Grants:Project/Rapid/VideoWiki/Community Engagement Workshop 2020/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2019-20 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/VideoWiki/Community Engagement Workshop 2020.
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.

General overview

VideoWiki (also known as WikiVideo) (https://videowiki.wmflabs.org/en), aims to make Wikipedia more accessible by adding a visual component (“summary videos”) to Wikipedia. After initial development, with funding from the Wikimedia Foundation and NCore, several users largely on English Wikipedia have been using it to produce several articles, all of which are at this category. The project had less awareness among non-English languages, and to address a workshop to introduce the project to a few communities in India was ideated, as the power of VideoWiki lies in using for native languages, which have very less video content related to crucial topics such as medicine.

In this regard, a 3-day workshop was conducted from 24 to 26 January 2020, at The Centre for Internet and Society, in New Delhi. The workshop witnessed 10 participants from 6 language communities. On the first day of the workshop, participants were introduced to the project, its purpose and objectives, and developments till then. This was followed by a tutorial on creating script for a VideoWiki article. Before participants started to work on their articles, they had set up necessary infrastructure on their local Wikis, such as templates and categories, and which were to be used by the VideoWiki tool. Second day of the workshop was mostly spent hands-on on creating VideoWiki scripts, voice overs, and finally rendering a video, part of which also followed onto the morning of the third day. The last day concluded with a feedback session on the tool, how it can be made easier, brainstorming about plans to create more awareness and outreach in India, and potential use in EduWiki programs.

Etherpad: https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/VideoWiki_CES_2020

Goals

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

Yes, we met the overall goal of conducting the workshop. However, we were only able to meet some of the objective goals. We were happy with the project, as it created intended initial awareness in India. Though it wasn’t very large, it formed the ground for further work, helped us scope community’s reception of the project, and potential for a larger outreach plan.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
10 participants	8 participants	This doesn’t include the two facilitators, and only represents the count of people who were introduced to the project at the workshop. As invites were sent to less people than we initially planned, anticipating budget constraints, eventual participant count reduced. Also as a participant dropped off at the last moment, we had one less than expected.
5 languages	5(+1) languages	Though Wikimedians six various language communities were present, one of them was from English. Though we had less than expected participants, they were more diverse, and as a result we were able to spread awareness to five communities from India, and one new contributor to English.
20 VideoWiki articles	5 VideoWiki articles	Soon into planning specifics of the workshop and after starting the workshop, we realised that this was an ambitious goal. A substantial amount of time was spent on introducing the project, clearly establishing the vision, and also setting up the infrastructure before one can create VideoWiki articles on their Wiki. These took up a huge chunk of time that was initially planned for hands-on i.e. creating articles. Poor follow-up can also be attributed to this low score. Participants weren’t followed up much as planned in the immediate next month i.e. February. March and the following few months did not give us much space due to COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequent lockdowns in the country. As things are limping back to normal, as of July 2020, we may touch base with a couple of communities.

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?

Lot has been learned; since it is a unique project and its first proper outreach event, we were able to get clarity on things such as how one can conduct a VideoWiki workshop, how to activate VideoWiki for a new language Wikipedia, nuances of introducing the project to communities, and also training people on creating VideoWiki scripts. A learning pattern about implementing VideoWiki on a Wikipedia was created, the same be viewed here.
Four of five languages represented at the workshop were able to set up required infrastructure to create VideoWiki articles on their local Wikipedias.
We received good and actionable feedback regarding improvements to the VideoWiki tool; these include adding an upload button to upload an externally recorded audio file (this feature is now available!) and cropping/trimming of videos.
CIS-A2K provided their organizations’ office in New Delhi for gratis, which helped us reduces expenses to a great extent.

What did not work so well?

As we feared time crunch, we had to deviate from the selection process for participants as originally mentioned in the grant proposal, which is not a best practice. We have invited people based on previous contributions to Wikipedia, especially, if they had considerable photography or multimedia contributions. Otherwise, we seeked help active community members, and asked for their recommendations.
We did not realise about some technical work that needs to be done on backend of the tool, before users can create videos in a new language, until the end of the first day of the workshop. This step has to be done after infrastructure on local wikis are set up. It created a doubt about whether all participants would be able to work on their scripts the following. Fortunately, it had been resolved timely.
The hotel where we initially booked the accommodation cancelled the booking on the morning of Day 0 i.e. 23 January 2020, which created a chaos. It had been tough to find an alternative nearby to the venue. Though we found one, we were charged more as it was a last minute booking. This also created confusion for participants arriving from other cities, and a few of them went to the previously booked hotel.

What would you do differently next time?

Introduction to the project and the work of setting up templates and categories on local wikis (for new languages) would be given as pre-event work to participants - this would not only save time during the actual workshop, sparing more time for hands-on practice, but also orient participants to an extent.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

S.No	Item	Amount (INR)
1	Travel (flights)	₹29,177.00
2	Travel (local)	₹2,218.92
3	Food	₹26,317.87
4	Accomodation	₹46,622.70
5	Reimbursements	₹7,785.22
6	Logistics	₹349.00
7	Misc	₹950.00
Total expenditure		₹113,420.71
Grant approved		₹144,000.00
Total funds received		₹143,587.00
Underspent		₹30,166.29

Remaining funds

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of 30,166.29 INR were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:Project/Rapid/IMD/SWT South Asia 2021.

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Yes, ₹30,166.29.