Shared Knowledge/Annual plan 2014-2015

This is the Annual plan of the activities of Shared Knowledge for the grant year 2014-2015. It refers to the links to 2014-15 Annual grant and Request for use of remaining funds from September-January 2015 (see Extension of activities).

Goals

General goals

The primary goals of the Annual plan are the following:

to increase the quantity and improve the quality of free content;
to raise awareness of the Wikimedia movement;
to extend cooperation with the Wikimedia Foundation and other affiliated organisations;
to extend cooperation with external institutions;
to raise awareness about knowledge in general;
to release a substantial amount of knowledge held by the Macedonian GLAM institutions;
to promote free knowledge in the country's educational system;
to increase the presence of the Wikimedia projects in the country's educational system;
to encourage participation on Wikimedia projects.

Administration

to implement the assumption of going concern;
to promote the work done within the organisation;
to establish efficient and effective organisational governance;
to establish efficient and effective volunteer management;
to establish efficient and effective process of reporting;
to reduce the gender gap in the organisation;
to extend cooperation with institutions and organisations.

GLAM

Wikimedian-in-Residence

to extend cooperation with GLAM institutions;
to release and digitise materials from the libraries;
to enrich articles by this content and create new entries inspired by it.

Holocaust Memorial

To crate content on various Jewish topics, with emphasis on the Jews of Macedonia;
To raise awareness about the history of Jews in Macedonia and their fate;
to set an example for communities of interest on how to collaborate with us

Skopje Zoo

to introduce QR-pedia in the GLAM sector.
create valuable content about the many animals represented

Wikiexpeditions

to document country's natural and cultural heritage;
to create content related to these places and familiarise the public with them via social media.

WikiCrafts

to document the county's cultural heritage;
raise awareness of these artforms as valuable part of culture.

Archaeoexpeditions

(pilot project)

to document unexplored or lesser known archaeological sites of importance;
to create content related to these places and familiarise the public with them via social media.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014

to document underrepresented objects and places of cultural heritage and importance;
to create content related to these places and familiarise the public with them via social media.

Wiki Loves Earth 2015

to document protected areas of natural beauty and biological significance in the country;
to encourage as much public participation as possible

Community

Edit-a-thons

to increase activity on the Wikimedia projects;
to improve the quality of content;
to reach out to new potential editors.

Editing competitions

to increase activity on the Wikimedia projects;
to improve the quality of content;
to reach out to new potential editors.

Lectures about Wikipedia

To gather as many new editors and collaborators as possible by presenting our movement in public places in the form of lectures and workshops.
Initiate new cooperative projects with the target groups reached.

Education

Educational programme

to introduce and increase the presence of the Wikimedia projects in the educational institutions;
to extend cooperation with educational institutions;
to promote the Wikimedia projects as useful educational tool;
to raise awareness about the benefits that the editing offers to the students;
to increase and improve the content on different topics;
to get access to materials that can be used for referencing.

Participation in conferences

To participate in at least three conferences:

CEE Meeting 2014
Wikimedia Conference 2015
Wikimania 2015

Activities

Administration

Employees

The part-time employee of Shared Knowledge will perform duties that are vital for the normal and efficient functioning of the organisation shall include: informing the general public about current projects, including Public Relations work, appearing in the media, providing basic information about the current activities to the community, providing information about the projects to potential members, quarterly and monthly progress reports and administrative duties. He shall also oversee the flow of the projects, making sure the deadlines are met in a timely fashion and projects properly executed. He shall take constant care to enlist sufficient support in the public and secure sufficient number of volunteers for each project, overseeing their wiki-education and encouraging a high standard of participation. The employee will be hired from 1 August 2014 until 30 July 2015 and upon satisfaction, the employee shall receive a new contract.

GLAM

Wikimedian-in-Residence

We will also need a Wikipedian in residence who will be essential for the projects (both GLAM and Educational projects). Arrangements have already been made with the National and University Library "St. Clement of Ohrid" in Skopje. The role of this person is necessary to address a significant problem we are facing as Wikimedians in this country - severe lack of digitalised literature and material of any sort, other than classic literary works. Most of the projects outlined in this Annual Plan require the use of library materials (both reference and longer works) to be able to write the articles that relate to each topic or item covered in our project activities. It is our aim as Macedonian Wikimedians to improve and liberate knowledge in society by bringing it out of the dusty bookshelves and rendering it in an encyclopedic form accessible to everyone. As already outlined in the preliminary discussions with the Library staff, the Wikimedian in residence will have their own laptop and will be provided with a scanner (which we request here, See: Budget breakdown: Office Equipment) and will be working as reference person, scanning relevant chapters from various books pertaining to our needs for article creation and sending us the scanned images of those parts of the books to be used by editors. This is planned to be a regular activity, in that the person will be in the library for a number of hours most days of the week and will serve the constant needs of our projects. The Wikipedian in residence will be active for six months during the upcoming year which have not been specified yet.

Holocaust Memorial

The project comes as result of the established cooperation with the Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia and aims to enrich different language editions of Wikipedia as well as other Wikimedia projects with articles about the Jews of Macedonia, their life, history, culture and faith in World War II. The collaboration with the museum will consist of taking appropriate written and photographic material. Some of the exhibits need to be photographed, for which Shared Knowledge as an organisation will coordinate volunteers to take the necessary photographs. The written material will then serve as basis for the creation of articles by by volunteer groups of Wikipedians organized by us. The Holocaust Memorial Center will participate in the project not only by sharing the materials, but also by helping with the process of determining the most important subjects that need to be covered by the articles of this project. The Memorial Center has agreed to colaborate with Shared Knowledge for this and future similar projects regarding the Jews of Macedonia. This is a long-term cooperation which will generate results throughout the whole year.

Skopje Zoo

The project aims to introduce QR-codes for all the species represented in the Skopje Zoo, which would lead to corresponding Wikipedia articles. For this to be achieved, we will organise the design, assembly and placement of the plates with the QR-codes. We will also coordinate writing and improving the existing articles on Wikipedia. The writing and improving of the articles will be done by consulting the zoo staff, thus ensuring that the articles meet both Wikipedia standards and the zoo staff's professional standards. Each corresponding article needs to have the following: physical characteristics, geographic dispersion, taxobox template, illustrations, precise category. Skopje Zoo currently has about 100 species, so the aim of this project will be to provide articles about all of the species. The idea of the project is inspired by the success that has been achieved by the implementation of a similar project in the Sofia Zoo. The project will be carried in the autumn of 2014 or the spring of 2015.

Wikiexpeditions

The main goal of the project is to visit four different regions in Macedonia, photographing them, visiting museums, old houses and monuments around the region, and writing articles for this buildings and objects and thereby enrich free content on Wikipedia from this region. Four regions are planned in this annual plan: the Mijachija region, Debar region, Negotino region, Kratovo region. The idea comes after similar projects implemented in Poland, Czech Republic and Ukraine. The expeditions will be organised in two terms, from August to October 2014, and from April to July 2015.

WikiCrafts

The goal of this project is to document a selection of the traditional crafts and trades of Macedonia that are on the way to being lost and forgotten or are culturally valuable as part of the national identity to photograph the workshops, the craftspersons and the working process, make video recordings of those crafting processes and take video interviews, where the person will tell something of the meaning of their craft/trade, its history and how it was passed on to them. This material is meant to illustrate current articles about crafts and trades, widen their scope, enrich their content and create new articles that are hitherto unwritten. All this will be supported by the appropriate literature taken from the Chamber of Trades of Skopje and the National Library. The project will be carried in the autumn of 2014 or the spring of 2015.

Archaeoexpeditions

(pilot project)

This project is similar with Wikiexpeditions, but also interesting because Macedonia has more than 6,000 archaeological sites around the country. The project aims to visit different archaeological sites with professionals, photographing them, writing more and new information in existing articles or writing whole new articles about this locations. The expeditions will be organised in two terms, from August to October 2014, and from April to July 2015.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014

Wiki Loves Monuments is a well-known and proven worldwide initiative and a very good way of creating freely licensed images that can be used by the Wikimedians to improve the quality of articles on specific Wikimedia projects. With our 'wiki-loves' contests so far, we have found great success, both with our participants and in the public, as it stimulates the community to generate content about cultural heritage sites.

Wiki Loves Earth 2015

These two projects will be organised for the second time in Macedonia. Wiki Loves Cultural Heritage in 2013 was out of the competition in an international competition Wiki Loves Monuments and ended quite successfully, while Wiki Loves Earth achieved remarkable success in 2014. In this contest, Macedonia finished first in the international competition with 12,647 photographs uploaded and several dozens of quality images on Wikimedia Commons. The implementation of both photographic contests has the following goals: to increase the number of freely licensed photographs from the cultural and natural heritage in Macedonia; to promote the cultural and natural heritage of Macedonia through the photographs uploaded during the competition; to improve quality of content on the Wikimedia projects by providing images to the articles; to support creation of new articles about cultural and natural heritage sites in Macedonia; to encourage active participation of photographs in the competition and simulate the creation of similar projects, and to create new articles about cultural and natural heritage sites in Macedonia. Wiki Loves Monuments 2014 will be organised in September 2014, while Wiki Loves Earth 2015 in May 2015.

Community

Edit-a-thons

The main goal of this project is writing articles on a given topic on a voluntary basis. We aim to attract more than 100 volunteers who write on the topic. Also hope that some of these new users will remain on Macedonian Wikipedia, because we have lack of new users in recent period. The first edit-a-thon will take place in the autumn of 2014, the second one around the Wikipedia Day in January 2015, and the third and fourth somewhere in the spring of 2015.

Editing competitions

The editing competitions will be organised for the users active on the Macedonian Wikipedia with the main goal of improving the quality of the existing articles or creating new articles on specific topics. In each competition, the interested users will have to sign up their participation and contribute within the previously specified period for the competition. After the end of each competition, a jury consisted of experienced Wikipedians will review the contributions of all participants and select the best three participants who will get awarded. The idea originated in Serbia where editing competitions have been successfully completed on the Serbian Wikipedia. The first editing competition will be organised in the autumn of 2014, while the second one in 2015.

Educational programme

Faculties and schools

This project is not a new project for us because we've been already involved in lecturing about Wikipedia in different educational institutions for more than three years. Our main activities with largest success have been carried out at the Faculty of Economics in Skopje, which resulted in several lectures and workshops as well as the creation and improvement of more than 100 articles on topics in economics. In the forthcoming year, we plan to use the experience from the Faculty of Economics in Skopje to broaden our activities in other educational institutions. The project aims to teach students to edit Wikipedia, writing new articles about their areas as part of their regular curriculum, and expand existing articles. The focus in the primary schools will be on teachers, in the secondary schools on both teachers and students, and at the faculties predominantly on students. Activities will be carried out during the academic year, from September to December 2014 and from February to June 2015.

Lectures about Wikipedia

The project aims a series of lectures devoted to free knowledge, Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, and other movement-related topics. Participants after the exercises and tutorials are tasked to write one or more articles on selected topics. The lectures will be given at the end of 2014 and the beginning of 2015.

Participation in conferences

In the upcoming year, we also plan to send two representatives at the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2014, three representatives (including our staff member) at the Wikimedia Conference 2015, and to award two scholarships for Wikimania 2015.

Measures of success

Administration

Administration

at least 20 active members;
at least 20% female members;
at least 8 successfully completed projects;
establishing cooperation with at least 2 institutions or organisations;

GLAM

Our general aim is to establish cooperation with at least 4 GLAM institutions.

Wikimedian-in-Residence

materials in at least 2,000 pages released;
digitisation of materials in at least 1,000 pages;
releasing materials in at least 5 languages;
digitising materials in at least 3 languages;

Holocaust Memorial

no goal set

Skopje Zoo

at least 60 installed QR codes;
at least 50 articles on animals in the Skopje ZOO created or improved

Wikiexpeditions

exactly 4 two-day Wikiexpeditions;
at least 1,000 photographs taken during the expeditions (including Wikiexpeditions, Wikicrafts and Archaeoexpeditions);

WikiCrafts

no goal set

Archaeoexpeditions

(pilot project)

exactly 1 one-day archaeoexpedition.

Wiki Loves Monuments 2014

at least 10,500 photographs uploaded on Wikimedia Commons;
at least 3,000 photographs from cultural heritage objects as part of Wiki Loves Monuments 2014;
at least 450 photographs from cultural heritage objects used in articles across the Wikimedia projects;
photographing at least 500 different cultural heritage objects;

Wiki Loves Earth 2015

at least 6,000 photographs from natural heritage sites
at least 600 photographs from natural heritage objects used in articles across the Wikimedia projects;
photographing at least 50 natural heritage sites;

Community

Edit-a-thons

organising exactly 4 edit-a-thons;
at least 100 participants in the edit-a-thons altogether;
at least 200 articles improved or high-quality articles created during the edit-a-thons;

Editing competitions

organising exactly 2 editing competitions;
at least 20 participants in the editing competitions altogether;
at least 100 articles improved or high-quality articles created during the competitions.

Lectures about Wikipedia

at least 20% increase in the average number of very active users on the Macedonian Wikipedia throughout the year;
at least 20% increase in the annual total number of articles created on the Macedonian Wikipedia compared to the previous year;
at least 20% increase in the annual total number of articles created on the Macedonian Source compared to the previous year;
at least 10 high-quality books with at least 50 related articles on the Macedonian Wikibooks;

Education

Educational programme

establishing cooperation with at least 4 educational institutions;
at least 10 lectures and workshops given in the educational institutions (including the lectures on movement-related topics);
at least 500 students reached;
at least 100 students involved;
at least 100 high-quality articles created or improved.

Participation in conferences

to participate in at least 3 conferences

Resources and Risks

Resources

This section is used to highlight your potential for successfully executing this project. Consider including the following information:

List of team members (names or usernames):
- Kiril Simeonovski;
- Bojan Jankuloski;
- Igor Sazdovski;
- Toni Ristovski;
- Snezhana Shtrkovska;
- Zoran Mechkarski;
- Nikola Stojanoski;
- Igor Kuzmanovski;
- Cvetko Nedelkovski;
- Dana Uzhevska.

Onwiki evidence of community support (such as a project about this discussion):

There is no onwiki evidence of community support because the annual plan was being created and subsequently adopted on in-face meetings of our team members.

Endorsements from community members or movement groups:

The community voted no confidence on the work done by Wikimedia Macedonia and approved the foundation of a new NGO that would have to replace its work and retake its name. This grant request was approved by the Board of Shared Knowledge on 8 July 2014.

Special skills or qualifications this potential grantee or project lead brings to this project:

The team consists of members with long-standing experience in the Wikimedia projects, project and financial management in the NGO sector, and education. In addition, the president and staff member has been active Wikimedian for almost nine years and has advanced skills in external relations and project management. Our main goal is to match people with different skills who will have to increase efficiency and improve the capacity of our organisation and we strongly believe that we're on the right way to achieve it.

Evidence of past success in executing similar projects:
For activities conducted prior to 2013, please see the chapters reports of Wikimedia Macedonia or visit its official page.
We have been actively promoting the Macedonian Wikipedia on the social networks, namely on Facebook and Twitter, for more than three years. Great success with a higher number of followers was achieved on both of them, especially on Facebook where the number of "likes" achieved amounts to more than 38,000 as of July 2014 (Facebook page, Twitter page).
We have conducted a series of educational activities at the Faculty of Economics in Skopje.
February-May 2013 — Students were given assignments to create and improve existing articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia on topics in monetary economics. On 28 February 2013, Kiril Simeonovski and Toni Ristovski lectured about Wikipedia with particular focus on the basics of editing (details).
November-December 2013 — Students were given assignments to edit articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia on topics in banking and bank regulation. On 14 November, Toni Ristovski lectured about Wikipedia with particular focus on the basics of editing (details).
April-May 2014 — Students were given assignments to edit articles on the Macedonian Wikipedia on topics in monetary economics. On 10 April 2014, Igor Sazdovski and Kiril Simeonovski lectured about Wikipedia with particular focus on the basics of editing (details).
4 April 2014 — Kiril Simeonovski organised a workshop with a case study on the Wikimedia Foundation and its fundraising titled "How to raise $ 20 million without sales?" (Macedonian: Како без приходи од продажба до 20 милиони долари?). The workshop was attended by about twenty-five students who actively participated in the discussion during and following the presentation. At the end, they were given a homework to form groups and work on suggesting how the fundraising in its current shape could be improved (details).
11 April 2014 — Igor Sazdovski organised a workshop with a case study on the overlook of the peer-produced against the price-incentivised websites in near future titled "The future of the most influential websites" (Macedonian: Иднината на највлијателните страници на Интернет). Before the start of this case study, the best three selected groups presented their homework from the previous case study. The workshop was attended by about twenty students who actively participated in the discussion during and following the presentation (details).
We have organised two photographic competitions.
7 November-7 December 2013 — Wiki Loves Cultural Heritage, a photographic competition aimed at uploading images taken from cultural heritage of any form, was organised in Macedonia. The project ended with a total number of 4.915 uploaded photographs (details, report).
May 2014 — Wiki Loves Earth, a photographic competition aimed at uploading images taken from natural heritage sites was organised in Macedonia as part of the international contest. The project ended with a total number of 12.695 uploaded photographs (details, report).
We have been also in active negotiations with several GLAM institutions since April 2014:
28 May 2014 — Shared Knowledge and the Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia signed a memorandum of agreement, proscribing our future mutual cooperation in the documentation of the life and history of Macedonian Jews. The cooperation will be mostly reflected through the release of materials and generating content on the Wikimedia projects.

Risks

This section is used to identify key risks or threats that would prevent you from achieving your project goals and how you would mitigate those risks and threats.

The main risk concerned with our annual plan derives from the uncertainty that our negotiations with the GLAM and educational institutions will end successfully. Therefore, we've prepared a list of alternatives that will be introduced in the case of negative outcome. Another risk is associated with the probability that some unforeseen events may occur and increase some expenses. However, we've projected an item of incidentals and included it at the end of each individual budget for almost every single project or activity.

Impact

Fit to strategy

increasing reach (more people will access or contribute to Wikipedia or our other projects), participation (more people actually contributing), quality (more content, more useful content, or higher-quality content), credibility (more trust in our projects), organizational maturity and effectiveness (how it will move you or the Wikimedia community forward), or financial sustainability (how it will help you achieve more in the long run)?

This statement should address at least one of the strategic priorities listed here specifically. See Project and Event Grants program criteria for decision making.: The activities and project that we plan to carry out during the course of the year will address all of the aforementioned objectives to a certain degree. A reflection of increased reach and participation will come from our educational programme along with the community-oriented projects. Quality content will be generated through our GLAM projects and educational programme, while quality improvements of the existing content will be pursued through the editing competitions. The lectures that we plan to give about specific topics such like the Wikimedia movement with its projects, the value of the free knowledge, and the licencing of free content have the potential of presenting and promoting our movement in the way that will have to increase credibility as well. Most of the people involved in our activities will be community members or people who have very good experience in project management and are interested to increase their knowledge about our movement. The linkage between these two groups of people will lead to a faster growth of our capacities, increased effectiveness of all processes, and greater openness to the external environment. With regard to the future financing of our activities, our strategic priorities include securing financial sustainability, increasing the number of different funding sources, and raising the level of financial independence. Our goal in the first year will be to promote our activities and get in touch with different institutions, which will have to help us achieve our strategic priorities on the long run.

Benefits

The Annual Plan includes a wide range of activities and projects that will benefit various Wikimedia projects in different languages. It will also provide benefits particularly for our local community and for the global community as well.

Our Annual Plan is subdivided into four different tracks: administration, GLAM, education, and community. The administrational part aims at increasing our organisational capacities and effectiveness; GLAM has its primary goal of extending cooperation with the institutions from this sector; our educational programme focuses on the activities and projects implemented in cooperation with the educational institutions; and the track on community includes a set of activities aimed at supporting the work done by our community members.

Annual Plans are submitted by other organisations on a regular basis to the FDC or PEG. Since we don't meet the criteria to submit our request to the FDC, we find it more convenient to do it to the PEG. This will have to change in near future once we meet the criteria.

The increase of the number of organisations with plenty of activities and projects dealing with the Wikimedia projects is always beneficial for our movement, especially when the entity operates in a region with high potential of improvements.

Priority levels

Level	Project
High	Administration Education
Mid	Skopje Zoo Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia Wikiexpeditions Photographic competitions Wikicrafts
Low	Archaeoexpeditions Edit-a-thons Editing competitions

Calendar

Project	2014				2015
Project	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep
Education
Skopje Zoo
Holocaust Memorial Center for the Jews of Macedonia
Wikiexpeditions
Wikicrafts
Wiki Loves Monuments
Wiki Loves Earth
Archaeoexpeditions
Edit-a-thons
Editing competitions

Extension of activities

At the end of our annual 2014-2015 grant period, we had enough remaining funds to request an extension of planned activities and the introduction of new projects. This was necessary to fill-in the gap between September-October 2015 (end of current grant) and the Simple APG grant that only started in January 2016. This Request for use of remaining funds was approved and all details follow.

Note: Below are given the goals and activities of only the newly introduced projects, as the rest are already described above.

Goals

Wikimedian-in-Residence (MANU)

Same as above, but in a different institution.

GLAM

Wiki Loves Performing Arts (Drama Theatre)

to illustrate articles on noted actors that lacked (free) images.
to create new articles inspired by the images taken.

Community

European Science Photo Competition 2015

to encourage the public to take interest in the sciences and paticipate with their own photos.
to improve the science element of our activities and enrich Wikipedia by those images.
to encourage creation and improvement of articles related to these images.

Activities

GLAM

Wikimedian-in-Residence (MANU)

Since the term of the first Wikimedian-in-residence (WiR) at the National Archives finished, and he ceased working on that position, this extension provided the opportunity to introduce a new WiR in a new institution, the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts (MANU).

Physics experiments

This is a project aimed at recording high-quality videos of systematically selected physics experiments for the purposes of illustrating important scientific concepts and phenomena in various sciences.

Wiki Loves Performing Arts (Drama Theatre)

This is a first part of a larger project group named Wiki Loves Performing Arts, designed to systematically illustrate the theatre actors of Macedonia (many of them TV and film actors too) by taking high-quality images in their theatres and improving their articles.

Community

European Science Photo Competition 2015

The European Science Photo Competition 2015 is a pan-European science photo competition will be organized to bring more science to Wikipedia. An international competition makes it possible to reach out to the wider scientific community and make them aware of the possibility to share their findings and passion with wider audiences using visual communication and free environment of Wikimedia.

Measures of success

GLAM

Wikimedian-in-Residence (MANU)

60 images scanned and uploaded per month
60 images used in articles per month
1 educational/editing event organised at MANU

Physics experiments

at least 15 experiments recorded;
at least 50 articles in multiple languages enriched with the recorded videos.

Wiki Loves Performing Arts (Drama Theatre)

at least 20 actors photographed
at least 20 images used in their articles
at least 10 articles on actors improved

Community

Archaeoexpeditions

1 archaeoexpedition undertaken
40 images made and uploaded
10 articles created and improved

Wikiexpeditions

1 wikiexpedition undertaken
400 images made and uploaded
30 articles created and improved

Edit-a-thons

1 edit-a-thon undertaken
at last 5 participants
at last 30 articles created or improved

Editing competitions

1 editing competition undertaken
at least 8 participants
at least 200 articles created or improved

European Science Photo Competition 2015

at least 10 participants uploading at least one photograph;
at least 200 photographs uploaded;
at least 70% of total images used in articles in three months.