Grants:PEG/WM US-DC/Workshop Facilitator Training

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Organization

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Wikimedia District of Columbia

Please provide the name (or username) of the main contact for this grant request. You do not need to disclose your legal name publicly.

Peter Meyer

For groups and organizations only: Please provide the name (or username) of a second contact for this grant request.

James Hare

Please link to any relevant documents, including your website if you have one.

Our website is located at wikimediadc.org.

Official project name

Workshop Facilitator Training

Project start date

This is the date you begin work on your project. Please include a month, day, and year. You must include a project start date.

August 17, 2014

Project completion date

This is the date you finish work on your project. Please include a month, day, and year. You must include a project completion date.

September 1, 2014

Please describe the project in a few sentences

We propose a weekend-long seminar for active Wikipedians who want to host Wikipedia Workshops, workshops that teach people how to edit Wikipedia. This seminar will be modeled off of Emily Temple-Wood's successful pilot workshops in Chicago.

Please request your grant in your local currency. WMF is able to grant funds in many currencies.

Amount and currency requested

US$11,909 ($4,000 will be reallocated from the WMUS-DC Programs 2014 grant)

Please provide an equivalent amount in US dollars using the exchange rate provided by Oanda on the date you open this request

US$11,909

This section only needs to be completed by organizations requesting grants. Individuals and groups that are not incorporated do not need to complete this section.

Are you an incorporated organization able to provide local proof of nonprofit status within your country? For-profit organizations are not eligible to receive grants through the PEG program.

Answer YES or NO.

Yes

Does your organization currently employ or engage any fulltime or part-time staff or contractors? If yes, please tell us how many staff or contractors you employ or engage, along with their functions or a link to your staff page. For example, "2 full time program managers and 1 part-time contractor accountant at 50% FTE each."

Project Manager, Wikipedia Summer of Monuments (Contractor, 1.0 FTE, engaged through October 2014)

Please briefly describe what will be accomplished if the project is successful.

Project goal

The goal of the project is to train 10-15 facilitators in how to conduct effective, repeated editing workshops. It will include hands-on training with resources, teaching skills, and curation, as well as a chance to put the newly-acquired skills into action at a workshop open to the public.

Please provide a list of measurable criteria that will be used determine how successful the project is. You will need to report on the success of the project according to these measures after the project is completed.

Measures of success

This project will primarily be measured according to the number of participants in the training, including the number who successfully implement workshop programs in their own communities. The rate of repeat event attendance at each workshop series will be measured against the baseline edit-a-thon retention experienced by Wikimedia DC.

This section describes what will happen if this project is funded. Who will do what, and when?

List of activities

Summary: The principals for this project are Emily Temple-Wood and James Hare. James is responsible for securing the venue and arranging catering, travel, and accommodations. Emily will recruit participants through the English Wikipedia and Meta-Wiki, teach during the training, and help to guide the participants throughout. She will also facilitate round-table discussions with the participants to help refine their approach to workshops/editing events.

Recruitment: We are looking to recruit 10–15 participants for this seminar. The recruited participants will be from the United States and Canada, but we will offer financial assistance to international applicants if funding is available. We will reach out to specific Wikipedia editors we believe would benefit from this training and engage in recruitment efforts through Wikimedia wikis, including watchlist notices and village pump notices. Wikimedia DC will also be inviting several locally-based participants.

Program: The seminar will last three days, August 29–31. The first day will be held at the University of Maryland McKeldin Library, where participants will (among other things) learn how to work with librarians to get access to specialized sources. The second day of the seminar will feature instruction on creating a friendly and welcoming space for workshop participants. The participants will be divided into two-person "pods" to work together on developing their skills, a form of social learning. The third day will focus on each participant developing a plan for carrying out workshops where he or she lives. Group meals will be held throughout the seminar, encouraging the participants to socialize and develop close ties that will help them in their continued outreach.

After the Weekend: The objective is for each participant to leave DC with the skills necessary to develop a program of Wikipedia workshops. Consistently repeated events, as opposed to one-off events, have been shown to be effective in increasing editor retention. Each participant will be expected to develop a game plan for their own workshop series, which will be developed throughout the training session. Six months following the seminar, we will check back in with the participants to determine how effective it was in planning workshops.

Metrics: To facilitate our reporting, each facilitator will be expected to keep records consistent with Wikimedia DC standards for edit-a-thon reporting, including username tracking and tracking event attendance rates. (For an example, see a recent Wikimedia DC report.) To measure effectiveness, the number and size of edits and editor event-to-event retention will be measured against one year of Wikimedia DC edit-a-thons.

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here.

Grantees are subject to line-item scrutiny of expenses. Changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

Project budget table

Total cost of project

US$11,909

Total amount requested from the Project and Event Grants program

US$7,909

Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this project, and amounts funded

US$4,000 re-allocated from Projects 2014 grant.

See a description of non financial assistance available. Please inform Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) of any requirements for non-financial assistance now.

Requests for non-financial assistance

We would like to put out a call for applications on the English Wikipedia (the training will be conducted in English).

After the event, we will want to write about it on the WMF blog, and will work with the communications team to do so.

Emily will provide copies of the kit from her IEG printing budget, but we would like some supplementary merchandise (in addition to what she already has from IEG) to give to participants.

Resources

This section is used to highlight your potential for successfully executing this project.

Consider including the following information:

• List of team members (names or usernames):
• Onwiki evidence of community support (such as a project about this discussion):
• Endorsements from community members or movement groups:
• Special skills or qualifications this potential grantee or project lead brings to this project:
• Evidence of past success in executing similar projects:

Wikimedia DC has a strong track record of three-day training events, including GLAM Boot Camp in 2013 which led to the development of highly active outreach volunteers. We also have a strong track record of booking travel, most recently arranging travel for 25 scholarship recipients for WikiConference USA. We share our lessons regarding travel planning on the travel planning page on Meta, and have invited other organizations to do likewise. We also developed a how-to guide for GLAM Boot Camp, which we will eventually transfer to Grants:Learning patterns.

The program was designed by Emily Temple-Wood, the Vice President of Wikimedia DC and a recipient of the Individual Engagement Grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. This facilitator training is a logical extension of her research in Chicago, applying the techniques developed at Loyola University Chicago to a wider base of potential workshop organizers. By training other workshop organizers and studying their outcomes, we can learn whether the results in Chicago can be reproduced.

Wikimedia DC has a strong background in planning and carrying out edit-a-thons; we have so far held 15 edit-a-thons in this fiscal year alone. The diversity of institutions we have planned events with gives us access to a broad base of GLAM professionals in DC who would benefit from this training, and our consistent tracking of edit-a-thons gives us a baseline to compare the subsequent Wikipedia workshops against. Our reach in DC puts us in an excellent position to host workshops in the coming year.

Risks

This section is used to identify key risks or threats that would prevent you from achieving your project goals and how you would mitigate those risks and threats.

Key risks: We identify three primary risks. The first risk is the potential lack of interest. The second risk is that participants will not be able to plan as many workshops as expected, or any at all. There is also a significant risk posed by the brief time window during which this seminar is being planned; we expect there to be just enough time to arrange travel, but there is a very small window for delay and error.

Mitigating risks: If fewer people sign up than expected, we will have leftover money to return to the Wikimedia Foundation. However, our target for participation is a low one to meet, and several people have expressed interest. If those who do participate cannot carry out as many workshops as planned, we can investigate why that turned out to be the case, and these lessons will help us plan future seminars. Regarding the limited time window, this seminar is a high priority for us, and we are dedicating as much time as needed to carry out the seminar in a satisfactory manner, having already carried out significant pre-planning.

In the sections below, please describe how the project is related to the Wikimedia mission and Wikimedia's strategic priorities.

How will this project support the key organizational objectives of

• increasing reach (more people will access or contribute to Wikipedia or our other projects),
• participation (more people actually contributing),
• quality (more content, more useful content, or higher-quality content),
• credibility (more trust in our projects),
• organizational maturity and effectiveness (how it will move you or the Wikimedia community forward),
• or financial sustainability (how it will help you achieve more in the long run)?

This statement should address at least one of the strategic priorities listed here specifically. See Project and Event Grants program criteria for decision making.

Emily's research has focused on improving editor retention at Wikipedia editing events, and the outcomes from this research have been encouraging. Expanding the scope of research allows us to study this in greater depth, while scaling up these efforts allow more people to benefit from well organized training workshops. Building a community of organizers through this seminar is also vital to the continuation of these organizing efforts; for example, Emily is an alumna of Wikimedia DC's 2013 GLAM Boot Camp. Wikimedia DC, in addition to the invited participants, stands to benefit from this seminar, as we will learn what we can do to hold more effective editing events. Finally, each workshop held generates content for Wikipedia, directly improving the quality of Wikipedia. Therefore, it supports the objectives of increasing reach, participation, quality, and organizational maturity/effectiveness.

If the project will benefit a specific online community, please tell us.

This will primarily benefit English Wikipedia, but international attendees (if there are any) could potentially carry out events for other language editions.

Please provide a brief statement about how the project is related to other work in the Wikimedia movement. For example, does the project fit into a work area such as GLAM, education, organizational development, editor retention, or outreach?

This works primarily for organizational development in that it trains people in the proper techniques for hosting Wikipedia workshops. These workshops, however, work to improve editor retention.

If successful, will the project have the potential to be replicated successfully by other individuals, groups, or organizations? Please explain how in 1–2 sentences.

We would like for other Wikimedia affiliates to host their own facilitator training, depending on their needs. The techniques of this workshop, as well as the resulting findings, will be published for the benefit of other organizations.

Please list other benefits to the movement here.

This seminar is a form of professional development, benefitting each individual participant. Participating GLAM professionals could participate in this training, giving them skills not shared by their peers.