Wikimedia Fellowships/Project Ideas/Events and presentation support

Wikimedia volunteers are involved in hundreds of real-life events throughout the year -- speaking engagements, booths at conferences, editing workshops, meetups, and so on. Within the Wikimedia community, there are dozens and dozens of events that go on around the world, ranging from meetups to regional workshops to the general conference Wikimania; externally, Wikimedians are involved in doing outreach about the projects in all kinds of settings. This fellowship would focus on supporting this massive volunteer initiative. Work could for instance include the following components:

Presentation support -- a few nicely done stock slide decks, with updated numbers and swappable content, could do wonders for volunteers (including Wikimedia staff and leaders) who speak at events; despite years of sharing content about presentations and producing WMF presentations, producing stock slides for volunteers has never been done. Making data for slides available is a part of this; it could be a bit like a press kit, but geared for presentations. This would benefit both inexperienced speakers, who might not know where to start with a deck, and experienced speakers who may be more willing to take engagements if supporting materials were provided.
Helping volunteers become better presenters -- train-the-trainer exercises, workshops, etc could help volunteers become more effective presenters and advocates.
Events calendaring -- there is no movement-wide calendar of events; despite past attempts this is a difficult enough problem that it needs a concerted effort (and possibly software support) to set up. Once set up, volunteers everywhere would be able to use it, and it would also be a good recruitment tool for those looking for local events.
Collecting best practices about event management, to aid local communities in running small to medium events; could be expanded to conference best practices and meetup best practices. Producing "event kits".
Collecting best practices about how to run a topical workshop, editing workshop, or other specific type of outreach event; there has been a great deal of work done on this by the education program and others, but it is not necessarily easily accessible. Working with topical editors or wikiproject members to help with workshop materials for their subject areas.
Meetup and event support; helping document what financial or other resources are available for events and setting up areas for asking and answering questions.

This is a non-exclusive list of ideas for this fellowship. The goal of this fellowship would be to build sustainable systems (i.e. an events calendar) that could be used by other volunteers and staff into the future, rather than day-to-day events support or management. In other words, this fellowship would help build the infrastructure to help volunteers do great events, without always having to reinvent the wheel for every conference or workshop.

Rationale

Events make up a large part of the real-world work of Wikimedians. But to date, there has been very little global support of events -- even in the most basic forms, such as stock presentations. This is a bang-for-the-buck area -- with a small investment, thousands of people doing outreach work can be better supported.

Real-life events are a recruitment tool for new editors, who may learn more about the projects and get questions answered; they are also a retention tool for existing community members, who may find satisfaction and community in meeting other editors and doing work in-person. Getting involved in events is also a path to leadership for community members. Events give a face to the projects and provide an accessible way into Wikimedia.

Project components should seek to build sustainable, customizable support that can be used by volunteers anywhere in any language. At any given time dozens of meetups and other events are going on around the world, so supporting this work could be very impactful. The results should be helpful to volunteers, members of organized groups including chapters, and staff.

Idea submitted by

phoebe | talk 01:41, 4 January 2012 (UTC), who is not eligible for a fellowship :)[reply]

@ 189.203.54.41 02:46, 15 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Prospective fellows

Would you like to be considered for a fellowship to work on this project?

If you'd like to take an active role in this project, either alone or in a team of fellows with complementary skills, please add your name below. Note that in order to be considered for a fellowship, you must also submit an application to the program.

Name	Email	Mobile
Abhijith Jayanthi	abhijith.jayanthi@yahoo.com	+91-9866898311

Endorsements

This section is for endorsements by Wikimedia community volunteers. Please note that this is not a debate, vote, or poll, but is rather a space for volunteers to describe in detail why they think a project idea is of value. If you have concerns or questions rather than an endorsement to make, please use the idea Talk page. Endorsements by volunteers willing to work in collaboration with a fellowship recipient on a project are highly encouraged.

Theo10011 02:46, 4 January 2012 (UTC) (who is also not interested but really supportive of the idea.) We can centralize a repository on outreach.wiki for this. It's a great idea, phoebe.[reply]

In person meetups are awesome and I do lots of them. The available resources are both insufficient and hard to find. When I am going face-to-face I want to look good and I need good materials, and I am sure others feel the same way. This kind of project is of great importance. Hey! I made this template some time ago. I use it but I have not shown it to others. Check it out, please! Template:Invite. Blue Rasberry (talk) 06:32, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]
One of the most interesting ideas so far in my opinion. But as I have understood it, some of the suggestions above seem to be embodied in the Bookshelf Project (at least the first bullet). But I might have misunderstood something? I love the idea about a common global events calender! Perhaps that could be done through Google Calendar and a common account for all of the Wikimedia Chapters? Jopparn 13:32, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

comment: yes, definitely there is overlap (though I think bookshelf to date has been externally, not internally focused, so there aren't presentation resources -- I could be wrong). Anyway, they would surely work together. I don't know much about calendaring hacks but a g-calendar occurred to me too -- it would be nice if it could be embedded *in* the wiki itself, and world-readable/editable. Anyway, like I said, could benefit from someone doing some serious work on it :) -- phoebe | talk 16:45, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Great idea in my opinion. A practical solution direction would be to make something like Open Office available on a central Wiki. Commons and Meta come to mind with some others especially Wikisource and of course Wikipedia as de facto Big Brother. Video conferencing for those who have a camera installed. I can;t promise to be a contributor, but just some ideas to thibk about. I'm afraid for real life metings funds are not sufficient. Only rich Wikimedians can participate if no budget is made available by the Foundation. ZeaForUs 21:04, 5 January 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I endorse the idea and am glad someone brought up the Bookshelf project. We have had several instances of documentation and never managed to put them up in one place. I had asked my chapter to make a separate bookshelf for all the documents we create but it is not visible enough and not updated regularly. So, files just remain on Commons and get lost. I would suggest you expand more on how you plan to make it more visible, who is it addressed to, will it have chapter/language wise bookshelves and so on. But, I am delighted someone has volunteered to take this up! Good luck :) Noopur28 (talk) 03:52, 29 February 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I endorse this as well, as a member of Hong Kong community for years, and organizing meetup here since 2006. I always found there isn't many support on hosting meetup when want to share with community in other city. Also I found meetup pages in different places, different wikipedias, meta also very chaotic, so I think it is worth a try to put up in the same calendar. I am also personally interested to pick this up -- ※ JéRRy ~ 雨雨 ※ Was? ※ 07:00, 11 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]