CIS-A2K/Work plan July 2017 - June 2018/Skill Building Initiatives

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Kannada

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Telugu

Bridging Gender Gap

Global Engagement

Skill Building

Executive summary

CIS-A2K strongly feels that skill-building activities and initiatives play a very crucial role to empower a Wikimedia community. This observation is based on the analysis of the requests that A2K has received towards technical trainin, tech trouble shooting and resolution of bugs. In the Strategic plan June 2016 - July 2018, CIS-A2K proposed that we would gradually "move from the facilitator role to an active contributor towards skill building initiatives."

To become a self-sustaining community, a community needs leaders who can train, conduct and lead outreach, initiate GLAM sctivities and also provide technical expertise for the development of Wiki activities.

CIS-A2K continuously receive requests from Indic Wikimedians to conduct and support/power skill-building and other Wiki-technical training workshops/training and this has been one our topmost priorities. A2K team has been conducting Media Wiki Training to address these issues along with regional training sessions to include local Wikimedians as well.

During this work-plan year also CIS-A2K will work on various community strengthening and skill development initiatives (MWT, Mini Tech Training Sessions, Tech Wishlist, technical Audit) and activities.

Over-all goal

CIS-A2K proposes to conduct:

• 3 national level skill-building workshops/initiatives and
• 10-12 regional skill-building activities

Where we expect to

• Involve at least 100 Wikimedians to undergo various levels of training and troubleshoot the problems faced by Indic communities.
• Train at least 8 Indic Wikimedia Community Ambassadors dedicated to provide tech support and guide new Wikimedians related to the matters of MediaWiki.

Please find the overview in the infograph below:

Best practices

CIS-A2K will try to:

1. avoid one-time activities: as one-time activities generally don't help in consolidating relationship with an institution and often fail to fulfill the aim of bringing new editors, and editor retention
2. Design efficient follow-up activities and customised training programs

Wikimedia India conference 2018

The Wikimedia movement in India has grown leaps and bounds in the last few years. Indic Wikimedians have been recognised globally and Indic communities have contributed in framing of policies and guidelines that influence the Wikimedia movement worldwide. However only a few support structures and groups such as Wikimedia India, CIS-A2K, User Groups exist in India and these support structures are working independently though contributing towards a common cause. Inspired by Wikimedia Conference, CIS-A2K proposes to conduct a national-level edition of the WMCON in India in the first quarter of 2018 (between January-March). This conclave will serve as an idea exchange platform and will yield insights for all the participating organizations, communities, and groups working in India for the development of the movement.

Expected participants

• Wikimedia India Chapter;
• Wikimedia User Groups representatives in India;
• Experienced Indic Wikimedians
• WMF Staff
• CIS-A2K representatives;

Expected outcome

• Strategy planning for collaborative work for next 1 year.
• Common minimum targets for various Wiki projects
• Cultivating partnerships for skill building and global engagement
• Setting up of support structures for Wikimedians

Train-the-Trainer

Train-the-Trainer 2017 participants

Train-the-Trainer or TTT is a residential training that attempts to groom leadership skills among the Indic Wikimedia community members. Based on internal needs-assessment conducted annually CIS-A2K tweaks and improvises the design and expected outcomes of TTT. It has also been established (via various requests on the request page and feedback forms collected by A2K) that there is a lot of potential to do outreach in India and Indic community members need to be groomed for such an endeavour. TTT is an annual workshop and has been conducted in 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2017 and has received positive responses from the participants and observors. TTT has been imagined as an idea-exchange platform, from where we have seen ideas come to fruition, such as Punjab Edit-a-thon

TTT has been a successful event, however there are a few areas where A2K can improve:

1. We have noticed that the enthusiasm of the participants has been short-lived.
2. Although individual leaders have emerged out, comprehensive community-driven activities have been missing.

Goal

This year also CIS-A2K will conduct a Train-the-Trainer event. These are our targets:

• One national-level Train-the-Trainer event;
• Around 18-20 Wikimedians are expected to join;
• From at least 8 different Indic communities;
• The participants will be conducting and leading (minimum of one outreach activity)Wiki-events post TTT 2018.

Target

• At least 4 ideas planned or discussed during the workshop will be taken forward/supported. CIS-A2K would like to financially support the idea and help in evaluating the event. This should result in at least 4 community-driven independent Wiki-events.

Community consultation

CIS-A2K conducted a [1] among Indic Wikimedians (mainly TTT participants) and asked if they found the TTT program useful. Here are some of the responses we have received. We have taken their permission to include their comments:

Urdu Wikipedian User:Drcenjary told:

Train-the-Trainer event is very much helpful at the Multi Lingual Context esp in India. Urdu Language Community requires one dedicated workshop of a three day event in collaboration with either Dr. Abdul Haq Urdu University, Kurnool, Andhra Pradesh or/and Maulana Azad National Urdu University, Hyderabad.)

English Wikipedian User:Krishna Chaitanya Velaga told:

It is a very helpful and an innovative move by the CIS. It helps a lot for experienced editors to get knowledge about of outreach programs. The duration can be extended to 4 full length days with more exposure to various other aspects of WMF. Also I suggest you another important aspect that is the time. It is better to conduct the events, both the TTT and the MWT, in the month of May or early June, because most of the professionals and students will be on vacation. So it would be easy for them to attend the event without any professional or educational constraints.

Telugu Wikipedian User:Nrgullapalli felt that. . .

. . . it is important to conduct such events frequently

We also received several suggestions to further improve this program. For example, Bengali Wikipedian User:Bodhisattwa alerted us:

Follow-up is needed. Participants should be asked by CIS for mandatory reporting to the community about what they have learned and share the knowledge.

All feedback and suggestions will be taken into account before planning TTT event for the upcoming grantr period.

Changes

CIS_A2K would like to bring these changes in the proposed MWT/WTT workshop:

1. Invite expert Wikimedian(s) not only as a resource person, but involve them throughout the process.
2. Better pre-event introduction/briefing about the topics to be discussed during an event.

MediaWiki Technical Training or Wiki Technical Training

MediaWiki 2017 sessions

MediaWiki Training or MWT is a residential training program that attempts to groom technical leadership skills among the Indian Wikimedia community members. MWT has been conducted in 2015, 2016, and 2017.

Goal

This year also CIS-A2K proposes to undertake MWT (or Wiki Technical training). These are our targets

• One national-level MWT
• Around 14 participants
• From at least 6 different Indic communities

Community consultation

Following are afew important suggestions offered by the participants of MediaWiki Training 2017:

• As the workshop concentrates on general Wikipedia technical topics such as tools, gadgets, scripts, templates, more emphasis should be given on 'MediaWiki software and different extension'.
• Participant should be selected based on their aptitude for MediaWiki-related projects.

Telugu Wikimedian User:Meena gayathri.s is of the opinion:

Yes of course (the training us useful), but there is a suggestion for media wiki training.

In MWT there is a very small session about MediaWiki. We couldn't learn more about it. And there were some unimportant sessions which are not in schedule too. I suggest that the organizers should concentrate more on scheduled topics.

Team A2K will take into account these valuable feedback for the next iteration of MWT/Wiki Technical training workshop.

Changes

Following CIS-A2K's own assessment and the participants' feedback CIS-A2K may bring these changes in this year's workshop:

1. Inviting expert Wikimedian(s) not only as a resource person, but involve them directly right from the moment of planning the event.
2. Better pre-event introduction/briefing about the topics to be discussed during an event.

Mini TTT and MWT

Mini TTT and MWT are regional (smaller/mini) edition of the TTT and MWT program conducted of different cities of India. The mini versions of the workshop are conducted as follow-up of the main event. The follow-up event serves both as a reminder and a test run for TTT participants to examine their skills, resources, and documentation. Thus A2K ensures that there is co-ordinated follow-up between the main event and mini events. This ensures high RoI on both financial and ideas floated during the workshop. Mini TTT and MWT have have conducted in: Pune (Marathi community), Bhubaneswar (Odia community), Hyderabad (Telugu community), Kolkata (Bengali community). The Kolkata mini TTT and MWT was an initiative that was organized by the local community members.

During the survey several editors requested to organize the regional workshop for their community. A2K proposes to conduct mini training workshops in collaboration with Punjabi, Hindi, Tulu, Malayalam, Bengali communities.

Goal

This year CIS-A2K expects to conduct:

1. 2-3 mini TTT and MWT workshops for focused language area communities
2. 1-2 workshops for non focused language area communities.
3. Participation of at least 40 Indic Wikimedians

Mini TTT and MWT in different cities in India till March 2017

Possible Mini TTT and MWT regions in India in 2017-2018 (click to enlarge)

Wikidata clinic

In the last couple of years Wikidata has grown to be a project of immense interest for global Wikimedians. Indic Wikimedians have shown enthusiasm in working towards the project. A couple of Wikidata workshops conducted by Asaf Bartov (WMF) in India and CIS-A2K has started working with Wikidata project from the last project year and regional MWTs workshops discussed the importance of Wikidata, Wikidata tools and A2K has also hosted lable-a-thons. Taking into account several requests that A2K has received towards introducing Wikidata workshops, we would be organising quarterly Wikidata workshop (introduction, orientation lable-a-thon). In last one year or so CIS-A2K received several requests to conduct or power Wikidata workshops.

Plan

• Popularizing Wikidata label, item and property management (creation; translation etc.)
• Popularizing Wikidata game and integrating with Wikipedia Education Programs;
• In Hackathon, times will be allotted for Wikidata

CIS-A2K request page

CIS-A2K regularly provides support to Indic-language Wikimedia communities. A2K feels that this is an important task and such support is essential to conduct Wiki-related workshops, edit-a-thons and events to improve their projects. These requests are put on CIS-A2K request page. These requests undergo the following steps before it is approved: event page creation, community discussion and endorsement, and review by CIS-A2K team members , alignment with WMF strategy and Global Metrics.

In the last 12 months, we have seen increased number of requests submitted to our request page. Between April 2016 and 21 March 2017, CIS-A2K received 32 support requests from different Indic Wikimedia communities. This includes both

1. Financial requests (Example 1, Example 2) and
2. Non-financial requests (such as technical requests, merchandise materials, asking for resource person Example 1, Example 2, Example 3).

The learning has been:

1. Indic communities should be introduced to/exposed to the various grant opportunities offered by WMF
2. A2K needs to employ creative documentation strategies
3. Community leaders and A2K must work closely in closing the loop on communication, financial agreement and support structure
4. A2K must insist on adopting code of conduct and safety and support policies for all the events supported

Metrics

Global metrics

Metric	Expected outcome
Participants	150
Newly Registered	20
Content Pages	800
Footprint tracker	9
Value of bytes deleted	2,048

Activity-specific metric

Metric	Wikimedia India Conference	Train-the-Trainer	MediaWiki Training	Mini TTT and MWT	Wikidata/other workshops
Participants	150
Newly registered	20
Content pages	800
Footprint tracker	9
Value of bytes deleted	2,048

Event-related metrics

#	Metrics	Expected outcome	Explanation
1	# of national-level Wiki workshops	3	Wikimedia India Conference Train-the-Trainer MediaWiki Training (Wiki Technical Training)
2	# of regional Wiki workshops	10
3	# of community-driven events as outcome of the events mentioned in #1, #2 above	8-10

Request-page metrics

#	Metrics	Expected outcome	Explanation
1	# of requests CIS-A2K expects to support during this work-plan year	>24	Estimation based on the requests CIS-A2K received last year. CIS-A2K received 32 requests between April 2016 and 21 March 2017

Grantee specific metrics

Metric	Count
Wikidata workshop	4 workshops in a year
Technical audit	200 issues to be fixed
Templates localised	50
Bugs filed	10
Policy pages created/localized	20

Budget

Serial number	Expenditure Item	FDC Support (INR)	FDC Support (US$)
Conversion rate: 1 → US$ 0.015
1	Salary	627,000	9,405
2	Travel and stay	100,000	1,500
3	Events and meetup	100,000	1,500
4	Digitization	35,000	525
5	Miscellaneous	15,000	225
	Total	877,000	13,155
6	In-kind support	63,000	945
	Grand total	940,000	14,100

Activity-wise Budget

Serial number	Expenditure Item	FDC Support (INR)	FDC Support (US$)
Conversion rate: 1 → US$ 0.015
1	Salary	627,000	9,405
2	Skill building	125,000	1,875
3	Content Enrichment Activities	98,000	1,470
4	WEP	6,000	90
5	GLAM	6,000	90
6	Miscellaneous	15,000	225
	Sub Total	877,000	13,155
7	In-kind support	63,000	945
	Grand total	940,000	14,100