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.
The week before last I was in Katowice in Poland for the annual conference Wikimania. Overall, it was well-organized, but as in any big conference, there are always things to improve. Unfortunately, there always seem to be some things that have been done better in the past that are regressing (for example, not using multilingual menus). I wonder how we can not only capture the learnings from every year, but also successfully transfer them over to the next.
Overview
As usual, I used the learning pattern Documenting your event experience, continuously documenting what I was doing, watching and participating in, along with notes of thoughts that I got. In total, I partook in 24 sessions and as organizer/speaker of another 3 myself during the conference. I have later watched another 6 sessions and have 7 still on my backlog, so the conference will stay in my mind for quite some time. I will delve deeper into the different aspects of my Wikimania experience below.
Podcast
This year I tried to get people together, but it was difficult to get hold of people as they were so busy with all the sessions. I did record one session, but it has not been edited yet. Per Wikipediapodden tradition, we did record one episode leading up to Wikimania and one episode summarizing it. These two are, alas, only available in Swedish.
I participated in this panel as part of my work in the Open Climate Data project for Creative Commons that I do in Open By Default now. The session was overflowing with people, apparently a huge interest. Many of the questions were specifically about the intersection with Wikidata, and I think there are some things Wikimedia needs to do to really enable this. First, create a connection from the Wikidata Query Service to the Data namespace on Wikimedia Commons. Second, enabling Structured data in the Data namespace on Wikimedia Commons so that provenance and attribution can be solved.
While I had a workshop session with this title last year, this year it was a poster session. I think at least a few people got inspired to take a closer look at their countries when back home, and I got some good sources immediately when standing there.
This poster really sparked many interesting conversations. It was inspiring that so many attendees were so knowledgeable about Wikidata and also found it important.
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.
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.
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.
Surprisingly, the tables were turned when after an interview at the Wikimedia summit in April, Eva Martin offered to interview me. I agreed, and here is the episode where I elaborate on the experience of the summit with the perspective of being there as a representative for the Wikimedians for Sustainable Development. While it is a bit specific for the summit, it still is a good introduction to the user group.
User group meeting
I announced a user group meeting, but it was not many attendees. I still took some notes and published the minutes.
On a more positive note, another user group member offered to help announce the meetings and already scheduled one for 16 June after a bit of coaching. This is precisely what I hoped for, and with just three or four more members taking on small tasks like this, it will turn into a lively group quickly.
Newsletter
There were also plenty of cool things happening in the community, and the newsletter for May was fun to write.
Grant
Last month, I reported I submitted a grant for starting a secretariat. Unfortunately, it was declined.
I have been podcasting for Wikipediapodden for almost five years now. The show is a weekly news run down with recurring segments. However, often when I go to Wikimedia events, I bring my gear and record special episodes, interviews with some of the attendees of the event. I did this again for the Wikimedia Summit in Berlin this year too, when I participated as the representative for Wikimedians for Sustainable Development.
After I recorded the interview with Eva Martin, from the organizing team in Wikimedia Deutschland, she asked if she could interview me with the same questions I was using. I accepted, and we recorded straight away. The result was published today.
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 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.
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.
