June was busy and fun! Just check all the things that happened.

Vodcast

WikiAfrica Hour had the theme: #36: Does the Wikimedia movement contribute to the SDGs? and I was a guest representing the user group. It went well in my opinion and I think it might be an inspiring episode for people who see it.

User group meeting

We had a good and productive meeting, and another member of the user group organized it. That was a lovely feeling. Minutes are published.

Affiliate health

The Affiliations Committee published new criteria for judging the health of the affiliates, and based on that I made a table to see how well Wikimedians for Sustainable Development meet them. The table makes it clear that we have some room for improvement, and makes it very actionable what we need to do.

Goals and strategy

One very concrete thing we are missing are measurable goals. So I started a page for us to collect them. When doing that, I thought it would be necessary to connect them to the movement strategy, and set up a strategy page for the user group to do that connection. Of course, both of these are just empty placeholders for now, but at least we have some concrete things for the agenda for our upcoming meetings.

Voting on the Movement Charter

The user group may vote on the adoption of the Movement Charter, so I started a page for our vote and got nominated as the person to submit it on the behalf of the user group.

Newsletter

I sent another monthly newsletter, and this one was full of stuff, both from the user group and from around the movement.

This is the first half of my sixth monthly report of my New Year’s resolutions.

April didn’t see much on-wiki activity for the Wikimedians for Sustainable Development user group, but I did do two large activities. Plus, I got my act together and sent a newsletter for March and April.

Wikimedia Summit 2024

First, I went to the Wikimedia Summit as a representative for the user group. It was a lot of work, but really focused on the Wikimedia Movement Charter, which is so generic it won’t have much direct impact on the user group activities (but possible on the governance). I was interviewed for a podcast in my role as a user group representative, but that episode will be published in early May.

Grant writing

Second, I wrote an application to the O’Shaughnessy Fellowships to work on setting up a secretariat for the user group. While the likelihood it is approved is fairly low, if successful, it would give me the opportunity to work full-time in it, so keep your fingers crossed.

As it was a fellowship, much of the application is focused on me, and not relevant to share, but I also made an action plan that might be useful for someone thinking about similar progress for their affiliate. I posted that in my own Ideas repository, along with the video pitch I recorded.

This is the second half of my fourth monthly reports of my New Year’s resolutions.

This month was a slow month. While we had planned a user group meeting, the shift to daylight savings time caused confusion, and we didn’t manage to get together.

On a positive note, I managed to get a proposal for Wikimania submitted. Now, let’s hope that the program committee finds it worthy.

This is the second half of my third monthly reports of my New Year’s resolutions.

This is the second half of my second monthly reports of my New Year’s resolutions.

User group meeting about roles and responsibilities

I organized a user group meeting and got some great help from Alex Stinson to facilitate it. We wanted to explore what further roles could be created in the user group to get more people to feel there was space for them to be more deeply involved. We go some ideas, but there is more work to be done. Minutes from the meeting.

This is the first half of my monthly reports of my New Year’s resolutions. I am not sure exactly how I want these monthly reports to be like yet, so I am just going to make a simple one to start with, and I’ll see how it evolves in the coming reflections.

Annual report 2023

I created the base for the annual report, basically by copying the format from last year and then adding what had been listed in the activities section over the year. With a bit of nudging in the Telegram channel, a few others added some more detail too, which was appreciated. Together with Daniel Mietchen, we added some images from the events and that was basically it.

It is thin, but it is also a fair description of our activities over the year, and I can only hope that it could also light a fire for us to do better.

Plan a user group meeting

As a result of my nudging, there was also a request to figure out more things people could help with. I was delighted by that and encouraged it. This led to Alex Stinson offering to help coordinate a workshop to find some activities for the user group and roles that people could take on for that. We have scheduled the workshop for February 9.

January newsletter

With those two points in the works, I felt inspired to start a newsletter to get this out. Luckily, there are some other activities happening too, that fit in there. Even if it is one of the shortest newsletters, I still feel good about it, as the news it carries might be one of the most important so far.

The newsletter has evolved through a couple of phases over the years, and I still don’t think it has found its final form. All ideas are welcome.