Grants:PEG/WM SE/Wikipedia 10 years anniversary party/Report
- Report accepted
- To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/WM SE/Wikipedia 10 years anniversary party.
- You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
- You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.
Project Goal:These two events will not only give roughly 100 persons, Wikipedians and non-Wikipedians alike, the possibility to meet and party, but also give Wikipedia some positive media attention. We will cover this with our own photographers and upload it under a free license to Wikimedia Commons.
The events will also be a start for one collaboration, with the City Library, who has done excellent work on online education, and deepen our collaborations with Nordiska museet and print-on-demand company Vulkan.
Description of actual activities:
- January 13, Strand restaurant: panel debate with 8 participants, among them one member of parliament, two writers, one GLAM representative, one scholar, one journalist and one internet entrepreneur (the eighth person was me). Afterwards, party until the wee hours of the morning.
- January 15, Stockholm City Library; open lectures, cake, singing, inspirational films, and Truth in numbers.
What lessons were learned that could help others succeed in similar projects?
- Use professional PR organisers. They cost a bit, but they make the entire thing much more professional. sit down with them and describe to them what you want the party to be like, including what it should not be like. The more you think about this, the better.
- Check on any other events that the venue are organising on the same day. We had a release party that the organisers had failed to tell us about, which made some guest leave at the door, as they thought that they had come to the wrong place.
- Make sure that everyone can see the panel where you place them. We had to move the panel since the sofa the restaurant had was too low. Which meant that the panel instead was sitting in a place which was a little badly-lit.
- Connect the panelists's mics to a recording device directly, instead of recording the sound in the video camera.
- Bring laptops, not netbooks. This makes it easier to connect cables to other equipment.
- Do not engage in any negative blog posts about what happens. There are bound to be some people who are never satisfied.
All in all, the activities were almost entirely positive experiences, but there are always little glitches. We used humour very effectively to puncture any of these situations and got sympathy points.
What impact did the project have on WMF mission goals of Increased Reach, Increased Quality, Increased Credibility, Increased and Diversified Participation?
- Increased reach and participation - we got in contact with more than 150 persons that would probably have not a) thought more deeply about Wikipedia before, and b) considered editing Wikipedia before. We have no definite numbers of new editors, but at least 10 tried editing during the second event. The media attention, which was great, may have contributed to even more new editors, but again no numbers.
- Increased quality - we got several images of the panelists and the venues [1] and [2] (all in all, nearly 170 images, with more on the way, including at least one video).
- Increased credibility - the professionalism shown during the two events, the guests for the first event, the nice films we showed, the venues, as well as (actually) the cakes, contributed to an overall sense of credibility. Also, the perception of increased quality was prevalent in the stories in the media. Most of them were very positive, with the credibility issue not in focus (which is a good thing) - instead they were talking about the future, the user base and interesting things from the history of Wikipedia.
- Diversified participation - we chose the city library with care, since we know that many people from some of the groups of people that edit (and talk about) Wikipedia less frequently. And as you can see in the images, plenty of them came, listened, asked questions and had a good time.
Detail of expenditures:
Documentation of expenditures has been received by WMF.
Copies of the receipts are on their way.
Amount underspent in US Dollars: 0
Will you be requesting re-allocation of remaining grant funding? Eh... no.