My sustainability November 2024

User group meeting and strategy

We did have a tiny but constructive user group meeting (minutes) in November which brought up one good new idea about exploring new media and coordinating that work. I added it to the strategy which is starting to come together to the point that I think we can use it for 2025 and then incrementally improve it. As the year is quickly coming to an end, I also set up a page for our annual plan for next year to start collecting some tangible ideas.

Newsletter

The newsletter came together this month too, and this time also with a new contributor which was nice.

CEE catch-up call #8

The Central and East Europe hub have catch-up calls and for their 8th I was invited to give a brief introduction to the user group. It was recorded but neither the video nor the slides (I added mine to their slide deck) have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons yet.

My Fediverse November 2024

As previous months, I continued to share news about the Fediverse on Mastodon, in particular I enjoyed this analogy to Fediverse being vegetarian, organic, locally produced food and other social media being ultra-processed food by giant corporations. I also enjoyed this personal and educational explainer of the Fediverse:

This month I also encountered a lot of comparisons to Bluesky. While planned to be decentralized and federated, I read enough now to know that it isn’t yet.

Deactivating Twitter

I guess the biggest news is that I finally deactivated my personal Twitter account, @Jan Ainali. Taking the plunge was easier when I figured out how to share my archive, and you can find it on aina.li/twitter. Similarly, I published the much smaller archive for @openbydefault on openbydefault.se/twitter. What is left for me in this regard is to deactivate that account and figure out where and how to start a new Fediverse account, preferably using my own domain.

Streaming and podcast improvements

I continued to do some live streaming on Everything video. Unfortunately, there seems to be something causing to video and audio to lose sync after a few minutes. I think I need to file a bug report somewhere.

On the more fun note, I got into a conversation with the developer of the WordPress ActivityPub plugin on Mastodon and got some tips to make the audio file from our podcasts playable directly in the feeds. That’s a really nice step forward.

Post by @pfefferle@mastodon.social
View on Mastodon

The conversation also encouraged me to do a feature request on the plugin, my very first!

My sustainability October 2024

Strategy

I created a first draft of the strategy for 2030 by moving the ideas we came up with at our last meeting. It’s not fully fledged, but perhaps it is good enough to provoke a reaction, or to see what is missing when we get down to annual planning.

Newsletter

While not packed with content, I did manage to get a newsletter for October sent.

Social Media

This month, after a discussion I initiated, we opted to deactivate the Twitter account @wikisusdev: Internet Archive.

On a more constructive note, I also engaged a new moderator in the Facebook group. I truly hope to be able to get more people involved like this, by taking on quite small tasks. Not only will it unburden me, but my ambition is that it will increase the sense of belonging, community and agency in the process and development happening in all these ends.

This is the second half of my ninth report of my New Year’s resolutions.

My Fediverse October 2024

As previous month, I continued to share news about the Fediverse on Mastodon, it felt like that there was more good news this month. I highly enjoyed the FLOSS Weekly podcast episode with Andy Piper about Mastodon and I answered a survey for a bachelor’s thesis about users’ perception of Mastodon.

Creating PeerTube accounts

I finally found an instance that felt serious and allowed live streaming, and now I have a PeerTube account at Everything Video. The channels I have started and plan to publish videos on there is Wiki Editing for myself and one for Wikipediapodden.

I also found the niche instance Urbanists.video so now I have also started an account dedicated for biking in Amsterdam (but not published any videos yet).

Deactivating Twitter accounts

This month I got around to closing down some Twitter accounts I have been managing. Some I tried to archive properly using the instructions from the Internet Archive, but it looks from the logs that X makes it nearly impossible, as all new tweets failed to be retrieved. Some I just did a quick archive of the profile page before deactivating, some even failed archiving the profile page as Twitter makes a (hostile) redirect to another tweet instead. Here are the ones that I have already deactivated:

For Open By Default, @openbydefault I haven’t deactivated yet. I am both in need of starting a Mastodon account somewhere, and get around to publish the old tweets: Internet Archive, archive downloaded

For the Govdirectory project, we wanted to make sure no one else could claim the name, so we pinned a tweet pointing to our Mastodon account.

For Wikimedians for Sustainable Development, we opted to deactivate the account @wikisusdev: Internet Archive.

For Wikipediapodden, we opted to deactivate the account @wikipediapodden: Internet Archive.

Upcoming

In November month, I will publish some of the archives using this conversion tool.

Tips on Mastodon instances that would fit for the deactivated bots (now that Botsinspace is closing) would be appreciated.

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

My sustainability August and September 2024

September was more hectic than planned, so here comes two months of reporting at once.

Wikimania

As I mentioned last month, I organized a meetup for anyone interested in sustainable development. While decently attended, it did not pan out the way I had planned. Instead of sharing ideas of what to do, there were plenty of people who felt a need to vent their worries about the climate change. I think for the future, having a separate climate café where people just can talk about that would be useful and can make the community more sustainable in itself.

I don’t know if many others used the list all sessions related to the SDGs that I created, but at least it was useful to me during the event.

User group meetings

We had meetings in both August and September, in the first we mostly did some planning and in the second, we started the work on a strategy for the user group. More work to do in the following weeks.

Newsletters

While hectic, I managed to get the newsletters sent both for August and September.

This is the second half of my eighth report of my New Year’s resolutions.

My Fediverse August and September 2024

September was more hectic than planned, so here comes two months of reporting at once.

Just as lately, these two months were largely similar to the last ones. I have continued to boost information about Fediverse apps, news and tips and tricks.

The larger thing I did do was to talk about and to recommend the Mastodon instance wikis.world for Wikipedians on the Wikipediapodden podcast.

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

My sustainability July 2024

July was not as busy as June, but I still felt like good progress was made.

User group meeting

The meeting was yet again organized by another member of the user group, and sharing responsibilities is great. While not many attended, we decided to mode forwarded with the strategy work, which will be a fresh air and sorely needed. Minutes are published.

Wikimania

Wikimania is coming up in a week, and I have started organizing a meetup for anyone interested in sustainable development.

I also looked through the entire program and made a list of all sessions related to the SDGs. Hopefully, that can help people navigate to impactful sessions.

Newsletter

I sent another monthly newsletter! This time I also got some input from more user group members, which is promising for the future.

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

My Fediverse July 2024

This month has been largely similar to the last one. I have continued to boost information about Fediverse apps, news and tips and tricks.

The new development I have made is that I have started researching where I could buy a service to self-host a Mastodon server for my company Open By Default. Any tips of lived experience are appreciated.

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

My sustainability June 2024

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.