Grants:APG/Proposals/2012-2013 round1/Wikimedia Argentina/Impact report form
Purpose of the report
[edit]FDC funds are allocated to improve the alignment between the Wikimedia movement's strategy and spending; support greater impact and progress towards achieving shared goals; and enable all parts of the movement to learn how to achieve shared goals better and faster.
Funding should lead to increased access to and quality of content on Wikimedia project sites – the two ultimate goals of the Wikimedia movement strategic priorities, individually and as a whole. Funded activities must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
Each entity that receives FDC funding will need to complete this report, which seeks to determine how the funding received by the entity is leading towards these goals. The information you provide will help us to:
- Identify lessons learned, in terms of both what the entity learned that could benefit the broader movement, and how the entity used movement-wide best practices to accomplish its stated objectives.
- Assess the performance of the entity over the course of the funded period against the stated objectives in the entity's annual plan.
- Ensure accountability over how the money was spent. The FDC distributes "general funds", for both ongoing and programmatic expenses; these funds can be spent as the entity best sees fit to accomplish its stated goals. Therefore, although line-item expenses are not expected to be exactly as outlined in the entity's proposal, the FDC wants to ensure that money was spent in a way that led to movement goals.
For more information, please review FDC portal/Reporting requirements or reference your entity's grant agreement.
Basic entity information
[edit]Note you can copy this from your recent progress report if the information is the same. Table 1
Entity information | Legal name of entity | Asociación Civil Wikimedia Argentina |
Entity's fiscal year (mm/dd–mm/dd) | 01/01-12/31 | |
12 month timeframe of funds awarded (mm/dd/yy-mm/dd/yy) | 01/01/13-12/31/13 | |
Contact information (primary) | Primary contact name | Anna Torres |
Primary contact position in entity | Executive Director | |
Primary contact username | Anna Torres (WMAR) | |
Primary contact email | annawikimedia.org.ar | |
Contact information (secondary) | Secondary contact name | María Cruz |
Secondary contact position in entity | Communications Manager | |
Secondary contact username | María Cruz (WMAR) | |
Secondary contact email | mariawikimedia.org.ar |
Overview of the past year
[edit]The purpose of this section is to provide a brief overview of this report. Please use no more than 2–3 paragraphs to address the questions outlined below. You will have an opportunity to address these questions in detail elsewhere in this report. Also, we encourage you to share photographs, videos, and sound files in this report to make it more interactive, and include links to reports, blog posts, plans, etc as these will add context for the readers.
- HIGHLIGHTS: What were 2–3 important highlights of the past year? (These may include successes, challenges, lessons learned. Please note which you are describing)
- SWOT: Reflecting on the context outlined for your entity in the FDC proposal, what were some of the contextual elements that either enabled or inhibited the plan? Feel free to include factors unanticipated in the proposal.
- Strengths: Organizational strengths that enabled the plan
- Weaknesses: Organizational weaknesses that inhibited the plan
- Opportunities: External opportunities that enabled the plan
- Threats: Risks or threats that inhibited the plan
- WIKI-FOCUS: What Wikimedia projects was your entity focused on (e.g., Wiki Commons, French Wiktionary) this year?
- GROWTH: How did your entity grow over the past year (e.g., Number of active editors reached/involved/added, number of articles created, number of events held, number of partipants reached through workshops)? And what were the long term affects of this growth (e.g. relationships with new editors, more returned editors, higher quality articles, etc)?
Response:
- HIGHLIGHTS:
- Education activities: Wikimedia Argentina managed to expand its educational activities. We were involved in dialogue with different educational referents in order to obtain elements to develop a wider educational strategy, we hosted several workshops and presentations with students and teachers and signed an agreement with the National University of Córdoba.
- Edit-a-thons: Three edit-a-thons took place in 2013. This type of activity allowed us to achieve success in several fronts: the institutions have released various images and photos to Wikimedia Commons, people who want to join our movement have been educated, old Wikimedians have been reactivated and encouraged to join our chapter, community ties have been strengthened and relations with the institutions have been improved.
- Professionalization: We continued to improve our chapter, making it a more serious and trustable organization, with clear processes and improving our reports. We incorporated our second officer: Communications Manager.
- SWOT:
- Strengths: Clear leadership in the Board and the staff, permanent and strong relationship with our movement, trusted organization by
- Weaknesses: Limited taskforce, young organization with few experience, lack of major contacts with private and public organizations.
- Opportunities: Increasing knowledge and value of Wikipedia and the movement by external institutions.
- Threats: Financial and economic problems in the country, bureaucracy.
- WIKI-FOCUS: We focused, as usual, in the Spanish-speaking Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. Also, there were some initiatives supporting Spanish-speaking Wikisource.
- GROWTH:
- Important increase in the number of non-virtual activities (nearly 20 events, compared to 6 in 2012) and participants (nearly 400, compared to 200 in 2012).
- Increase in the number of articles improved (1,227 by contest, compared to 550 of the last contest in 2011; 10 articles new and improved by edit-a-thons, compared to 3 in 2012).
- Increase in the number of images and documents uploaded by GLAM agreements (273 files in 2013 from 6 institutions, compared to 86 files by 1 institution in 2012)
- Decrease in the number of images uploaded in contests (4,119 photos in 2013 compared to 6,030 in 2012)
Financial summary
[edit]The FDC requires information about how your entity received and spent money over the past year. The FDC distributes general funds, so your entity is not required to use funds exactly as outlined in the proposal. While line-item expenses will not be examined, the FDC and movement wants to understand why the entity spent money in the way it did. If variance in budgeted vs. actual is greater than 20%, please provide explanation in more detail. This helps the FDC understand the rationale behind any significant changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
If you'd prefer to share a budget created in Google or another tool and import it to wiki, you can do so in the tables below instead of using wiki tables. You can link to an external document, but we ask that you do include a table in this form. We are testing this approach in this form.
Revenues
[edit]Provide exchange rate used:
- 1 USD = 4.6900 ARS (official exchange rate on 30 Sep 2012, at the time of the FDC application)
- 1 USD = 5.1180 ARS (official exchange rate on 31 Mar 2013)
- 1 USD = 5.3736 ARS (official exchange rate on 30 Jun 2013)
- 1 USD = 5.7259 ARS (official exchange rate on 30 Sep 2013)
- 1 USD = 6.5154 ARS (official exchange rate on 31 Dec 2013)
Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan Annual grant ARS 664.894,70 0,00 399.076,63 301.921,36 0,00 700.997,99 141.768,59 122.425,82 [1][2] Membership fees ARS 2.010,00 1.825,00 0,00 1.150,00 99,49 3.074,49 428,57 526,61 CC reimbursement ARS - 0,00 0,00 0,00 113.916,05 113.916,05 - 17.915,00 [1][3] Total revenue ARS 666.904,70 1.825,00 399.076,63 303.071,36 116.990,54 817.988,53 142.197,16 140.867,43
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
- ↑ a b Precise estimation in dollars, not using conversion.
- ↑ Underspent amounts from the Grants talk:WM AR/Annual Program Plan 2012/Report/Financial report were deducted from the FDC grant.
- ↑ Grant not considered in the original budget.
Spending
[edit]Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.
- (The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan Administration ARS 59.807,00 6.552,36 32.197,15 20.873,02 14.885,12 74.507,65 12.752,03 13.201,96 104% Staff expenses ARS 261.500,00 63.899,00 86.027,27 77.940,93 90.451,05 318.318,25 55.756,93 55.989,05 100% Global engagement ARS 100.158,00 544,61 92.908,81 15.585,99 1.083,81 110.123,22 21.355,65 20.284,64 95% Organizational strengthening ARS 27.008,00 4.231,36 14.230,67 2.252,00 0,00 20.714,03 5.758,64 3.868,32 67% [1] Outreach ARS 16.500,00 0,00 5.297,05 19.137,74 9.260,85 33.695,64 3.518,12 5.749,44 163% [2] Federalization ARS 40.000,00 900,00 8.864,29 826,35 4.575,38 15.166,02 8.528,78 2.672,01 31% [3] Wiki Loves Monuments ARS 31.200,00 0,00 3.540,40 7.838,75 13.716,67 25.095,82 6.652,45 4.133,12 62% [4] Hackathon ARS 24.104,00 0,00 0,00 0,00 8.671,06 8.671,06 5.139,45 1.330,86 26% [5] GLAM activities ARS 26.000,00 180,00 0,00 2.677,00 36.496,17 39.353,17 5.543,71 6.104,22 110% Diversification ARS 11.000,00 0,00 2.460,00 632,00 10.438,40 13.530,40 2.345,42 2.170,28 93% Education activities ARS 17.000,00 5.235,65 725,85 7.109,67 1.153,00 14.224,17 3.624,73 2.576,70 71% Subtotal ARS 614.277,00 81.542,98 246.251,49 154.873,45 190.731,51 673.399,43 130.975,91 118.080,59 90% CC Global Summit ARS 0,00 0,00 0,00 36.660,00 44.224,30 80.884,30 0,00 13.190,14 - Total 2014 ARS 614.277,00 81.542,98 246.251,49 191.533,45 234.955,81 754.283,73 130.975,91 131.270,73 100%
* Provide estimates in US Dollars
- Percentage spent to date calculated using the US$ estimates.
- ↑ Internal workshop not realized.
- ↑ Includes development of new website, annual report (design and printing) and tools for digital communication.
- ↑ Activities in Cuyo and Patagonia were not carried out.
- ↑ Plans for a ceremony and photo exhibition were discarded.
- ↑ No participant applied for scholarships.
Progress against past year's goals/objectives
[edit]The FDC needs to understand the impact of the initiatives your entity has implemented over the past year. Because the FDC distributes general funds, entities are not required to implement the exact initiatives proposed in the FDC proposal; the FDC expects each entity to spend money in the way it best sees fit to achieve its goals and those of the movement. However, please point out any significant changes from the original proposal, and the reasons for the changes. Note that any changes from the Grant proposal, among other things, must be consistent with the WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, must be reported to WMF, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement. The WMF mission is "to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally."
Education Program
- What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
- General objective: Increase participation and adoption of Wikimedia project on Educational environments (mainly secondary and tertiary education)
- Particular objectives:
- Design of an Education Program for Wikimedia Argentina to face this initiative in a more comprehensive and organic way.
- Increase the number of agreements with institutions
- Increase the number of events (workshops, lectures) organized
- Increase the number of participants in activities organized by the chapter.
- What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
- Education Program: A programmatic meeting was held in March 2013, raising various issues relevant for the development of the Education Program. However, it was decided to halt the progress of this program until we have an officer with expertise in educational programs dedicated to the program design, implementation and evaluation.
- Agreements: 1 new (0 in 2012). A new agreement was signed and carried out with the National University of Córdoba. Another agreement with the Education Department of Buenos Aires Province is waiting the final approval by the ministry.
- Events: 12 events (1 in 2012). This events includes 7 presentations with students and teachers[1]
- 3 advanced workshops with students in Rosario and General Belgrano (2).
- 1 workshop with teachers in La Plata.
- 1 online workshop with teachers from different countries.
- Participants: 160 students approx., 100 teachers actively involved.
- Involvement: 1 staff member, 2 volunteers.
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Improve quality
- Increase reach
- What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
- Education Meeting: The education meeting was held on March 2013 and, in spite of showing mixed results, we were pleased with its impact on Wikimedia Argentina. It was an outstanding opportunity to join a number of people from different educational fields and encourage them to participate in a discussion about Wikipedia as a learning tool. Because of this debate we got the chance to incorporate different viewpoints on the way we are addressing our educational activities. This has also helped us to correct our educational presentations and to work with a strong focus on students' and teachers' needs. In this sense, Wikimedia Argentina has used all this knowledge to redirect the main objectives of its educational program, understanding the need of hiring a professional in this field as a way to build up in the future an effective Educational Program.
- New documents available: During 2013, Wikimedia Argentina published 2.000 print versions of its pocket manual which was published in December 2012. The Wikimedia Argentina's pocket manual is a valuable learning tool used to lead the teaching process of how to edit Wikipedia. Moreover, in December 2012 was translated to Spanish the Case Studies document created by Wikimedia Foundation. This will let us to get a better approaching to another institutions, not just showing all our work done until today, but supporting Wikimedia activities with empirical metrics and more relevant results.
- CITEP virtual course: The Center of Innovation in Technology and Pedagogics, from the University of Buenos Aires organized in November and December a massive virtual course focused on training teachers in new technologies, and learning new teachers' practices related with those. Close to 2,500 Spanish-speaking teachers all over the world (including professionals from different parts of the world, such as Albania and China) took part in the course, of which 200 took part of all the practical exercises suggested during the course. The last weeks of the course were dedicated to collaborative learning contexts, with an important emphasis on Wikipedia. Besides a video and a videoconference, a virtual workshop was created, where the participants engaged with some Wikipedians and were guided through different editing stages within the encyclopedia. After this two-weeks experience, around 60 teachers took active part in the experience, posting more than 300 messages.
- Wikimemoria: In Rosario (Santa Fe Province), we had a series of activities in a project called Wikimemoria, organized with the Free Faculty of Rosario and the Museum of Memory of that city. The main activity was a workshop within the museum with students from a local secondary school. It was a very successful activity, where the students not only were able to understand one of the most difficult parts of the Argentine contemporary history (regarding the last military dictatorship and the violation of human rights) but also understand how Wikipedia works and how they can participate on it. It was a great opportunity to see how to work together within educational institutions (as well as cultural institutions) and also a big opportunity to take advantage of the museum and used it as a learning space. It was also an important opportunity to use the new netbooks provided by the government under the national program "Conectar Igualdad", allowing us to evaluate, on a first-hand experience, the activity and its difficulties.
- If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
- The design of an Educational Program is one of the primary aims of Wikimedia Argentina; hence, it was faced during the first months of 2013 with enthusiasm. However, the first initiative showed mixed results -as mentioned before-. Wikimedia Argentina, composed by the staff, the board, their fellows and volunteers, considers the education field very interesting and varied. This typical range made it difficult to transform the discussion into specific actions and activities. The problem was not a lack of ideas but the lack of a theoretical frame and methodology that enable implementation. Considering this situation, Wikimedia Argentina decided to carry on with the design of the educational program with a professional in this field, who is starting to work in April 2014. Because we consider educational activities as key to our mission, we invested staff hours in occasional activities organized by third parties. In this manner, we always aimed at spreading the use of Wikipedia in different educational contexts. The decision to design the educational program with a specialist stems from the fact that we want to face the educational sector with the seriousness it deserves. This programmatic line will be core in our organization in 2014. We understand that by working from today onwards with a professional we will able to build our main objective in education: a specific, effective, measurable and replicable Educational Program.
- One of our biggest failures was the impossibility to include older adults into our activities. During our visit in Rosario and the activities at the Free Faculty, Wikimedia Argentina produced a specialized workshop to try to approach the inclusion of older adults in Wikimedia activities. After a workshop attended by 20 people, the following day the activity planned with older adults and secondary students did not work, as no one of the older adults came. On the same track, the workshop with the students turned out to be very successful and the fact that the older adults did not come allowed us to rethink this kind of activities and understand the causes of this failure. In our opinion, the fear of failure and the insecurity that older adults can feel when they must face young people (already familiarized with new digital tools) can explain their absence. This forced Wikimedia Argentina to look for new and different ways to include this age group in a way that they find comfortable.
Any additional details:
- ↑ Activities organized in Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires Province (Junín, Pergamino and San Miguel del Monte), Córdoba Province (Córdoba) and Jujuy Province (San Pedro de Jujuy, San Salvador de Jujuy and Libertador General San Martín).
GLAM activities
- What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
- General objective:
- Engage with cultural institutions and promote their cooperation with the Wikimedia communities, encouraging the release of materials under free licenses.
- Promote editing on Wikipedia, increasing the number of editors, and to strengthen the relationship with existing editors' community.
- Particular objectives:
- Increase the number of agreements signed with cultural institutions.
- Increase the number of activities organized.
- Increase the number of participants attending the events.
- Increase the number of articles edited and/or files uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
- What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
- Agreements: 3 new agreements (1 in 2012)
- Activities: 3 edit-a-thons (1 in 2013)
- Participants: 100 participants approx. (20 in 2013).
- Articles edited: 4 articles improved greatly (+ 20kB, avg. increase per article: 34%) and 6 new articles (+ 40kB, avg. size per article: 6,6kB)
- Photos uploaded: 148 photos uploaded from 3 institutions (in 2012, 86 from 1 institution). 24 different images in use in 14 different Wikipedia articles with a total of +50,000 visits per month.
- Documents digitized: 125 files uploaded by 4 different institutions under special agreements (0 in 2012).
- Involvement: 2 staff member, 1 volunteer.
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Improve quality
- Increase reach
- What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
- Edit-a-thons: After the outstanding experience at the Bicentennial Museum, Wikimedia Argentina carried out three edit-a-thons in new places during 2013. In June took place an edit-a-thon at the Buenos Aires Legislative Palace, with full support of the City Legislature. This activity provided 86 images of its historical building to Wikimedia Commons. The Space for Memory and Human Rights, used in the past as an illegal detention center, opened its doors to more than 40 Wikimedians interested in expand the information on Wikipedia about one of the saddest events of the local contemporary history. The Space provided more than 50 images of the place and its activities, including some preserved places that can't be photographed normally for legal reasons. The third edit-a-thon, the first outside Buenos Aires, was carried out during the activity Wikimemoria in Rosario (as mentioned before in the Education segment).
- Agreement with the Buenos Aires Cultural Institute: On May 16th, Wikimedia Argentina signed an agreement with the Cultural Institute of Buenos Aires Province, the largest provincial institution for cultural development and preservation in the country. The agreement, signed by Jorge Telerman and Galileo Vidoni, will allow to organize several activities between our chapter and the dependent institutions of the Cultural Institute, including the Direction of Libraries, the Provincial Historical Archive (the oldest of the country) and the Digitization Program for Museums (PRODIM). Thanks to this, in 2014 we have started to upload digitized documents of the Archive and we are ready to deliver two book scanners as part of our Digitization program.
- Digitization Program: Wikimedia Argentina continued its digitization project using do-it-yourself scanners. 3 scanners that were built with funds from the 2012 annual plan were put into operation in three cultural institutions: the Faculty of Humanities and Education Sciences (FAHCE) of the National University of La Plata, the Intellectual Creation Dissemination Service (SEDICI) from the same university and the Feminaria Library. Thanks to this work, 125 documents were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. Many of these documents were freely available for the first time to the community, including several academic papers specifically licensed under Creative Commons as part of this project. Three other scanners were purchased at the end of the year and armed during January and February 2014, taking advantage of the summer period. One of these three scanners was installed in the office of Wikimedia Argentina and the other two will go to the Historical Archive of the Province of Buenos Aires and the Argentine Academy of Literature.
- GLAM document: During the last quarter of 2013, we developed a brochure to support the outreach work of our chapter (and other groups in the Spanish-speaking world) with GLAM institutions to carry out heritage projects. This document is available in digital format and, during 2014, limited editions will be printed to support meetings with directors of museums, libraries and archives.
- If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
- While we met the goals set by our program, we were a bit disappointed by the difficulties in contacting more cultural institutions willing to work with us on GLAM activities. Although we were able to contact some, then it was difficult to make them advance faster in the implementation of the agreements and activities, especially because of bureaucratic impositions required to start these projects. Even signing the agreement with the Cultural Institute did not prevent the need of additional steps, which ended up delaying the project several additional months.
Any additional details:
- Press mentions (external links):
- Signing of the agreement with Buenos Aires Province Cultural Institute: Press release, video.
- Edit-a-thon at the Buenos Aires Legislative Palace at La Nación Data.
- Edit-a-thon for the Memory: press release and video. Other press mentions at Educ.ar, Prensa ANM and Conectar Igualdad.
Contests
- What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
- General objective:
- Increase and improve the content available in Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and other Wikimedia projects, whether developing existing articles, write new entries and/or produce new media.
- Increase the number of volunteers in our projects and foster their participation, making them more active in the community.
- Particular objectives:
- Increase the number of participants of the contests.
- Increase the number of articles edited on Wikipedia.
- New photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons.
- Increase retention of participants on Wikimedia projects.
- What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
- Mujeres iberoamericanas
- Number of participants: 27 participants (+12,5% from last edition).
- Number of articles involved: 1,227 articles, including new and improved (+143% from last edition).
- Retention of participants after contest: 85%
- Wiki Loves Monuments
- Number of participants: 150 participants (-67% from last edition).
- Number of pictures uploaded: 4,119 images to Wikimedia Commons (-32% from last edition).
- Retention of participants after contest: 8%.
- Staff involved: 2 staff, 10 volunteers
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Improve quality
- Increase reach
- What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
- Mujeres Iberoamericanas: For the second time, Wikimedia Argentina organized the contest Mujeres Iberoamericanas (Ibero-American Women) for the creation and improvement of articles on Spanish Wikipedia about female personalities from the culture, arts, science and history of the Ibero-American countries. The contest was launched on March 8th as a way to address the significant gender gap that exists on Wikipedia, not only in the number of editors but also in the contents existing on the projects. 35 participants from different countries from Spain and America participated in the contest, creating and improving more than 1,200 articles. Several images were also uploaded in Wikimedia Commons to illustrate better the participating articles. The results of the contest are yet to be announced.
- Wiki Loves Monuments Argentina: Also, for the second time, Wikimedia Argentina launched the international photo contest Wiki Loves Monuments. With the cooperation of the Government of the City of Buenos Aires a new prize was created for the best picture of a monument within the city and more than 200 new monuments were uploaded to the lists, including the iconic Obelisk. New monuments were also included from Chaco, Buenos Aires, La Pampa, Misiones and Río Negro provinces. A photo safari was organized for September 29th and was attended by more than 20 participants.
- At the end of September, 4,097 pictures were uploaded to the contest from more than 140 participants. There was also an important increase in the number of monuments illustrated: after WLM 2012, 45% of the 1,881 monuments listed had a photography and now, 57% of 2,221 monuments listed are (see graphic on the right). The monuments still lacking an image are generally located in very remote places or are not clearly defined (i.e. historic sites without a concrete monument).
- Wiki Loves Monuments Antarctica: A special contest was created to cover the monuments located in Antarctica. Wiki Loves Monuments Antarctica was a singular but very significant initiative, making WLM a truly global contest. For this, we contacted the Secretary of the Antarctic Treaty (located in Buenos Aires) and they decided to support us. With that support we got contacts from other Antarctic agencies to support the contest. At the end, 5 participants sent 22 images.
- If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
- Mujeres iberoamericanas proved to be a very successful contest. There was an important increase in number of participants and an even larger in the number of articles improved. This success is based on two main reasons. The first was the possibility of cooperation with other Ibero-American countries that supported the dissemination of competition. This allowed the increase of the number of participants; although the number of Argentine participants stayed the same, those from other countries increased greatly. Because of this, international participation grew from 56% in 2011 to 68% in 2013. The second reason is the emphasis on recruiting active Wikipedia editors. The contest allowed committed volunteers to focus their work on issues relevant to improving the encyclopedia's quality and motivate them to work harder than they normally do. This allows a greater impact on the content of the encyclopedia, but these contests are usually unattractive to new users. Example of this is that the high retention rate is due entirely to active users in the encyclopedia; those very few new users who participated in the contest left almost immediately at its end.
- Wiki Loves Monuments Argentina, by contrast, had a much lower impact than expected, without even repeating previous year's results. Although the dissemination of the competition done by the chapter was improved, the awards were increased and the monuments database was increased, the drop in participants reached 67%. The fall in uploaded images (-32%) was less serious, due to the award given to the participant with most different monuments uploaded. This special award encouraged a few users to have more commitment: 5 users charged 34% of total images. On the other hand, many users did participants through very few images: 42% of participants uploaded less than 4 photographs, totaling only 2.6 % of the participants' images. Retention figures were very low and the 8% of users that continued to upload images after the contest were already veteran users on Wikimedia Commons. This has forced us to analyze and revise the competition and think of ways to improve it for 2014. In particular, we believe that two consecutive years of competition and little space for innovation affected the overall participation. Also, the reduced time for announcement on CentralNotice (after the introduction of banners for other WMF's initiatives) explained part of the decline in visits to the official contest and to the contest in general.
Outreach
- What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
- General objective:
- To promote Wikimedia projects to general audiences and engage with communities, increasing participation (new readers, editors and volunteers)
- Particular objectives:
- Produce leaflets, booklets and other materials for outreach.
- Increase estimated reach of those leaflets.
- Increase participation within our communication channels (website and social networks)
- What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
- Materials produced: 2,000 manuals about Wikipedia, 1,000 flyers, 500 institutional pens and 500 pins.
- Estimated reach: 1,500+ manuals, 500+ Wikipedia en el aula booklets, 100 Bicentenario books.
- Participation in communication channels:
- Website: 6,912 visitors and 5,528 unique visitors (between Aug-Dec 2013, no data available for previous months).
- Facebook: 2,562 daily people talking (+135% since past year), 1,382 followers (+58%), monthly average of 16,713 people reached (+90%).
- Twitter: 1,185 followers (+58%), 418 tweets (273%), 363 mentions (+65%) and 812 retweets (+124%) from 150 different users (+54%), 198 favorites (692%).
- Staff involved: 2 staff member (1 full-time, 1 part-time).
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Increase reach
- What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
- Communications Manager: In March 2013, it was decided to hire a part-time employee to be in charge of reporting the activities of the Association (to its members, the WMF and the rest of our movement), press relations and community engagement. After reviewing more than 300 résumés, María Cruz was hired, starting on April 1st. This helped the chapter to increase its work related to communicate its efforts and call for participants in their activities. After nine months, the Board positively evaluated the position and it extended it to a full-time one, starting on January 2014.
- Outreach materials: This year, we created a set of materials designed to support the activities of Wikimedia Argentina and extend the influence on the participants once the activity ends. The manual for Wikipedians have been used as an important tool for workshops and other activities, while Wikipedia en el aula booklets are still used in activities with teachers from different parts of the country. New booklets and leaflets have been printed, while we have produced pens and pins to increase the identification of volunteers with the projects and increase the chances to turn newcomers into active members.
- New website: In August 2013 the new website of Wikimedia Argentina was launched, which incorporated a radical design change, more friendly and attractive to visitors. The site was designed with a strong emphasis on news about the chapter and movement, as well as a calendar of scheduled events to encourage participation on them. Also, we created a newsletter to improve communication with partners, volunteers and people interested in chapter activities. The newsletter has had an important result, reaching a 39% openness index (nearly twice the industry average). Thus, Wikimedia Argentina renewed its face to thousands of people, giving a greater sense of professionalism and dedication to our mission.
- Social media: After hiring a new Communications Officer, Wikimedia Argentina has placed emphasis on enhancing its management of social networks to disseminate better activities of our Association and the latest news of our movement, thus bring new volunteers and enthusiasts. Our emphasis has been primarily on Facebook and Twitter, while also incorporating Google+ and Pinterest in a lesser degree. This has meant a considerable increase in the number of publications, making our networks much more active and influencing more our followers. The number of followers on Facebook and Twitter increased 58% last year, but the interaction with them has grown, getting more comments and retweets.
- If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
- Outreach has been always an important part of our work. However, we decided at the beginning of 2013 that it should be strengthened if we really expect to include new volunteers and increase participation of those already available. This explains the emphasis we have given to Communications, including the hiring of a new officer dedicated to this task and the change of our new website. Both decisions, although not included originally on the plan, has proven successful. In our opinion, a better work in communications has been fundamental to increase the number of participants in the different activities we have organized this year.
- One of the reasons behind the expansion of the reach of our printed materials has been the association with different institutions that have more activities on the field, especially in remote areas. This year, we sent manuals, booklets and books to more than 200 libraries in small cities of the Buenos Aires Province thanks to the agreement with the Cultural Institute; also, we sent materials to rural towns on San Juan and Tucumán Provinces to support the activities of digital inclusion done there by Ruta 40 Foundation, while we shared several copies of Wikipedia en el aula in Guaraní with TEDIC, a Paraguayan NGO. This way, we were able to reach new communities that would have been difficult or impossible to us; however, it is very difficult to evaluate the impact once the materials are given to another institution, with different procedures and priorities.
Organizational strengthening
- What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
- General objective:
- To constitute a professional Wikimedia chapter in Argentina, able to work efficiently with other institutions and to support and promote volunteers' work.
- Particular objectives:
- Hire a new assistant
- Organize a tutoring program to learn new skills from other chapters.
- Host workshops to improve knowledge and abilities of WM-AR members and staff.
- What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
- New assistant: Replaced by Communications Manager, hired on April 2013 as a part-time officer.
- Tutoring program: Implemented. Set of recommendations for short, mid and long term.
- Internal workshops: No workshops organized.
- Staff involved: 1 staff member and 2 Board members.
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Stabilize infrastructure
- Encourage innovation
- What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
- Tutoring program: In March 2013, we carried out a project of “institutional tutoring” that allowed us to identify areas for improvement, adapt successful projects and acquire best practices through some of the best WM chapters worldwide, like Wikimedia Deutschland (WM-DE). Cornelius Kibelka, a member of WM-DE and a former employee, visited Buenos Aires and took part in this new project, focused on the areas of Administration, Communication and Volunteers participation. His 20-days stay made possible interviews with different members of the Board, and after that, a series of recommendations were elaborated in collaboration with WM-AR Executive Director. These advices involve both short, mid and long term actions. Through 2013, several of these recommendations have been implemented and others have been scheduled for 2014, especially those related to support volunteers participation.
- Annual report: During July, Argentina Wikimedia published its first annual report, summarizing the activities realized by the chapter in the last period. Unlike previous years in which the annual report was only an object of control given to the tax authorities and the Wikimedia Foundation, this year was made with the idea of being disseminated widely to members, volunteers and institutions interested in cooperating with us. This marked an important milestone for WM-AR because it made us revisit our past activities, evaluate them and learn how to explain them other people (especially members and partners).
- If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
- The tutoring experience was a very interesting opportunity for us, not only to learn from other chapters but also to analyze internally our processes and activities. It helped us to detect spaces for improvement and raised awareness of the need to develop a clear strategy for next years. We believe this experience was very enriching and could work in other chapters all over the world. However, it is important to be careful in which chapter to use to compare and learn. The gap between WM-AR and WM-DE was probably too big and made it difficult sometimes to compare. In future tutoring programs, we recommend to have more similar institutions, where the structural gap is not that wide, so there are more opportunities for both institutions to learn and benefit in a more active way.
- We failed to organize the internal workshops for volunteers. In early 2013, we had some problems defining the role of volunteers within Wikimedia Argentina as it became an institution led by a professional staff. Once that role was clarified, it was difficult to find time to prepare those meetings so they were postponed and not produce.
Hackathon
- What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
- General objective:
- Promote the usage of MediaWiki within Argentina and encourage local developers to train skills and innovate.
- Particular objectives:
- Realization of the hack-a-thon
- What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
- Number of participants: 16 participants
- Staff involved: 2 staff members, 1 volunteer
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Increase reach
- Encourage innovation
- What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
- Wiki Hackathon: On Saturday, November 30 and Sunday, December 1, we held the first Wiki Hackathon in Argentina, a space where volunteers of the movement offered presentations on technical aspects involved in the different wiki projects and encouraged newcomers (especially, developers) to join our community. The crowd analyzed Wikipedia tools and also offered trainings on Git, Python, PHP, Bugzilla and Mediawiki installment. The event was held in the Government Lab, a space for developers that belongs to the Ministry of Modernization of the Buenos Aires City Government. In both days, the participants discussed users and edit metrics, geolocalization of recent changes and census data from Argentina and learned how to use bots within Wikipedia. We counted also with the participation of a volunteer from Chile and other from Brazil.
- If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
- The Wiki Hackathon was our first initiative targeted for a very specific community, such as developers and people interested in the more technical aspects of Wikipedia and MediaWiki. Considering the success of other hackathons initiatives, we expected to have an important number of participants. In fact, the registration for the event reached more than 60 people few days before the hackathon. However, the result was disappointing: less than 30% of the registered showed up and not necessarily both days and we didn't received a valid scholarship request for someone in the inner provinces of the country. In our opinion, the event ended up being a very specific one, discouraging the participation of more interested people. For future situations, we should join more popular hackathons before doing a second version of this particular Wiki Hackathon.
Federalization
- What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
- General objective:
- Increase the participation of people from outside Buenos Aires in the activities of Wikimedia Argentina and Wikimedia projects.
- Particular objectives:
- Increase the number of activities and events in other provinces across the country.
- Sign agreements with institutions outside Buenos Aires.
- What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
- Activities outside Buenos Aires City: 12 activities (4 in 2012)
- Agreements: 1 signed (0 in 2012).
- Staff involved: 1 staff member, 2 volunteers
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Increase reach
- What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
- Activities: Wikimedia Argentina was able to organize 12 activities outside the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, an important increase compared to past year. Most of those activities were related to our Education program. Excluding Buenos Aires Province, Wikimedia Argentina hosted 9 activities in 3 different provinces (Córdoba, Santa Fe, Salta and Jujuy). Also, we participated in conferences in La Rioja and Salta. Overall, Wikimedia Argentina participated for the first time in the North of the country and in three provinces (Jujuy, La Rioja and Salta).
- Agreements: Wikimedia Argentina signed an agreement with the National University of Córdoba, being the first agreement with an institution outside Buenos Aires-La Plata. Thanks to this agreement we were able to host 3 activities (a presentation and two workshops).
- If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
- Although there was an interest to have some activities in the Patagonian region, we weren't able to find a suitable partner to organize an activity there. We expect to change this during 2014.
- An important part of our Federalization program is to foster the participation of those already existing Wikipedians in other provinces to become more active within Wikimedia Argentina and become local leaders. However, we haven't been able yet to find people interested to do this. Even though we have a system of scholarships to help those volunteers to attend WM-AR events in Buenos Aires and be more engaged with chapter activities, very few of our members have used this. For 2014, we want to change this approach and be more pro-active, organizing small meetings with the community of different cities in Argentina in an effort to start the organization in those cities and provinces.
Diversification
- What were the stated objectives of this program? Please use SMART criteria to explain these goals.
- General objective:
- Encourage the participation of volunteers from communities underrepresented in the Wikimedia movement.
- Particular objectives:
- Publish the outcomes of Wikigénero 2012
- Develop manuals in other languages (Guaraní, Aymara, etc.)
- Organize more activities focused on underrepresented in the Wikimedia movement.
- What is your progress against these objectives? (Include metrics and number of volunteers/staff involved.)
- Wikigénero 2012: Published.
- Manuals in other languages: Suspended.
- Activities: 2 gender workshops (1 in 2012), 1 presentation on indigenous people (0 in 2012).
- Participants: 50 people approx. (10 in 2012).
- Staff involved: 1 staff member, 1 volunteer
- Which Wikimedia movement strategic priority (or priorities) did this program address and how?
- Increase participation
- Increase reach
- What key activities were conducted and/or milestones achieved with this program?
- Wikigénero publications: After a couple months of work, we published the document «Gender issues in the digital world. Wikipedia and other communities» (only available in Spanish), that brings together a selection of presentations held at WikiGénero, held on May 26, 2012, in Buenos Aires. The meeting seek to debate the possible reasons of low women engagement in the free encyclopedia, as well as reduced content of important women in the history of humanity. With this publication, we hope to take back some of the valuable discussions that took place back then, and put it at anyone's service, with an aim to continue the discussion around these issues. Through these actions we seek to improve Wikipedia's content and expand its community with new collaborators.
- Gender workshops: The workshop “Editing the gender gap in Wikipedia” was held on two different days this time: June 14 and June 28, organized jointly with the Faculty of Philosophy and Humanities of the National University in Córdoba, as part of the cooperation framework signed with that institution. The workshop was attended by 17 people on the first meeting, which lasted for three hours, and 11 people on the second meeting, which lasted for six hours. None of the participants had edited Wikipedia before, hence, the experience was also a chance for dialogue about what is the free encyclopedia and the principles in which it is inspired.
- Indigenous groups: Wikimedia Argentina has been interested in the promotion of Wikimedia projects to indigenous groups within Argentina. For example, we have used the Guarani version of Wikipedia en el aula to engage with different communities in Jujuy Province and Paraguay. In Jujuy, we hosted two activities with an important participation of people from indigenous community, especially Guarani and Aymara ones. In these presentations, we showed the multilingual reality of Wikipedia and the many possibilities a community of indigenous inhabitants has to take part in the project. Many members of the Guarani community in that city attended the presentation and were very motivated to join the projects. We are looking forward to continue these efforts in the coming months.
- Digitization: Thanks to the GLAM agreement signed with the Feminaria Library, 53 documents and books were uploaded focused on gender issues, history of Argentine women and feminist movements. Most of these documents are not available online, besides Wikimedia Commons, thus increasing the availability of this part of the history.
- Mujeres iberoamericanas: As explained in the Contests programs section, Mujeres iberoamericanas was a very successful initiative to increase the number and the quality of biographies of women relevant to the history, arts and sciences in Ibero-America. 1,227 articles were improved, reducing the gap in the representation of men and women on Wikipedia.
- If your entity did not achieve the desired objectives, why not? If it did, what enabled this? If the initiative was not in your plan, why did you pursue it?
- The manuals in indigenous languages were not developed and we considered a restructuration of the approach we have given in the past. In particular, most of the people speaking indigenous languages are fluent on Spanish and written documents in their languages can be a bit confusing. After speaking with some representatives of indigenous communities, it seems more effective to not only focus on the indigenous languages but also promote the usage of the Spanish Wikipedia to include more content about these people. This way, it helps to reduce the systemic bias that still is present in those articles.
Lessons learned
[edit]Lessons from the past
[edit]A key objective of the funding is to enable the movement as a whole to understand how to achieve shared goals better and faster. An important way of doing this is to identify lessons learned and insights from entities who receive funds, and to share these lessons across the movement. Please answer the following questions in 1–2 paragraphs each.
- 1. What were your major accomplishments in the past year, and how did you help to achieve movement goals?
- Mujeres iberoamericanas contest: With more than 1,200 articles involved, the contest have a very successful second edition, increasing the number of participants and improving the participation from international volunteers. Cooperation with other Iberocoop chapters to promote the contest and the focus on existing Wikipedians were key for this initiative.
- Edit-a-thons: Three new edit-a-thons were hosted by Wikimedia Argentina, becoming one of the signature activities of the chapter. The edit-a-thons are not only interesting ways to improve the quality of some topics within Wikipedia, they are also successful ways to engage public and private institutions, secure the publication of images and documents under free licenses in Wikimedia Commons and get some press mentions. Also, they are attended by several active Wikipedians, thus are great opportunities to enroll them in chapter activities and make them increase their participation in the projects.
- 2. What were your major setbacks in the past year (e.g., programs that were not successful)?
- Wiki Loves Monuments: Even though we increased the time and work devoted to this contest, there was a huge decrease in the number of participants and images, something that was at the end a global phenomenon (the contest itself barely surpassed 2012 pictures, even though more than 10 new countries were included). In our opinion, the contest has a very limited space for improvement and innovation so this second contest was too similar to the 2012 one, decreasing the interest of media and volunteers. Also, the CentralNotice banner had less time of exposure, affecting the number of users seeing it and visiting the website.
- Wiki Hackathon: In our first experience in this kind of event, we have a very low turnout of participants. Less than 30% of the people subscribed the week before attended the hackathon and no valid application for scholarships were received. Although there could be an external factor explaining this, we think for further hackathons we should join forces with other institutions used to host this kind of activities, which have a very loyal and active community.
- 3. What factors (organizational, environmental) enabled your success?
- Professionalization: In 2013, Wikimedia Argentina become certainly a professional NGO, with clear processes, roles and functions. A more involved Executive Director and the support of new officer (for Communications) allowed the chapter to engage more consistently and follow better the different projects and programs proposed. Other private and public institutions see us as a trustable organization and this has helped us to contact other institutions and
- Recognition of Wikipedia: This has been a continuing process in the past year. Every day, Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects are more valued and better evaluated by different institutions. Most of them want to participate with Wikipedia somehow and see our projects attractive. However, not all the time is easy to find a suitable way these institutions can participate with us.
- 4. What unanticipated challenges did you encounter and how did this affect what you were able to accomplish?
- Re-accommodation of volunteers' roles: Before 2012, all the work done by the chapter was made by volunteers. Once Wikimedia Argentina started to move to a professional organization, there was a need to re-accommodate the role of the volunteers. This was relevant especially for those project developed by volunteers. We needed to find a way to made the volunteers report their activities without alienate them.
- Bureaucracy: Several institutions have a good reception of our proposals and were very enthusiasts to participate with the Wikimedia community. However, their inner bureaucracy has delayed the implementation of several projects and some of them were suspended given the level of problems and delays faced. Internally, Wikimedia Argentina has faced several bureaucratic problems that forced us to devote a lot of time to solve them, leaving less time to a more programmatic work.
- Internal reporting: We consider reporting an important part of our work, not only because it makes it more transparent, but also because it is a good opportunity to review and analyze the way we pursue our objectives. However, it requires a lot of time, leaving less time for programmatic work. We need to find a balance so we can report without spending too much time that can be used to create a new project or implement a program.
- 5. What are the 2–3 most important lessons that other entities can learn from your experience? Consider learning from both the programmatic and institutional (what you have learned about professionalizing your entity, if you have done so) points of view.
- Consider a wider audience: Look beyond your borders. Although chapters are concerned about the participants in its country, a lot of programs may be useful for other countries with your same language or culture. In our case, Spanish is used by a much bigger community than the Argentinian one, so a lot of our documents can be used also by the rest of chapters from Iberocoop. So, we have started to design our documents not Argentine-centric: trying to use examples understandable by people from other Ibero-American countries, using neutral accent on videos, etc. This way, WM-AR is able to share their documents easily with other chapters, especially those without funds.
- Look for qualitative measures: It is still very difficult to find quantitative measures, because most of the time participants don't have an account registered to analyze, their behavior is not only affected by our initiatives and there are some privacy concerns. However, it is important to start collecting more qualitative measures of our activities, especially through surveys. It is easier to collect and probably will give the chapter more insight in the way the activities are done. This is something we will start implementing in 2014.
- Improve an active member, less expensive than bringing a new one: Mujeres iberoamericanas proves that activities focused on Wikipedians can be very productive, tangible, easier and cheaper to implement. Other initiatives targeted to catch new users like Wiki Loves Monuments certainly have very good short-term result, including a lot of newcomers. However, the retention level is usually very low, so it is needed a truly massive program to get some good long-term results and this can be very expensive. Also, the contest itself has to be designed to support this retention, trying to be more than a specific action.
Lessons for the future
[edit]The Wikimedia movement grows as each entity in the movement reflects and adapts its approaches to changing needs and contexts. The questions below encourage you to apply your thinking in the sections above of "how well have we done" and "what have we learned" to the development and execution of future organisational and program strategies. The questions below can be informed both by your own entities' learnings, as well as the learnings of other movement entities (e.g., adding a new program that appears to have caused significant impact in several other countries or communities).
- 1. What organisational or program strategies would you continue?
- Focus on education: There is a big interest from different Argentine educative institutions about Wikipedia, from small schools to large universities. We couldn't pursue more activities because we didn't have enough time to do it. Through educative institutions, there are also big opportunities to reach more people through a global scale, especially with the initiatives of the national and provincial governments for digital inclusion in schools. For 2014, we will continue with this focus in our educative work and we will have a specialized officer so we can have a more effective approach.
- Alliances with GLAM institutions: Edit-a-thons are the most prominent activities we organize with GLAM institutions and are one of the most attractive to them. As we said before, edit-a-thons are good ways to start an alliance with a museum, for example, and then move to other initiatives such as the publication of resources under free licenses. Usually, GLAM institutions are part of a network of similar institutions so a good experience with one of them can be used as an example for the rest.
- Professionalization process: After a year and a half, we are convinced our path to become a professional institution has been positive. We have created a staff on a sustainable way, with its growth related directly to the needs of our chapter for greater impact. Although it has raised some internal problems, the move from an amateur organization to a serious NGO has been successful and more institutions are interested given our credibility and seriousness.
- 2. What might you change in organisational and program strategies in order to improve the effectiveness of your entity?
- Community support: An important part of the work of Wikimedia Argentina is to support directly the work of the volunteers of the Wikimedia movement, so they can work better and with more quality in our projects. The work of volunteers is, ultimately, one of the most valuable assets of our chapters. We believe that in recent years, although we have tried to support volunteers, this has not been done in a clear and consistent way. We hope to work closer in 2014 with our volunteers and support their projects with more strength. This is especially relevant given that, in the process of professionalization, volunteers have reduced their participation as it was before.
- 3. Please create at least one learning pattern from your entity's experiences this year and link to it here.
Stories of success and challenge
[edit]Of all the accomplishments highlighted through this report, please share two detailed stories: one story of a success and one story of a challenge that your entity experienced over the past year in a few paragraphs each. Provide any details that might be helpful to others in the movement on the context, strategy, and impact of this initiative. We suggest you write this as you would tell a story to a friend or colleague. Please refrain from using bullet points or making a list, and rather focus on telling us about your organization's experience.
Case study: success
[edit]The edit-a-thon in the Legislative Palace was one of our first GLAM initiatives of the year. With the Buenos Aires City Legislature we had first the contact at the beginning of 2013. They wanted to promote knowledge about the historical heritage that its Palace has. To do this, they gave us a disc with 80 images to upload to Commons that featured historical images of the building and current images after its restoration. The edit-a-thon was originally scheduled for Saturday, April 29th. About 20 people signed up to join the event. Everything was ready ... until a political conflict resulted in less than two days in an impeachment. We receive the notice of the urgent impeachment session (and the cancellation of the edit-a-thon) just four hours before starting the event. Because we had used a registration system, we were able to communicate immediately with all registered attendees to announce that the edit-a-thon had to be suspended.
This situation was very disappointing for us at the beginning, but the commitment of the Legislature was real. On the following Monday we got together to reschedule the event and within weeks we had a definitive date: June 29th. The new date even called more people and more than 30 registered for the event. Once in the Palace, the edit-a-thon went smoothly. The press officer of the institution accurately narrated the hidden stories of the building, including its former use by Eva Peron and other prominent figures in Argentina. Many people also discovered the local library. Attendees were organized into four groups: one worked in a new article and the rest decided to improve existing ones. The initiative brought about a dozen people who weren't Wikipedians but were interested in knowing more about it. Among them was Elizabeth Kreis, one of the architects responsible for the restoration of the building about 20 years ago. Thanks to her, we were able to document some of the process and even upload some personal pictures that reported the process.
Case study: challenge
[edit]Wiki Loves Monuments was designed to be one of the main events of the chapter for 2014. We increased the preparation for the contest, we added more prizes and we had the Buenos Aires City Government as a partner for the event. We were able to include much more monuments from other provinces and a lot of Buenos Aires, included some of the most iconic buildings (like the Obelisk). Thus, we expected to have much more images than the 6,000 images received in 2014.
However, in the first days of the contest, there was a very hard decrease in the number of participants compared with 2012. At the beginning there was a decline of nearly 60% of the images. To reverse the trend, we decided to create a new category for the user with most different monuments photographed, encouraging those users that maybe won't be really good photographers (compared to the winners of past year) but were enthusiast enough to help illustrate more new monuments. This proven a good solution to increase the number of monuments covered by the contest. Around 5 participants decided to pursue this prize uploading over 100 images each one and totaling almost 35% of the participating images. For the final days, we decided to do a sprint with a photo safari. This allowed not only to increase the number of photography, but also to bring together the community and join new people interested in Wikipedia.
At the end, the contest had around 4,000 images, a third less than the previous year, and the number of participants was reduced in more than 60%. We were able to revert part of the decline, but at the end we had a disappointing performance. For next year, we expect to innovate in the contest to bring new people and increase the retention rate of the participants.
Additional learning
[edit]- 1. What are some of the activities that are happening in your community that are not chapter-led? What are the most successful among these, and why?
- We have very few activities that are not chapter-led. One of the main ones was the Creative Commons Global Summit. This was organized by several volunteers (including some members of Wikimedia Argentina), while Wikimedia Argentina had a relative minor participation, devoted mainly to support the organization in administration tasks and financial management.
- 2. Provide any links to any media coverage, blog posts, more detailed reports, more detailed financial information that you haven't already, as well as at least one photograph or video that captures the impact your entity had this past year.
- Links to 2013 monthly reports of the chapter (in Spanish and English): Jan - Feb - Mar - Apr - May - Jun - Jul - Aug - Sep - Oct - Nov - Dec
- State of the Chapter - Wikimedia Conference 2013
- Category "Activities of Wikimedia Argentina in 2013" in Wikimedia Commons
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Participants at the Legislative Edit-a-thon
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Participants at the Edit-a-thon for Memory
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Participants at the II Photo Safari for Wiki Loves Monuments.
Compliance
[edit]Is your organization compliant with the terms defined in the grant agreement?
[edit]- 1. As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.
- The main deviation from our plan was the decision to change the assistant position to the Communications Manager, the overhaul of our website, the design and printing of the annual balance. All of these decisions are consistent with our mission and the one of the Wikimedia Foundation and comply with the terms of the grant agreement.
- 2. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes
- 3. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".
- Yes
Financial information
[edit]- 1. Report any Grant funds that are unexpended fifteen (15) months after the Effective Date of the Grant Agreement. These funds must be returned to WMF or otherwise transferred or deployed as directed by WMF.
- The total income related to the annual grant (this means, excluding the grant given to host the Creative Commons Global Summit) is ARS 704,072.48. Excluding the costs related to CC Summit, the expenses for this year were ARS 673,399.43. This means ARS 30,673.05 were not spent in the 2013 period. According to the exchange rate by December 31th, this is equivalent to USD 4,707.78. We formally request these funds to be kept by our chapter as part of our operational reserves in compliance with the agreements signed with the Wikimedia Foundation.
- 2. Any interest earned on the Grant funds by Grantee will be used by Grantee to support the Mission and Purposes as set out in this Grant Agreement. Please report any interest earned during the reporting period and cumulatively over the duration of the Grant and Grant Agreement.
- No interest has been earned by the chapter in the last period.
Signature
[edit]Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.
- --Osmar Valdebenito (WMAR) (talk) 20:29, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
- Annual plan grant reports
- Annual plan grant reports for 2012-2013 Round 1
- Annual plan grant reports by Wikimedia Argentina
- Annual plan grant reports by Wikimedia Argentina for FDC 2012-2013 Round 1
- Annual plan grant impact report forms
- Annual plan grant impact report forms for 2012-2013 Round 1
- Annual plan grant impact report forms by Wikimedia Argentina
- Annual plan grants or proposals by Wikimedia Argentina for 2012-2013 Round 1