Wikimania 2015/GLAM III

UNESCO

Presentation

• About UNESCO
• Project funding
• Goals of the prohect
• Brainstorming

Objective

• Tell you about the project
• Get all your god idea

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UNESCO Wikimedian in Residence presentation Please add your names if you wish to connect in the future with those at this workshop: Naureen Nayyar: techistoria (msnora@gmail.com); WMUK 2. Dineshkumar Ponnusamy (dineshkumar.erd@gmail.com); Tamil wiki community, India

UNESCO was founded in 1945 after WWI and WWII to "build peace in the minds of men and women". They: Mobilize for education Build intercultural understanding Protect freedom of expression Encourage everyone to participate in the internet and the global.

Structure of UNESCO: 2000 employees of around 170 nations

Prioriteis:

• Global priorities
• ....

380+ organization partnerships: Medecins sans Frontieres for examples

UNESCO contact: Ian Denison

Project goals:

• Train UNESCO staff to contribute to Wikimedia (upload, edit)
• Make their content availabile on Wikimedia projects
• Create a model....
• Disseminate and promot information on the project and ...

Hay's tool offers list of Wikimedia-related tools http://tools.wmflabs.org/hay/directory/

Questions How can we best identify and involve people from countries with smaller user groups or no formal user groups? The WMF has a tool which can look at the most active Wikimedians on each project... including ones who communicate the most with other Wikimedians. Asking nearby chapters (eg the Australian Chapter might have some members from Polynesia, or WMUK might have some from the Commonwealth) Wikimedia Scholarship recipients! A directory of local Wikipedians, especially in languages other than English: we need an intersection of geographic and topic based interests and be able to reach out programmatically to these users banners on the smaller language sites? (would need to target logged in users) agreed. I would say that there is value Essentially repitch to the smaller offices, explaining the benefits of WiR and how it will help them achieve their goals Global Education had the exact same problem and they invested a lot in documentation/outreach materials Partner with WLM... & Wiki Loves Earth Can use similar approach to Art+Feminism which had 79 global node events this year, and build on their directory (works easiest for those who edit a large Wikipedia, eg US, but also any countries where a large Wikipedia is edited) Find GLAM-type partners who can host events and see the benefits and purpose ; perhaps focus on wikisource and historical speciallists Ask at related wikiprojects for contacts in the target country -- for example WikiProject Oceans is quiescent but ocean specialists have contacts on many islands You can always find out people from a country with help of language templates in user pages or even user templates (with people saying I come from El Salvador or Jamaica). Other options to find people: village pumps or Wikimedia blogs. You can also find a "mentor" country nearby (e.g. Mexico for El Salvador) that would help with local UNESCO offices. In Italian version of Wikivoyage we have crated and promoted an "expedition" to develop Italian content of UNESCO heritage sites for each of the 163 nations (see https://it.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Wikivoyage:Spedizione_UNESCO and for example https://it.wikivoyage.org/wiki/Patrimoni_mondiali_dell%27umanit%C3%A0_in_Italia) The whole activity has been performed by volunteers. In Bangkok exists the UN main HQ for South Asia, it would be great to train numerous folks who connect with South East Asia around UNESCO

How can we ensure suitable trainers for UNESCO staff in countries with no chapter? Anyway, one should look for active Wikimedians through village pumps, and suitable the are or not -- it will be obvious after all:) Can we piggyback on existing partnerships that UNESCO has with other big organisations? I would use the UNESCO existing network, I don't think you are the first one with a challenge like this. (+1) Are there Wikipedians who are members of Wikimedia Egypt, but actually live in (say) Sudan? Fly them in and train the trainer (expensive) skype as the inexpensive alternative. Google Hangouts is a good way to scale to multiple users.. (how good is internet in some of these places? Could only have Wikipedia zero level access...) (These are good ideas though!) Do the training when the UNESCO staff meets up for other meetings and training.

What qualities and skills do good trainers have? Good knowledge of Wikipedia and its community/habiitis and policies as well as open access/free licenses Communication skill Eduaction skill (ie. some background experience with teaching) Knowledge of the subject (both UNESCO and WMF) Diplomacy!/civility - in general high level of interpersonal/communication skills. Understanding how the oldschool tools are changing into the new editing tools. Wikipedia is in transition and new users need to have a foot in both worlds for now. Reliability/showing up Passion and confidence, ability to not digress into ideology. Pragmatic. Patient, persuasive and hard working Teaching new users not to fear the frequent rejection that occurs during inittial editing. (+1) They have handouts and online materials so people can work a little independently at different rates speak the language and the culture of the local people. Enthusiasm. They tend to be able to keep up building relationships with various good partners and potential future trainers. Ideal trainers are those who are wanting to promote Wikimedia or help spread UNESCO ideas within various social/

What events could be run with UNESCO offices? Outreach events targeted at subject matter experts Multimedia cultural performance recordings Improving the Wikipedia pages of the existing UNESCO world heritage sites We need to develop more comprehensive list of WiR doing work in institutions by speciality aroea to help connect Wikipedians with user groups and groups of editors around the world.

Initiatives to match open data / image / text collections (and their curators) to topics in high demand in Wikimedia projects (come and find me if you want to talk more about this -- @readermeter / User:DarTar)

Comments or sugestions please write any comments or suggestions here

The etherpad method gives you lots of coverage but little depth or cross-evaluation. Horizonatally very broad but vertically thin. It might be good to have sessions like this in the future have the leaders of the session use etherpad as a jump-off point for deeper discussions of the best ideas...

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Links

• Presentation: bit.ly/WM2015UNESCO
• tools.wmflabs.org/hay/directory/#/

presentation by John Cummings - John.Cummings@wikimedia.org.uk @mrjohnc user:mrjohncummings