Grants:Project/Rapid/Edit-a-thon Neuroscience and Mathematics/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2016-17 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Edit-a-thon Neuroscience and Mathematics.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?
Yes and more. We have applied for and hosted one edit-a-thon --which happened on August 29, as described in Portuguese on its official page--, which was an unexpected inspiration to host a second edit-a-thon on September 14 (official page, where the UGBR banner we are being funded by the rapid grant we applied for was used). In balance, this outreach activity attracted some media attention and a journalist from the Huffington Post (Brazil) attended and is expected to publish a piece about it on October 15 (it was published on the 21st, here).

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1 event	2 events	After our first edit-a-thon, we were approached by a professor to organize an edit-a-thon on veterinary anatomy, at the University of São Paulo. They were unable to join our first edit-a-thon because of time conflict.
20-25 participants	32 participants	13 participants in the first event, and 19 participants in the second event
15-20 new editors	24 new editors	8 new editors in the first event, 16 new editors in the second event
10-20 articles created or improved	21 articles created or improved	Articles created or improved are listed on our event pages.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?
- We were positively impressed by outreach potential. Besides our own group reports (from our website and on the Village Pump), the edit-a-thon was mentioned on three media outlets and we expect a piece to appear shortly on the Brazilian Huffington Post. This outreach was made possible by the poster we used to spread the event, which was used for online and offline advertisement.
- Around 50% of the new editors we brought for the activity have kept some sort of engagement with the Wikimedia projects, which we considered to be a high level of retention.
- This was the first time we applied for a grant to the WMF and though we made some initial mistakes we think we were able to go smoothly through the process. Our contact with the grant team was very positive.
- We thought it would be challenging to stimulate students to work on hard topics, such as Neuroscience, Mathematics and Veterinary Anatomy, and the help from three professors who took part in the edit-a-thon was a great experience of sharing knowledge and expertise.
- The partnership with the research center from the University of São Paulo was very positive. We might consider organizing another edit-a-thon next term.

What did not work so well?
- Because of the broader political context in Brazil, we had to anticipate our edit-a-thon, fearing the university would go on strike. We had initially planned to organize the edit-a-thon at the beginning of September and moved it abruptly to the end of August. We were hearing news from the impeachment of the president while we were editing. This did not generate any problem at the end to our activities, and we ended up having a second edit-a-thon, in September, but we were a bit stressed out by the prospect of having to cancel our project.
- On the first event, female participation remained low (only three women joined in). We were expecting a higher female participation. On the second event, 14 women joined in, which was a great success. We are unable to assess why Neuroscience and Mathematics were less attractive to potential female participants.

What would you do differently next time?
- We spent little time introducing people one another, and after all this sense of community we could have created was a missed opportunity. We also did not advertise enough our group webpage and Facebook, so the level of retention on these platforms remained low. We have sent out emails to follow up, and we have maintained contact with new editors.
- We would have enjoyed to have received promotional material from the WMF, which we requested but was never sent.
- We missed a chance to take a nice group picture at the second edit-a-thon.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

We have sent out receipts of our expenses to the WMF grant team. We have spent:

BRZ R$ 1,026.68 with printing material to advertise our activities (first event only)
BRZ R$ 117.22 with beverage (first event only)
BRZ R$ 439.40 with snacks (first event only)
BRZ R$ 767,90 with UGBR display materials (used on two events and reusable)

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?
No.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Edit-a-thon on Neuroscience and Mathematics
Edit-a-thon on Veterinary Anatomy