Grants:Project/Rapid/AWM/Symposium 2019/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/AWM/Symposium 2019.
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 rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

This is the report for the AWM Symposium 2019 Editathon.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

On our meetup page one can see the list of attendees (we are missing two participates who forgot to sign up) and which articles we created/improved.

Recruit new editors

Half of the participants were new editors. While initially we thought a higher percentage would be new to editing Wikipedia, this worked well and enabled the organizers to more easily help participates on an individual basis.

Increase skills for existing editors

Prior to the event we put together an informative sheet with links to lists such as Women in Red list of mathematicians and other ideas for articles that needed creating or improving. This gave all editors resources to continue editing after the event. Also, a couple editors started editing through the Wikipedia app and learned about the easy of editing on that platform.

Add or improve content about women in mathematics

We created 5 new articles on women in mathematics:

And improved 4 articles:

Anne Broadbent
Misha Collins (added section on research with Kathryn Leonard)
Ailana Fraser
Carolyn S. Gordon]

In addition, we fixed the Association for Women in Mathematics's new webpage links and broken links on List of prizes, medals, and awards for women in science].

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1 event	1 event	The edit-a-thon was held.
20 total participants	11 total participants	There was fewer than expected “drop in” participants. We expected more than the 2017 edit-a-thon since the location was more centralized.
15 new editors	6 confirmed new editors (2 unknown)	The 2 unknowns were “drop in” participants.
15 new articles	5 new articles	More editing time was spent on improving existing articles and fixing broken links to awards for women in science.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

Nearly all the new editors picked up the process quickly, needing very little guidance once pointed in the right direction. Many were surprised how easy it was to start editing. A new editor was even able to add a picture to an existing article. The room we ended up in was great for collaborating. It was a big conference room and was located near the coffee and exhibition tables.

What did not work so well?

We only had three or so “drop in” participants (people that didn't start/end the event with us). While the room was centrally, the conference as a whole was spread out all over the campus making it difficult from people to come by for just a short time without missing other events. In addition, there were some people I spoke to that did not bring a laptop to the conference. Perhaps in the future, we could work with the host university to have a few computers available for our use.

What would you do differently next time?

The Symposium is a two day (really one and a half day) event. While waiting to hold the edit-a-thon on the second day enabled us to recruit during the first day, it was only a half day. We think holding a session on the first day as well would give more people the opportunity to attend. It would also afford us the time to hold more informative sessions.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

Airline ticket for Denise: $516.00

Airline ticket for Beccah: $563.80

Hotel room for 2 nights, shared by Denise and Beccah: $275.32

Ground transportation/parking: $82.79

Total: $1437.91

We did not spend any money on coffee or snacks since the conference provided this and we were located next to it.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds? Yes, we have $322.09 remaining. We hope to be able to use these funds to help facilitate an editing event at the Joint Mathematics Meetings, which is the largest meeting of mathematicians in the world. See the discussion page for details on this.

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of US$322.09 were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:Project/Rapid/AWM/Joint_Mathematics_Meetings_2020.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

This is the second time an edit-a-thon was run at the AWM Symposium. We hope to continue this at future symposia which are held every odd year. We hope that by including a meet-up at the annual Joint Mathematics Meetings this will help foster a growing group of mathematician editors.