Grants:Project/Rapid/TECS/Editatona Tecs 2018

We are Tecs, a group founded by Computer Science undergrad students at the University of São Paulo, in Brazil, focused on the social impact of computer science and technology. We are members of TechShift, a global alliance of student organisations who share this purpose. We are endorsed by the Computer Science Department, and are open to members from different institutes as well.

Some of our previous projects

We were founded short of a year ago, and in this time we have successfully organised several events:

Free digital inclusion classes for university employees: we produced the content for seven classes and ministered them ourselves in the first semester of 2018. The project is ongoing, and we will have two more groups of students this semester.
Cycle of debates and lectures: always on topics relevant to spreading awareness on technological production, approaching the different ethical dilemmas that come with them. We regularly have 20 attendees, having reached nearly 50 (from several different institutes within our university) at certain lectures.
Promotion of volunteer work: we have developed partnerships with entities such as the São Paulo Municipal Secretary of Education and IDEC (Brazilian Institute of Consumer Protection) to develop projects in which computer science undergrad students could collaborate with the first and third sectors.
Introduction to programming logic course using MIT's AppInventor: a free course for inmates at a juvenile facility in São Paulo, Fundação CASA, with the goal of facilitating their re-insertion into the work force once they are released.

Project Goal

Improve the currently existing content in PT Wikipedia, mainly articles concerning Computer Science, by expanding stubs and translating already existing pages from English to Portuguese.
Increase awareness of the importance of sharing the highly specific knowledge we have access to at university.
Recruit new editors.

Project Plan

Activities

1. What is the purpose of the meeting and why is it important to your community?

We wish to engage more students in initiatives that have a social impact. As students of a public university, we see it as part of our duty to make good use of the highly specific knowledge we have access to for free. And Editathon is a perfect way of doing that: we have the necessary knowledge to make good additions to already existing PT computer science articles (some of which leave a lot to be desired when compared to their English counterpart). Our focus won't be solely on CS-related articles: we would like to reach several students at our university, regardless of their major. As such, we will welcome and advertise the event at several other institutes. We have found through our previous projects that having participants from a wide variety of backgrounds highly enriches an event. It also goes along with our mission of spreading awareness of the impact that technology can have - and how you can make a positive use of it even without having specific programming capabilities.

2. How will you let participants know about the meeting?

Through Wiki: We will create a page for the event, as well as request a Geonotice for SP editors.
Meetup: We will organise a page for the event;
Posters: We will spread posters throughout several institutes at our university;
Facebook: There will be an official page for the event, which we will advertise in several university groups on Facebook (we have found considerable success using this method and posters in the past);

3. How will you keep participants engaged after the meeting is over?

We will share the data with the result through the event's dashboard - both right after the event and some time after that (possibly a couple weeks). We believe that giving access to a clear impact that their edits have have right after the event, as well as a while after it, will help keep the importance of contributing to the Wiki in mind.

4. Is there anything else you want to tell us about this project?

The event will take place from 11h to 19h, at CCSL (Center for Competence in Free/Libre Software), a building at the university of São Paulo. We have already booked the space (at no cost), and we have already recruited people to help us ensure there will be wifi access to everyone (including participants who aren't students at the university). We will also have access to a computer lab at that facility, so that attendees with no laptop can also participate. We are recruiting experienced editors to make sure we will respected the suggested ratio of one experienced wikimedian per 10 participants.

We will distribute some free swag to all attendees (Wikipedia stickers and globe buttons), as well as prizes to recognise the best contributions and keep participants motivated throughout the event. We will use it as part of our advertisement, in hopes of attracting more participants. We also intend to have small breaks during the editing period to have short presentations or lectures, and are currently getting in touch with BR wikimedians who live in São Paulo to find appropriate speakers for the event.

Day schedule:

11:00 - 12:00 Training of new editors
12:00 - 13:00 Lunch break
13:00 - 19:00 Editing

Impact

Number of events: 1
Number of participants: 50
Number of new editors: 2+
Number of of articles created or improved: 10+
Number of people who will help organize the event: 5

Budget

The website oanda.com was unavailable when we tried to do the conversion from BRL to USD; as such, we used Google's conversion table instead.

Category	Item description	Total amount in BRL	Total amount in USD
Swag	Wiki Globe Stickers and buttons	R$ 77,56	$ 20,00
Prizes	Wikipedia items (shirts, scarfs, pens, special edition pin), headphones	R$ 1163,42	$ 300,00
Beverages	Water, juices, sodas, energy drinks	R$ 252,47	$ 65,00
Food	Sandwiches (with vegan option), snacks	R$ 795,00	$ 205,00
Total		R$ 2288,06	$ 590,00

Endorsements

The group has been organizing many great events at the University campus and I believe this one has a lot of potential impact Thalenberg (talk) 20:56, 18 September 2018 (UTC)