WikiIndaba conference 2018/Program/Wikimedia movement strategy process

Logo WikiIndaba colors ID: Movement_Strategy Wikimedia movement strategy process
Speakers: Nicole Ebber (Wikimedia Deutschland, Germany) Time block: saturday-afternoon Start: 14:30
Location: Great room Duration: 30 min.
Description :

I would like to have a conversation with participants about:

  • Present the current status of the Movement Strategy Process
  • What opportunities does the new Strategic Direction have for you and

your affiliate? Do you already have any concrete plans to implement it in your work?

  • What are the challenges that may hinder your work in this direction?
  • How do you think the movement address these challenges and find

solutions? Is there anything that you can immediately take action upon? Is there someone you can collaborate with to resolve the problem?

  • What can we do together in Phase 2 to tackle these challenges?
Themes: WikiCulture & Community
Tags: Wikimedia movement, Strategy process
Notes: #WikiIndaba18_Movement_Strategy



SESSION SUMMARY
During the session participants were presented brief history of how we got to the Strategic Direction, what it is, and what is happening next. This also included an overview of the research results from Phase I of the strategy process and highlighting key implications for the movement. (see slides)

This was followed by group discussion along the lines of guiding question: “What does this direction mean for the continent and its affiliates and communities?” and participants were asked to reflect on it in groups and cover both positive and negative implications of the strategic direction. After that groups filtered out the most meaningful and important observations and shared them with all the participants on the post-it wall.

Presentation for the Movement Strategy Process session at WikiIndaba 2018 in Tunis)

DISCUSSION SUMMARY
Input from the WikiIndaba Movement Strategy Session concentrates around some key themes in the context of the Strategic Direction, some of them related to Wikimedia vision and overarching goals (e.g. inclusion & diversity), others to more concrete practical steps in the direction and movement infrastructure (e.g. capacity building in volunteer communities, technical advancement and building partnerships).

As it might be expected from a regional conference there was also input related to localisation and contextualisation of global Wikimedia work, i.e. being aware of local opportunities, as well as barriers to support local communities and affiliates in a useful and effective way. This is also related to popular overarching theme of capacity building, as well as the general movement infrastructure to ensure that local volunteers and enthusiasts are enabled to manage expectations and workload.

Suggestions related to technology were mostly related to user experience that helps Wikimedia to reach out to new audiences and opens new opportunity windows. As in Africa local knowledge is often related to oral tradition, a need to address oral sources for knowledge in our strive to create and support knowledge equity was acknowledged.

A need to increase awareness about possibilities of Wikimedia among potential partners also came across as an important theme and as the most potential field for partnerships, educational institutions were mentioned. Various types of partnerships also work towards the goal of inclusion of new and diverse users (both contributors and readers/viewers) and help to break at least some of the external barriers and challenges through increase of awareness.

As a cultural component the usefulness of offline platforms and face to face conversations were mentioned, which is a proof that Wikimedia has grown beyond being just an online community and has become a wider social movement, where relations and interactions between real people in the real world are of essential value

WikiIndaba Movement Strategy Session Input

by Nicole Ebber, CC BY-SA 4.0

ESSENTIAL INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE ECOSYSTEM FOR FREE KNOWLEDGE
Key theme Session Input Sub-theme
Culture (3) Never lose hope General disposition (1)
Offline platform(s) are important (outreach & awareness; face to face meetings) Face to face conversations are very reliable Beyond online (2)
Knowledge as a service
Capacities (6) Volunteers have a lot of things to work on to prioritise in communities so volunteers, affiliates, should have more concrete things to work Make things more flexible for volunteers so they don’t get overwhelmed with work Structures for volunteers (4)
Volunteer structures need ongoing support more stable than volunteers Bringing infrastructure to contributors
Improving leadership General (1)
Resources (2) Resources need to be more stable (i.e. long term grants) |Need to shift investment towards organizers + coordinators rather than (institutional) editors Stability & Structure (2)
Technology (5) Easier to learn through a better UX for the youth specifically Create a platform that everyone can access (friendly environment) User experience (2)
Audiovisual translation for specific audiences with oral tradition Make oral citation reliable Oral tradition (2)
Digitisation Digitisation (1)
Partnerships (4) Increase awareness amongst Educational institutions Improve the level of understanding between affiliates and partners Awareness (2)
Starting points for academic researches Research (1)
Better infrastructure with tech + resources (i.e. lab/hub/local allies & organisations) + frameworks Tech (1)
Knowledge equity
Contextualisation (5) Learning the better way to support African communities Bringing more awareness to the African continent Localisation (4)
Translate to more local/African languages Localisation
Study what contents do people need and want Research (1)
Inclusion (8) Increasing the number and diversity of people from around the world both reading and contributing to the free knowledge project More Wikipedians without technical expertise Users (4)
More contributors More views
Devise more ways to break information barriers like no panorama Barriers of contribution due to intimidating fetching from our background Breaking barriers (2)
This means more research on how to foster inclusiveness in all communities and affiliates Ambitious direction that is slightly weak on inclusion of different perspectives as regards folks that do not yet share the vision Research & understanding (2)
Diversity (2) "How to implement the knowledge equity knowing that the diversity is not respected within Africa?" Breaking barriers (1)
Growth and retention of the user bases: Diversity of Profiles Users (1)
Neutrality (1) How do we address challenges that exist around neutrality and non-bias contributions, given the political nature of our environment in Africa? Political contexts (1)

Graph of clustered themes for sticky notes from participants of Wiki Indaba 2018 answering to the question: "What does the strategic direction mean for the continent and its affiliates and communities?"

Africa shaped word cloud created from raw data from sticky notes from participants of Wiki Indaba 2018 answering to the question: "What does the strategic direction mean for the continent and its affiliates and communities?"