasoning behind it, and were happy that they could actively influence the final documents, and not just some paperwork that would have been prepared merely for formal reasons. The wish from the chapter’s board and staff was to give real influence to members.
Hopefully, this kind of split is something that we do not need to do many times. Still, we learned a lot about organizing AGMs, about formal procedures, about democracy and decision-making within the organization, and how to deal with organizational problems. We identified several things we can improve for the future when it comes to organizing AGMs and involving members in the decision-making, and also realized how important it is to involve members not only in the formal decision-making process but also in the direction and development of the organization.
Expanding the community
editTo grow the community on Wikimedia platforms we are organizing a number of activities aimed at creating interest amongst groups of people who have yet to engage on our platforms, or around free knowledge in general.
We work to raise awareness of Wikimedia projects in order for new participants to engage. When new participants start to contribute we make sure to lower barriers and create an inclusive environment and to provide direct support of different forms.
Our cooperation with different organizations has been a cornerstone in achieving success in community growth. By involving the communities of our partners in our projects, some of their community members have joined the Wikimedia community in some capacity.
Both the WikiGap initiative and the Wiki Loves Earth contests have continued to be strong vehicles for engagement from new volunteers and we will continue to develop these concepts further in the second half of the year and organize Wiki Loves Monuments again.
Story: Trio of ambassadors in WikiGap
editIn this Story we are focusing on the first attempt ever to kick off the WikiGap Campaign with a global WikiGap event. With almost 70 participants, and more than 200 improved content pages created or improved, the event, which was opened by speeches from three Swedish women diplomats, was one of our most successful WikiGap events we have organized so far.
The COVID-19 pandemic remained a big obstacle for organizing WikiGap events in 2021, as the campaign historically has had a heavy focus on physical events. With this in mind, we wanted to support the global WikiGap organizers with the short-term transition to a virtual campaign. As a way of doing this, we decided to organize a global, virtual kick-off event.
We teamed up with competent partners: Wikimedia in Washington D.C. joined and supported with the organizing of an English-language virtual editathon; the Swedish Embassy to Washington D.C., the Swedish Representation to the United Nations and the Swedish Consulate General in New York all joined in and helped with communication and logistics. Our goal was to encourage and support virtual WikiGap editathons, show how a WikiGap event can be organized virtually in practice, and, finally, to provide a meaningful event in a difficult time.
A substantial amount of time was put into preparations for the event, and all three top diplomats – the Swedish ambassador to the United States, the Swedish permanent representative to the United Nations, and the Swedish honorary consul in New York – opened the event together with an intervention. As all of them are female, it was also a declaration of equality in itself.
A staff member at Wikimedia D.C. gave an extensive introduction on how to edit English Wikipedia with the Visual Editor. The purpose of this introduction was twofold: partly to show a global audience how to, in the easiest way possible, create new articles on English Wikipedia, and partly to show organizers globally a good way of introducing Wikipedia to beginners. More than half of the participants took part in this introduction. The other half were able to start writing immediately, as the event was divided up, virtually, into different rooms.
The event in itself became a hallmark of the WikiGap Campaign in 2021. Several participants also reached out to us afterwards, and said that it was one of the first global editathons they had taken part of, and that they wished to see more possibilities of engaging and taking part in Wikimedia events on a global level in the future, and not only locally or nationally.
Hopefully, we can use this insight to continue to provide the global Wikimedia movement with meaningful activities, during the pandemic and onwards.
Detailed project overview
editBelow all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories have been presented more in depth as case studies above.
For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).
We are also outlining where the project will have an impact in the Wikimedia universe and who we are partnering with to deliver the best possible result.
We also include information about the importance of each project, e.g. if the project is core, essential, one-off or experimental. In this context, a project is considered to be core if it is part of our identity as an organization. The project will be organized even if impact is less in the short term and will only be cancelled after a consensus has been reached amongst our community. A project is essential if it actively contributes to one or many of the goals that have been outlined for the year or the long term strategy. Most projects should belong here. A project that is considered a one-off is organized because it is delivering a specific benefit to the organization but it is unlikely that we will repeat it in its current form. The type of project might continue over the years, but the content will intentionally change significantly over time. The experimental projects are testing a new idea, method or technology and are often externally financed. They might be a one-off or if successful become an essential project.
Community Support 2021
editWhat is the project: This project is directed directly towards the Swedish Wikimedia community to support their efforts and ideas.
2021: Our work include support the Sweden-based Wikimedia community with its endeavors and projects, such as:
- Supplying the community with hardware and equipment, such as cameras, to better achieve their goals.
- Identify ways of lowering barriers for newcomers to take part in the support.
- Support the organization of Wikimedia camps, which will help build the volunteer capacity.
- Continued support of low maintenance events such as wikifika and wikipub.
- Continued support such as with the possibility to apply for grants, money for purchasing of books, sponsorship for photography accreditation to events.
We will experiment on how to communicate these opportunities to create interest and engagement and how volunteers can be engaged in finding new persons that would like to take advantage of the opportunities we offer.
As part of this project dedicated modules directed to the community outlined above. E.g. on how they can become better photographers and use the camera equipment. The created material will be created and connected to the educational package (outlined under the project Wikipedia in Education 2021).
What’s been done: The COVID-19 pandemic is still affecting the project. We have been lending cameras to a few projects, and organized accreditation to a few events (mainly sports). We are still not communicating actively about physical projects, however, in order to be careful in the midst of a pandemic.
We have been giving long term support to two standing projects, the Wikipedia podcast run by two volunteers, and the ongoing series of events on women characters in literature and culture. We are supporting with technical infrastructure and communication. We have also supported a new group of volunteers that have livestreamed via, for example, Twitch, in order to reach out to new target groups.
What’s next: During the fall, we hope to be able to start communicating actively and reaching out to volunteers and members again about possibilities to do physical events. We will also spend quite some time to find ways of innovating the project. Currently, we have a lot of technical equipment at the office that is seldom borrowed. We want to increase the flow of the technical equipment, and make sure that most of it is lent out at most times.
Size of project: Medium
Project impact: Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, Wikisource
Importance: Core
Partners: -
Link to the project: Stöd till gemenskapen 2021
Development Support 2021
editWhat is the project: The project focuses on giving technical (development) support to the Swedish-speaking volunteer community by solving technical problems that they have asked us to work on. From 2021 onwards this project will also take ownership of any previously developed tools which are still supported but were developed by now discontinued projects.
2021: Since community engagement with our wishlists has been limited we will this year investigate other ways of identifying technical community needs which could be worked on. The maintenance routine drafted in 2020 will also be expanded to provide a clear and maintainable overview of what tools we are currently supporting (incl. for how long and at what level). This effort will directly benefit the development of a Thematic hub.
What’s been done: As part of the project we have worked on developing a more systematic approach to long-term maintenance of the tools we develop.
What’s next: Due to limited staff resources available we will focus on updating and improving the software we worked on previous years and relaunch the wish list in 2022.
Size of project: Small
Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Importance: Core
Partners: -
Link to the project: Projekt:Utvecklingsstöd 2021
Wiki Loves 2021
editWhat is the project: The project aims to coordinate Wiki Loves-campaigns in Sweden in 2021.
2021: We aim to organize Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments in 2021, focusing our work on lowering barriers for participation in both competitions. We also aim to support the community to handle more of the planning and running of the competitions themselves, so that we can focus more on outreach to partner organizations and technical development. We also aim to experiment with a “Wiki Loves Hembygd” campaign, a campaign focusing on working with organizations for local history to share their material on the Wikimedia platforms.
What’s been done: In May, we organized a successful fifth round of the Wiki Loves Earth campaign. The number of submitted photos remains on a substantially higher level than what used to be the case, even if the number of participants and newly registered participants decreased compared to last year. This is most likely due to the fact that we innovated less this year, and the main innovations last year – with an interactive map, new partnerships and channels for communication and thousands of new objects to photograph – had lost their news value. We have evaluated the campaign, and look into how we can innovate both the Wiki Loves Earth campaign further, and the Wiki Loves project in general.
What’s next: We are preparing for the eleventh round of Wiki Loves Monuments, to take place in September. As part of this year’s round, we will listen to the community and see how we can improve the campaign in Sweden for upcoming years.
We are also looking into and planning for a new campaign, with the project name “Wiki Loves Hembygd”. The campaign will focus on local history, and will be a means to forge new local partnerships for content on the Wikimedia platforms.
Size of project: Small
Project impact: Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata
Importance: Experimental
Partners: UNESCO Sweden, the Working Life Museums Co-operation Council (ArbetSam), the National Maritime Museum of Sweden, the National Heritage Board of Sweden, the Swedish Local Heritage Federation
Link to the project: Wiki Loves 2021
A Community for Everybody 2021
editWhat is the project: This project focuses on inviting diverse participation in Wikimedia’s activities and platforms.
2021: We will be coordinating the international campaign WikiGap for the fourth time. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we aim to develop an engaging campaign with low barriers to participate in a predominantly digital format. We aim to continue to engage international partners in the coordination, e.g. aid organizations and UN agencies. We will engage volunteers to support the WikiGap events.
What’s been done: The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to rethink the global WikiGap campaign for the second year in a row. To encourage participation and involvement, we kicked off the WikiGap campaign with a global, virtual event, for the first time. The Swedish ambassador to the United Nations, the Swedish ambassador to the United States and the Swedish honorary consul to New York – all women – opened the event with some brief remarks.
After that, we coordinated and supported endeavors across the world to organize events, some of them physical and many of them virtual. In line with this, we developed guidance on how to organize virtual WikiGap events. With this support, the number of events were kept on almost the same level as previous years.
We also engaged new partners on a global level, both UN agencies and civil society organizations. Their primary role was to support with external communication, and to provide us with lists of women lacking biographies within various sectors, a new type of content partnership for us. The latter proved to be an engaging way for partners to join the movement. The names they provided were widely used in the WikiGap Challenge, which we organized for the third year in a row. For the first time, we introduced a qualitative part of the challenge, giving an award for the best new article. A jury was summoned, to define both the process for choosing, and then finally making a decision. This approach was appreciated by many contestants. We also reorganized the pointing system, following some input from previous years’ participants, with a higher focus on quality and good rather than quick contributions.
What’s next: We see a potential to dramatically scale up the WikiGap campaign during upcoming years, both nationally and internationally. During the fall, we will work on a long term plan for the WikiGap campaign, to this end. This involves reaching out to new and old partners, and identifying room for involvement for all parties.
We will also continue to give support to WikiGap organizers, for events during the fall.
Size of project: Medium
Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Importance: Core
Partners: UNFPA, UN Human Rights, Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Global Citizen
Link to the project: En gemenskap för alla 2021
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WikiGap was organized in 2021 as well. The pandemic forced many of the events to become virtual – but that worked well, too.
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In some cases, however, communities were able to organize physical events. We long for the day when events can become physical as standard again!
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Sweden participated in Wiki Loves Earth this year as well. Close to 2,000 photos were uploaded, many of them of high value for the Wikimedia platforms. Here is an aerial photo over the island of Ven, in the sea between Sweden and Denmark, one of the results of the campaign.
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Macro was introduced as one of two categories in the international Wiki Loves Earth campaign. Several macro photos were contributed by participants, such as this closeup of a Blyth's reed warbler, a relatively common visitor to Sweden.
Enabling
editTarget | Last year (if applicable) | Progress (at end of Q2) | Projected (end of year) | Comments | |||||
Enabling | E.1 For the association to work competently the office staff shall be given the opportunity to develop their skills in relevant fields and the members of the board shall strive to develop their competences. | 0/9 board members and 1/9 staff members. | 0 out of 9 board members.
0 out of 7 staff members. |
Below target: 3 board members.
Below target: 3 staff members. |
Only seven out of 11 staff members will work the entire year, with three staff members on parental leave and one staff member leaving the organization in the middle of the year. A few staff members and board members are expected to take part in trainings during the later part of the year, especially if in-person trainings are organized again. The interest to participate in pure online training seems to be lower amongst staff and board members. | ||||
E.2 To strengthen the transparency of the organisation and offer insight to international Wikimedia movement the members of the board or office staff shall participate in at least 5 international Wikimedia events and on a monthly basis update international newsletters[11] and key wikiportals etc. | 1 int. events and 6 newsletters. | 10 int. events out of 5.
6 newsletters out of 12. |
Above target: 14 int. events.
On target: 12 newsletters. |
The Wikimedia events are online and we have been able to participate in many of them. That way we have reached new groups with information about our work. However, it is worth noting that online events are not efficient in building personal relationships, which risks the transparency in the long-run as direct contacts and quick questions are less likely to take place. We have on a monthly basis published our GLAM reports in This Month in GLAM. | |||||
E.3.1 To ensure organizational stability the chapter shall work towards broad and sustainable funding where no donor exceeds 50 %, a 100 % increase in membership from the 31 December previous year, increase volunteer involvement by 30 % compared to the total amount for the previous calendar year. | WMF is the largest donor at 45% in Q1+Q2. 605 out of 1,008 members. 43 out of 125 volunteers. | WMF is the largest donor with 72% of funds secured in Q1+Q2.
483 out of 1,000 members. 33 out of 91 volunteers. |
Below target: 70% of funding from the largest donor (WMF).
Below target: 800 members. Below target: 60 volunteers. |
WMF is the largest donor at 72% in Q1+Q2 as we received a significant grant in 2021 and the external grants we are applying for will, if successful, mainly affect the budget of 2022.
However, if other grants are successful the percentage is expected to go down slightly. We might also underspend parts of the WMF grant in 2021 and move the funds to 2022, which might reduce the percentage further. If we can organize a fundraising drive later in the year the percentage of funding from WMF might drop further as well. The distribution of funding does not take in-kind donations into account. | |||||
E.3.2 To ensure organizational stability the office shall actively work to increase the amount of overlapping competencies in business-critical areas. | Fulfilled the goal. | Fulfilled the goal.
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Goal fulfilled. | Efforts include improved documentation around finances, usage of our wiki and information about our new tools. We have continued our efforts to organize small working groups at the office instead of delegating the responsibilities to one person and on documenting the work on Phabricator. |
The chapter aims to be a relevant actor for years to come and is actively working towards building the organizational capacity needed for long term activities and commitments. We need to be a good employer, a strong partner, and a well functioning democratic and transparent membership organization with close cooperation with a strong volunteer community. The chapter is also intending to not be an isolated player but be actively involved in the international movement.
These intentions demand projects that are more long term oriented and strategic. The projects in this program therefore contribute only marginally to content production in a given year, but over time will ensure the success and sustainability of all our activities.
Increasing competence
editTo be able to develop skills in relevant fields board and staff members shall be given the opportunity to develop their skills. More than half of the staff members have participated in different types of trainings this year, a few at multiple ones. The work with developing educational material for new volunteers and members to easier use our tools and join our projects has continued.
As Wikimedia Sverige intends to grow in the coming years we see a great need to ensure that we ongoingly identify and take notice of suitable board members, potential new staff members, and volunteers who have capacity to take leadership roles in different initiatives. We are in the process of developing a more comprehensive set of training materials for both volunteers and staff. We are also planning for more internal capacity building with staff members sharing their expertise with their colleagues.
Being transparent
editEnsuring that our work is transparent is core to how we plan our projects and day-to-day work. Transparency is inherently valuable as more people can give feedback, point out problems, suggest solutions and in other ways contribute.
However, working in such a transparent manner is something that takes a bit of getting used to for new team members, new volunteers, consultants and external partners. It also comes with an increased cost to ensure that all documentation is understandable, summarized and presented in the different places where our members might expect to find it. Simply making materials available without ensuring that it is understandable is arguably a false transparency.
While acknowledging the issues, our conclusion is that the value of transparency is much higher and we are working to increase our transparency even further. The aim for transparency affects many of the choices regarding what tools we use and it is also something that has to be done while respecting privacy.
Quarterly reviews by the ED and COO have been instigated since 2020. During these reviews we ensure that all content has been uploaded and shared as planned and that the financial information etc. is up-to-date.
Improve organizational quality
editFor the chapter to continue to improve its quality and efficiency we worked to keep our broad and sustainable funding, with the aim of no donor exceeding 50%, and to find new financial options, including a long term increase in paid memberships and donations. We also aim to increase volunteer involvement which can help ensure high quality projects for a limited cost.
Our work to secure funding from external grants have continued in 2021 and we are working on applications for several large grants. We currently have funding secured for our current size into the first half of 2023.
Significant investments will be made this year into establishing a donor based fundraising model through face2face campaigns and social media campaigns. The first initial tests are expected to start in October 2021.
Story: Adding interns into the mix
editIn this Story we are focusing on the extra value that interns can add to the work we do as an organization, while trying not to be an organization who takes advantage of unpaid work to do things we should do ourselves.
Earlier years we have had interns coming from different sources and working with different tasks. One who did outreach before Wiki Loves Monuments and clean-up of images after, one who did a user survey, some who did proofreading and translations of reports and documents. What we didn’t have was a common thread running through what interns we accepted and tasks we gave them.
With no common thread we had to start over with every intern, and couldn’t build on previous experiences and outcome. Even though most of our interns added value, we had to work hard to get that extra out of it. Knowing that we didn’t work our hardest to find new interns, which also added to the stress when we were approached by potential interns asking if they could work with us.
Looking back at it, and looking forward to the planned expansion of our organization and the tasks coming ahead, we are in a good position to add structure to our work with interns to get more outcomes with less input. We are making sure checklists are up to date and who is responsible for ticking off the boxes, we are adding both small recurring tasks and bigger one off tasks suitable for interns to work with to our list.
We are also looking into ways to work with schools where internship is part of the education. That will both ensure we have a steady supply of interns in the right field and allow for a more diverse group of interns as they can use student loans and not carry their expenses themselves.
Story: Experimenting with different types of corporate partnerships
editIn this Story, we are focusing on the new types of partnerships Wikimedia Sverige has been developing. Commercial actors can make positive contributions to the Wikimedia platforms and help our organization in other ways.
Through its history, Wikimedia Sverige has been collaborating with various types of actors, from schools to GLAM institutions to public agencies. But they are not the only ones with a keen interest in the Wikimedia platforms. Ever since Wikipedia has become a household name, commercial actors have been eager to get involved, to the chagrin of many Wikipedians. After all, it looks like a perfect – and free! – advertising platform.
The line between objective, well-sourced information and advertising is indeed thin, but it does not mean that commercial actors are inherently unable to stand on the right side of it. Quite the opposite, many are genuinely interested in learning more about the Wikimedia platforms and contributing to them in a constructive way. That's why Wikimedia Sverige has been dipping its toes in different types of corporate partnerships.
One of them is the project Unique Historical Kalmar County (Unika historiska Kalmar län), which is organized by the Kalmar County Museum and aimed at local businesses and associations in the tourism and cultural heritage sectors. Those actors have a lot of expert knowledge about local history and culture and are eager to contribute to Wikipedia in a constructive way. Wikimedia Sverige is providing them with a workshop series where we go through everything they need to know – from the basics of how Wikipedia works, to writing, editing and publishing articles. The expected result is that they become full-fledged Wikipedians, writing well-sourced, informative articles about the local tourist attractions.
Another commercial actor we've been working with this year is Trackuback. They are a Swedish start-up developing a platform for genealogy research with a focus on visualisation. They want to enrich their platform with data from Wikidata, such as information about historical places and people. The focus of our partnership has been providing training and support about the Wikimedia platforms. One of the activities we organized was a technical workshop about the Wikimedia APIs, Wikidata and SPARQL. We decided to make it an open event and invited members of the Swedish Wikimedia and open source communities to participate. A dozen people participated, gaining the skills necessary to start implementing data from the Wikimedia platforms in their own projects and applications.
2021 is the second year we are working together with Deloitte, a professional services network. Every year, Deloitte organizes an Impact Day, when their workers spend the day volunteering for NGOs in their community. During the 2020 Impact Day, they worked, among other things, on our visibility and communication plan. This year, the Impact Day will again take place in October; the ideas include setting up a structure for a climate impact report and improving our fundraising campaign in social media. We are excited to have this opportunity again; bringing in an external pair (or a dozen!) of eyes is not only about solving the concrete task at hand, but also enables us to look at our organization from a fresh perspective.
Corporate partnerships are a new area for us, but it is also one that is worth exploring. Commercial actors are going to edit Wikipedia no matter what, but with our assistance, they can learn to do it in a responsible way. We are going to evaluate this partnership model to see whether it's something we want to pursue more actively.
Detailed project overview
editBelow all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories have been presented more in depth as case studies above.
For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).
We are also outlining where the project will have an impact in the Wikimedia universe and who we are partnering with to deliver the best possible result.
We also include information about the importance of each project, e.g. if the project is core, essential, one-off or experimental. In this context, a project is considered to be core if it is part of our identity as an organization. The project will be organized even if impact is less in the short term and will only be cancelled after a consensus has been reached amongst our community. A project is essential if it actively contributes to one or many of the goals that have been outlined for the year or the long term strategy. Most projects should belong here. A project that is considered a one-off is organized because it is delivering a specific benefit to the organization but it is unlikely that we will repeat it in its current form. The type of project might continue over the years, but the content will intentionally change significantly over time. The experimental projects are testing a new idea, method or technology and are often externally financed. They might be a one-off or if successful become an essential project.
Tools for Partnerships 2020
editWhat is the project: This is the continuation of the project Tools for Partnerships 2019 – Blueprinting. The project starts in July 2020 and will continue the work to prepare for the hub. The activation of the hub was delayed due to COVDI-19 and its effect on Wikimedia Foundation’s fundraising.
2021: The project will focus on building capacity in the Movement and institutions for high quality content contributions, WMSE will illustrate SDC opportunities and mentor a cohort working with SDC, resulting in the addition of 250,000 new statements. This activity will inform an update to WMSE’s technical scope by 31 March 2021 and a best practices section for batch uploads on Meta by 30 June 2021. We will also actively coordinate and support the GLAMwiki community as part of the project, e.g. with support for the continuous development of the statistical tool Cassandra.
We will also help institutions move towards Open Access for cultural heritage, and will develop an implementation toolkit and work with local partners to organize workshops in 5 countries, with a minimum of 50 participating institutions.
Furthermore, the project will allow WMSE to expand the work in fundraising, both including grant application but also to initiate a Face2Face fundraising campaign based on the experimentation and preparation made in 2020.
To prepare for international hires we will improve, clarify and update our documentation and policies and start preparations on a few new policies identified as currently missing (e.g. a salary framework for international hires and policies around remote working as well as policies needed to provide financial support internationally).
An inventory of what documentation should be translated into English will be done. The information provided on the association’s wiki will be reviewed and evaluated systematically to add missing pieces of information, increase the searchability and structure and prepare for translations.
What’s been done: In the first half of 2021 the focus has been on supporting the Wikimedia movement with activities connected to Structured Data on Commons. We initiated the work by evaluating the current information available around Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons. We already knew that there was a lot of material missing and worked closely and efficiently with the GLAM and Culture team at the Wikimedia Foundation. We participated in eight events across the world with over 230 participants in total. During the events we shared the possibilities, opportunities and challenges around Structured Data on Commons. Apart from keeping the international Wikimedia community informed about our work and plans, our goal was to reach out to both current and potential GLAM partners to make them aware of how SDC can help them spread their collections on the Wikimedia platforms, and to ensure them that the time and effort invested in learning about and participating in the platforms will benefit them in the long run.
Through the project we could also practically experiment with batch editing of data on Commons. We made over 260,000 improvements on images from Wiki Loves Monuments and from different GLAM institutions. This will make the images more easily accessible, easier to find and more advanced and exact queries are possible. As the amount of batch editing efforts are still few and not very well documented we worked to develop in-depth case studies about the different uploads.
The project also allowed us to continue our work on developing ways to support the global GLAMwiki community and other people involved in different types of content partnerships. We developed a number of concept papers, e.g. about capacity building and an exchange program called The Grand Tour of Europe; about possible future partnerships with IGOs/INGOs; around software development to lower the threshold of content partnerships; about local fundraising in Sweden to cover parts of the costs; and about what we call The Helpdesk, where affiliates and volunteers can receive support to develop or deepen content partnerships (e.g. technical support around batch uploads).
What’s next: The project ended 30 June, 2021.
Size of project: Large
Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons
Importance: Core
Partners: Wikimedia Foundation
Link to the project: Verktyg för partnerskap 2020
Organizational Development 2021
editWhat is the project: This project aims to improve the functioning of the association and the efficiency of its work through targeted activities against identified bottlenecks.
2021: We will investigate technical systems for donations on our website to reduce the time needed to process the donor data when scaling up our fundraising campaigns. The implementation of the next 4-year strategy for Wikimedia Sverige into the existing work and planning will be done.
The project will ensure that staff and board training is delivered in an organized fashion and that different team building activities are planned and delivered.
We will establish a trainee program for the association.
What’s been done: A significant amount of effort has been invested in the new 4-year strategy that was adopted by the Annual General Meeting of Wikimedia Sverige. See also #Association Involvement 2021 for details about the interactive method used.
As the chapter is intending to grow in size the preparations to develop a formalized trainee program, and a more developed structure for in-house training/education has been a major focus. With a growing group of employees the work to develop a team spirit is key and a more structured approach to team building activities is being developed.
What’s next: The work with the trainee program, the staff education and team building structures are all being finalized during Q3. After that the focus will be on developing the crisis preparedness of the association.
Size of project: Small
Project impact: -
Importance: Core
Partners: -
Link to the project: Organisationsutveckling 2021
Exchange of Experiences 2021
editWhat is the project: The project’s aim is to ensure that we share our experiences and learn from other affiliates through available events and platforms.
2021: If any relevant international Wikimedia events are organized in 2021 we will participate to share experience, to coordinate and plan and to learn from others.
We intend to stay committed to supporting the emerging Wikimedia Northern Europe collaboration, and will investigate digital solutions to do so.
What’s been done: Due to Covid-19 and that other projects have carried the cost of event participation, very little work has been done as part of the project to date.
What’s next: Around half of the project budget will be used for participation at the digital Wikimania Conference in 2021 to allow for our staff members to attend parts of the program that are not directly related to specific existing projects.
We are investigating the interest from our sister organizations for a digital Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting late in 2021.
Size of project: Small
Project impact: -
Importance: Core
Partners: -
Link to the project: Erfarenhetsutbyte 2021
Association Involvement 2021
editWhat is the project: The project aims to increase the number of members and volunteers, and to find tasks and the necessary support to keep them engaged and develop a new membership management system.
2021: Organize the General Assembly, the Wikipedia Day and Membership Meetings. We will finalize a volunteer strategy during the year to keep existing volunteers and engage new ones. We will continue to engage members via improved communications capacities such as our newsletter.
Different types of micro tasks will be identified and communicated through our social media channels to showcase the many opportunities for engagement with the platforms.
We will define the criteria we have for a technical system to compile data about our volunteers for the entire organization and take the first steps towards implementation. This is especially important with a growing pool of volunteers, not just from Sweden but internationally, engaging in our work.
We will outline how we can showcase the possibility to become a member in the association through all of our work and develop a comprehensive set of actions to improve our communication. We will gather knowledge from other Wikimedia affiliates on how they have worked on this.
What’s been done: 2021 marked the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia. Wikimedia Sverige organized two celebrations, one large-scale celebration on 15 January, with some 70 participants and interventions by a famous Swedish comedian, a scholar of the history of technology, prominent Wikimedians and other VIPs. We also organized a celebration on 23 May, which marked the birthday of Swedish language Wikipedia. For the second celebration, we had, among other things, interviewed the person who started the Swedish language edition.
In the 20 days leading up to the celebration of the 20-year anniversary, we organized a micro tasks campaign, where participants were encouraged to perform at least one task per day. We put together a daily schedule, with tasks for Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata and Wikisource, and it ranged from identifying an unknown sportsperson on a photo, to proofreading a book page, improving a Wikidata object, creating a lexeme, etc. The campaign was appreciated by the online community, of which several took part, and was also successful in social media.
Early on during the year, we decided to opt for a solution with two General Assemblies, where the first focused more on the previous year and the second focused more on the upcoming year. In order to open up for input on both aspects, we invited all participants to workshops after each General Assembly, where members were able to give input and propose future directions for Wikimedia Sverige.
During the first General Assembly, the members adopted the new four years strategy for Wikimedia Sverige. The strategy was the result of a member-driven work during large parts of 2020, where members worked in working groups to identify areas of strategic importance, and propose the suitable direction. That means that the strategy was both developed and adopted by members, which was important for the chapter as a way to get support for and involvement by the members in the future work with the implementation of the strategy and the work to fulfill it.
A comprehensive area of work that has begun during the first half of the year has been the development of new strategies for volunteer involvement and education for the chapter. The chapter has lacked a structured and strategic approach on how to increase volunteer involvement and open up for possibilities to deepen the involvement for all volunteers.
What’s next: During the fall, the strategies for volunteer involvement and education will be finalized, and the implementation of them will start. The process of implementing the four years strategy that was adopted at the General Assembly will also continue, and subsequently the work to fulfill it.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the annual Wikipedia Day has still not been held. Depending on the development of the pandemic, an entirely virtual, an entirely physical or a mixed approach event will be held during the fall.
We will most likely continue with different kinds of micro task campaigns also future wise, using the lessons learned from this first attempt.
Size of project: Medium
Project impact: -
Importance: Core
Partners: -
Link to the project: Föreningsengagemang 2021
FOSS for the Association 2021
editWhat is the project: Here we investigate how we can support the development of the FOSS tools that we use as an organization. Through the project we will engage consultants to solve the specific issues so that we can improve the FOSS alternatives.
2021: In 2020 we identified several needs, in particular related to our new website (in WordPress). For 2021 our goal is to engage developers to have the identified plugins developed and released for other actors to use.
What’s been done: In preparation for engaging an external WordPress web developer a list of missing functionalities have been created.
What’s next: The web developer will be contracted to develop the new open source functionality to our website.
Size of project: Small
Project impact: -
Importance: Experimental
Partners: -
Link to the project: FOSS för föreningen 2021
Notes
edit- ↑ Definition: The number of participants and/or organizers of activities conducted or supported by Wikimedia Sverige who belong to underrepresented genders in the Wikimedia movement in Sweden (non-unique as we are not tracking them with names). These groups are defined as women and people identifying themselves as something other than male or female.
- ↑ Definition: The total number of people who have heard us talk about Wikimedia related topics through participation at events or activities, either in person or virtually (non-unique as we are not tracking them with names). Does not include reach through Social media.
- ↑ The Wikimedia projects mean those platforms within the Wikimedia Family that are usually called sister projects of Wikipedia:
- Wikipedia The free encyclopedia
- Wikimedia Commons The free media database
- Wiktionary The free dictionary
- Wikisource The free library
- Wikibooks Free textbook collections
- Wikiquote The free quote compendium
- Wikivoyage The free travel guide
- Wikispecies The free species directory
- Wikiversity Free learning resources
- Wikidata The free database
- Meta-Wiki About the projects
- We also include translatewiki.net.
- ↑ Identification can be via user names systematically connected with the institution, special user templates showing the connection to an institution, registration in a Wikiproject, or possibly through personal knowledge etc.
- ↑ This includes the Wikimedia projects, translatewiki.net and Wikimini, according to the principle that we train a pedagogue who uses the creation of content as a part of the pedagogical process.
- ↑ An organisational unit with self-governing power is included here; however, units that have been included in previous years are not.
- ↑ Software which is considered is MediaWiki extensions in use on the Wikimedia project or on translatewiki.net. This is in accordance with the priority order: bugs, erroneous translations, untranslated.
- ↑ We are counting occasions and Wikimedians as follows:
- Only activities outside of other project related goals count. I.e. a Bot Academy focusing on cultural heritage and as part of Connected Open Heritage does not count, but an event focused on running bots but not related to a specific project count.
- Wikimedians and advocates for free knowledge who got support count, regardless of if they used the information or not. The important part is that they asked for help/resources. I.e. people contributing to FOSS-projects count.
- We count occasions as when someone got help from a WMSE staff member. I.e. if Volunteer 1 works for two weeks they have not gotten support, but if they send an email with some follow-up questions after a week then that requires a contribution which corresponds to one occasion.
- ↑ With recurring meetups we are referring to some type of face-to-face meetings that are repeated over time.
- ↑ Underrepresented groups are here defined as:
- women
- contributors whose native language are different than the 10 largest Wikipedias (per 5+ edits/month (3m avg.) according to https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm) or Swedish
- contributors 60 years or older
- ↑ GLAM Newsletter.
Revenues received during this six-month period
editPlease use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.
- Important note
- the anticipated column may list revenues anticipated for the whole year instead of only the 6 months. Please make sure that this the time period clear in the table.
- In the explanation column, always mention relevant information about the numbers: what period they refer to etc.
Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan Membership fees SEK 115,000 - 59,650 N/A N/A 59,650 13,323 6,911 Our membership results are on par with that of 2020 for the same period. Based on this we expect the revenue to be of a similar size for the year i.e. about half of our anticipated result. However, we are currently in the process of developing a membership drive, based on face2face activities. If launched this year (depending on COVID-19) this number might increase significantly. Donations SEK 200,000 - 151,130 N/A N/A 151,130 23,170 17,509 Our donation work had a strong start this year. We believe that this was in large part due to Wikimedia Sverige being mentioned in the WMF mail to previous donors (with a link to our website). A second contributing reason is our renewed effort to membership care where we actively reach out and thank our previous donors and more actively communicate with them. We predict the final result to be higher than originally budgeted. FDC SEK 3,038,500 - 2,126,950 N/A N/A 2,126,950 352,013 246,409 Interest, misc SEK 15,000 - 13,204 N/A N/A 13,204 1,738 1,530 Other grants SEK 920,000 - 13,333 N/A N/A 13,333 106,583 1,545 Two medium sized projects have been approved which will bring in a revenue of 225,000 SEK (some of that in 2022). We also have a few much larger applications currently pending for which we expect a decision in the coming quarter. Trackuback/Vinnova SEK 75,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 8,689 0 This project has been started but the funding is only expected upon completion of the project (Q4). National Library of Sweden SEK 300,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 34,755 0 This funder has not issued any calls for projects this year so this revenue will most likely not be realised. Kulturbryggan SEK 348,749 - 247,756 N/A N/A 247,756 40,403 28,703 More of the funding was used at the end of 2020 than expected and hence the funds available for 2021 were a bit smaller than expected. This project has been finalised and no further income is expected. Vinnova SEK 179,000 - 114,346 N/A N/A 114,346 20,737 13,247 This is expected to be increased as less funds were used in 2020. The second payment is expected in Q4. Swedish Institute SEK 200,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 23,170 0 This is for yet to be accepted project applications to be submitted in Q3-Q4. Part of the funds will be used in 2022. Swedish National Heritage Board SEK 205,121 - 0 N/A N/A 0 23,763 0 The project has been started but the income is expected in early Q3. Wikimedia Foundation (special grant for Tools for Partnerships 2020-2021) SEK 608,524 - 816,016 N/A N/A 816,016 70,498 94,536 Less of the funding was used in 2020. The project has been finalised and no further income is expected. Wikimedia Foundation (special grant(s) around Strategic recommendations implementation 2021) SEK 2,300,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 266,457 0 The confirmed size of this grant is 3,344,000 SEK which will be paid out in Q3. Only part of that amount is expected to be used in 2021 though. Swedish Post and Telecom Authority SEK 1,042,693 - 848,537 N/A N/A 848,537 120,797 98,304 Although the project has been completed the remaining funds are only paid out upon the acceptance of the final report (submitted in Q3). We expect the sum to be paid in full.
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Notes:
- Exchange rate: 1 SEK = 0.11585 USD (per 1 USD = 8.63179 SEK in APG proposal).
- All numbers rounded to whole SEK/USD.
- The Anticipated column refers to the numbers included in our original APG proposal.
- We also received in-kind donation of about 1,044 SEK (121 USD) by FSData for server hosting, 158,340 SEK (18,344 USD) by The Internet Foundation In Sweden for office space, 16,008 SEK (1,855 USD) by Google for Google Workspace for Non-profits, 518 SEK (60 USD) by Canva for Canva for Nonprofits and 450 SEK (52 USD) by The Generation for web hosting.
Spending during this six-month period
editPlease use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.
- Important note
- Budget can be the budget for the whole year (and thus the percentage will reflect the half year and should be around 50%, or the half year, in which case the % should be around 100%. Please make that clear in the table.
- In the explanation column, always mention relevant information about the numbers: what period they refer to.
Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- (The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan Access SEK 4,063,739 - 570,058 N/A N/A 570,058 470,788 66,042 14.0% Some of the originally planned projects will not be realised as the funder has not made any calls for projects available. Funding related to our work around Content partnerships support has been secured but the predicted spending on this work, starting Q3, for the current year is less than originally budgeted. Use SEK 1,358,763 - 1,322,344 N/A N/A 1,322,344 157,414 153,195 97.3% This program is dominated by the Wikispeech – Speech Data Collector project which came to an end in Q2. The end results for the program is expected to be slightly above budget. Community SEK 780,819 - 160,602 N/A N/A 160,602 90,459 18,606 20.6% A focus on the Association Involvement 2021 project lead to a reduced capacity to focus on projects in the Community program (see below). A reduction in staff size during the second half of the year will decrease our capacity to work in some of the Community projects and we expect the final spending in this program to land around 500,000 SEK. Enabling SEK 882,419 - 1,249,686 N/A N/A 1,249,686 102,229 144,777 141.6% The Tools for Partnerships 2020 project under-spent in 2020 leading to an increased spending in 2021, this project will not lead to any further spending in the second half of the year. In addition we increased our activity in the Association Involvement 2021 project (which lies on the boundary of our Community and Enabling programs) in order to prepare for some larger changes to the association. We expect the final spending for this program to land around 1,500,000 SEK. Operational costs SEK 1,911,847 - 528,842 N/A N/A 528,842 221,489 61,267 27.7% The operational costs have been decreased in part due to the streamlining developed during 2020 as a result of the Covid19 pandemic but to a larger degree by externally financed projects being able to bear some of the operational costs and the team being reduced in size compared to when the budget was developed. For the last two quarters of the year we expect the operational costs to be decreased further as the size of the team has been reduced further and we no longer maintain office space in Norway. To reserves SEK 550,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 63,718 0 0% Reserves will be calculated towards the end of Q3 as per usual. TOTAL SEK 9,547,587 - 3,831,533 N/A N/A 3,831,533 1,106,096 443,886 40.1% N/A
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
Notes:
- Exchange rate: 1 SEK = 0.11585 USD (per 1 USD = 8.63179 SEK in APG proposal).
- All numbers rounded to whole SEK/USD.
- The Budgeted column refers to the relevant numbers for the whole year as included in our original APG proposal.
Compliance
editIs your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement?
editAs required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
- Yes
Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes
Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes
Signature
edit- Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.
- John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 17:18, 31 July 2021 (UTC)
Resources
editResources to plan for measurement
edit- Global metrics are an important starting point for grantees when it comes to measuring programmatic impact (Learning Patterns and Tutorial) but don’t stop there.
- Logic Models provide a framework for mapping your pathway to impact through the cause and effect chain from inputs to outputs to outcomes. Develop a logic model to map out your theory of change and determine the metrics and measures for your programs.
- Importantly, both qualitative and quantitative measures are important so consider both as you determine measures for your evaluation and be sure to ask the right questions to be sure to capture your program stories.
Resources for storytelling
edit- WMF storytelling series and toolkit (DRAFT)
- Online workshop on Storytelling. By Frameworks institute
- The origin of storytelling
- Story frames, with a focus on news-worthiness.
- Reading guide: Storytelling and Social change. By Working Narratives
- The uses of the story.
- Case studies.
- Blog: 3 Tips on telling stories that move people to action. By Paul VanDeCarr (Working Narratives), on Philanthropy.com
- Building bridges using narrative techniques. By Sparknow.net
- Differences between a report and a story
- Question guides and exercises.
- Guide: Tools for Knowledge and Learning. By Overseas Development Institute (UK).
- Developing a strategy
- Collaboration mechanisms
- Knowledge sharing and learning
- Capturing and storing knowledge.