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Notes from meeting with Wikimedia Morocco User Group
Date: 2021-10- 18

Participants:
Tore Danielsson
Axel Pettersson
Representatives for the Wikimedia Morocco User Group

How do you work with content partnerships today?

WM MA UG only has volunteers. Volunteering is good for editing and creating content, but harder for running partnerships professionally. No legal status for the group in the country. Hard to get bigger funding from WMF apart from rapid grants. Being an informal group also makes it hard to work with government organizations as they are expecting more formal collaborations.

  • First partnership with the Swedish embassy around WikiGap.
  • Having a local association in Marrakesh as fiscal sponsor for organizing a conference.
  • Getting help to set up a grant application around “Reading Wikipedia in the Classroom”, Reading network as fiscal sponsor and partner for that.
  • Partnership with the Education team at WMF as a continuation from an earlier project. Having two local staff members running the project. Running along with Bolivia and the Philippines.
  • Using Wikidata to set up objects and properties to make it easier to run bot jobs. Add monuments to get lists. Some are already done with Mix’n’match.
  • New language wikipedia (Tachelhit) set up, working informally with the royal institute of amazigh culture (IRCAM) to get it accepted.
  • List of events and partnerships also in UG reports at Meta.
What is your normal work process in collaborations with partners?

We need to distinguish two different approaches and processes. Either the external organization reaches out to us or it is the initiative of our UG. For the first case, the external entity - which can be an association, cultural institution or student organization - is in most cases knowledgeable of the User group and its activities, and therefore present to us the project or idea they would like to implement with our collaboration. We exchange through emails, hold meetings online or in-person to agree on the suitable action plan and timeline. As for the second case, the initiative comes from the UG, following internal discussions, to consider establishing partnership in order to support us in a specific project we are launching (especially that UG hasn't a legal status in the country, and needs therefore to establish partnerships to run "offline" projects). We prepare a concept note to the attention of the entity we are targeting presenting who we are, the project we would like to initiate and how this partnership would help both parties. If successful (meaning they get back to us), we hold a series of meetings to agree on the roles and responsibilities of each, adequate timeline and activities to be undertaken.

Are you having a work plan for new partners and collaborations?

Work with Wikidata to upload metadata.

What are your desired content partnerships in the future?

Establishing a Wikimedian-in-Residence in collaboration with a cultural organization. Documenting cultural heritage through GLAM partnerships (import of material in Commons, thematic edit-a-thons)

What are your needs for a successful work with partners?
  • Need for being recognized as a “formal” group. Maybe not a legal entity, but at least recognized. Getting a formal letter of recognition from WMF would be valuable to show that the UG is to count with.
  • Also need for some staff time to be able to do daytime work for the user group. Getting a contractor or someone able to have meetings and do training during their normal work hours.
  • Better communication with WMF to not have them interfere and do projects in the region as the UG have boots on the ground and both can and want to have contacts and run projects. Local culture gives better results when doing face to face meetings than by contacting potential partners by phone or email. Personal contacts are important to build relationships.
  • Sustainability from the partners would help to build better partnerships. Have them see events as not a one off thing but rather the start of a long term collaboration.
  • Need to have long term planning in order to work with government institutions as they have a yearly budget that needs to be set the year before. Hard to plan that long ahead when only volunteers are working for the UG. Sometimes political decisions need to be negotiated in where events can take place and things have to move around.
What does the best support look like for a successful partnership?

The UG would need project management training in order to run collaborations better. Both how to negotiate and implement projects, but also how to write contracts and how to avoid conflicts and sort out when projects don’t go as planned. Technical training is also needed for the UG to be able to run other collaborations.

Other questions or suggestions for people who would be interested in discussing these issues? Other comments?

Previous experience from the Arabic speaking community to gather partners and projects in a database from before. Basic structures were set up but never got flying.

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