Grants:TPS/SarahStierch/Museum Computer Network

User name: SarahStierch
User location (country): United States
Event name: MCN 2012 Annual Conference
Event Web site: Official website
Event date(s): November 7-10 2012
Event location (city): Seattle, Washington
Amount requested (remember to specify currency!): ~~US 646.60~~ US 1,141.66
Endorsements

Lori Byrd Phillips (talk) 13:26, 11 October 2012 (UTC)
Koven J. Smith, Director of Technology, Denver Art Museum/Co-Chair, MCN Program Committee
Edward J. Rodley, Exhibit Developer, Museum of Science, Boston/ MCN Board of Directors
Robert J. Stein, Deputy Director, Dallas Museum of Art, MCN Board of Directors
Diana Folsom, Systems Manager, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, MCN Board of Directors
Christina DePaolo, Director of Digital Media, Balboa Park Online Collaborative, MCN Board of Directors, President
Vicki Portway, Head of Web & New Media, Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, MCN Board of Directors, Secretary
Allegra Burnette, Creative Director, Digital Media, The Museum of Modern Art, MCN Board of Directors, Vice-President

Budget breakdown

Note I am not requesting funding for accommodations.

Travel: USD 233.60 (round-trip economy ticket from San Francisco to Seattle)
Conference ticket: USD $200.00 (Emerging Museum Professional discounted early bird ticket)
Per diem: USD 53.25/day x 4 days = USD 213 (75% of GSA rate)
Last minute accomodation: $500.98

TOTAL: US 1,141.66

Proposed Participation

I will be participating in four aspects of this conference as a Wikimedian.

I will be assisting United States Cultural Partnerships Coordinator Lori Philips with an all day workshop titled "Wikimedia Tech Workshop: Bridging the Gap". This workshop will focus on museum technologists learning about the MediaWiki platform and the melding of MediaWiki with existing museum tech platforms. Erik Moeller will also be participating in this workshop.

I will be presenting in the session "Working in a Wiki, Wiki World". My presentation, ""GLAM Women: How You Can Help Close the Gender Gap on Wikipedia". This will focus on calls to action that women in GLAMs can take to make sure that their cultural knowledge helps to fulfill our mission of sharing the sum of all the worlds knowledge. This also blends my two passions - GLAM and gender outreach.

I will co-present, with Lori Phillips, during the Slack Day session. This will be a 15 minute demonstration focusing on how GLAMs can take the right actions in regards to COI and content related to their organizations on Wikipedia.

I will be participating in a panel titled "Google on Trial: Is the Google Art Project Good?" which is being facilitated by Michael Edson, Director of Web and New Media Strategy for the Smithsonian Institution. I will be representing the free culture and license aspect in this discussion and will be bringing my knowledge about the poor visual quality of the content Google uses and the trouble with the licensing that Google claims and how Wikimedia "deals" with it.

Goal and Expected Impact

This museum conference has a history of providing a unique and important platform for Wikimedia to share our mission and our interest in furthering partnerships with cultural institutions around the world, in order to improve said content. While I do hope and intend on presenting successfully, specific goals include:

Our goal with the MediaWiki workshop is to increase awareness and interest in GLAMs about using MediaWiki as a platform. Potential usability includes releasing data and sharing it through MediaWiki tools, and even utilizing MediaWiki as an internal platform for communication and so forth. This workshop is open to any participants from the conference, with all levels of experience, and I hope that will allow me, as a Wikimedian, to expand on my own skillset and knowledge of MediaWiki (which is very minimal at this time). As a whole, I will provide support to workshop planners and participants. Our end goal is to help participants not only familiarize themselves with MediaWiki, but, to walk out of the workshop with a "next step" plan for GLAM attendees to take back to their institutions. We also intend on providing post-workshop support as volunteers for these participants which will include follow ups. Myself and Lori will be taking on that task.

My presentation about the gender gap and how GLAM women can help close it, will focus on engaging women at the conference about the importance of sharing their knowledge with the world via Wikipedia. My end goal is to not only inspire women, but, to provide clear calls to action and offer hands on assistance throughout the conference to help achieve those calls to action (i.e. account creation, conflict of interest statements, making their first edits). Presentations like this, which I have given at other conferences (but not at a GLAM conference), often leave me with a long list of contacts which allows me to further develop volunteer projects like the WikiWomen's Collaborative and WikiWomen's History Month. I also hope it'll inspire some women to take lead in their institutions to develop further partnerships for GLAM WIKI.

During the Slack Day presentation, Lori and I will do a lightning talk that discusses the very important topic of conflict of interest editing and GLAMs. This is a high demand discussion topic amongst museum professionals. We will be presenting in a fun, fast paced manner about what COI is and how GLAMs can ethically contribute content about their institution to Wikipedia by working with the community. End goal is to provide GLAM professionals with better understanding of how Wikipedia works in this capacity, which can lend to discussions about further healthy collaboration on Wikipedia - where both the institution and Wikipedia wins.

I was the only invited member of the free culture/Wikimedia community invited to speak on the Google Art Project presentation. GAP has partnered with institutions around the world, and I intend on sharing the voice of the community about why GAP is not helpful for the free culture movement, and how that affects GLAMs. By restricting use of the public domain content that GAP shares from GLAMs, Wikipedia is technically not supposed to use that content. I hope that by sharing my opinion, and those I am currently gathering of the Wikimedia community, I will be able to provide GLAMs with a unique perspective on how GAP affects Wikipedia, and on a positive upswing, explain how our partnerships and the freeing of GLAM data can be shared on a broader level through Commons and Wikipedia programs. I hope that by building awareness during the panel about our projects and the merits of partnering with us, that I can leave the panel with new queries about how GLAMs can share via Wikimedia. It is guaranteed that this panel will be one of the highest attended at the conference.

Overall, I intend on making a strong impact on this conference through awareness about GLAM WIKI, and also the importance of women contributing content. As the US GLAM Consortium starts to develop further, this conference will also allow me to help bring more interest into it, with the potential to find GLAMs that might want to help support it. We also hope that by building continued awareness we can help build a stronger and more sustainable GLAM WIKI community.