WMMED/Wikimedia Conference/Berlin 2016 Report

Wikimedia Conference 2016, an annual meeting for Wikimedia affiliate organizations and movement partners (Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups, Wikimedia Foundation, Center for Internet and Society, and Wiki Ed Foundation) was held in Berlin from from Friday, April 22 to Sunday, April 21. A two day pre-conference was help at the same venue on Wednesday April 20 and 21. Wiki Project Med Foundation was represented at both by FloNight/Sydney Poore.

The planned priority action items for the conference were 1) to promote Wiki Project Med as a global Wikimedia affiliate who is supporting the work of Wikimedia users around the world. 2) discuss with Affiliation Committee representatives the timing and qualifications to become a thematic organization. 3) in general promote medical and science content creation as an opportunity for institutional partnerships, Wikipedian in Residence, and Affiliate projects.
Other planned actions items included 4) meeting with WMF Legal staff to discuss Partnership Agreements, 5) presenter for group Partnership Session at Pre-conference, 6) meetings affiliates and WMF staff to identify partnership opportunities.

Reporting on Pre-conference, Conference, and individual meetings

Pre-conference:

The pre-conference was an invitation only event for people who were interested in learning and sharing about Engaging and Retaining Volunteers(e.g., Participatory Engagement Strategies, Communications & Social Media),Best Practice Exchanges with other Leaders(e.g., Lightning Talks, Creative Problem Solving), Designing Wikimedia Programs and Events (e.g., Program Toolkits, Creative Program Design, Workshop Design), Measuring and Evaluating Impact (e.g., Logic Models, Outcome Mapping, Data Analysis, Metrics).

Capturing Social Change Through Outcome Mapping. A presentation about a new method being introduced by WMF Program Capacity and Learning Department to document and share qualitative measures of success. The plan is to identify new qualitative measures of success that are applicable across the wikimedia movement. They can be used to evaluate progress in influencing change or building strong institutional partnerships.

In addition to attending the pre-conference sessions about Designing Programs and Events and Engaging and Retaining Volunteers, I co-planned and presented the Grants:Evaluation/News/Pre-conference for Wikimedia Conference 2016/Engaging and Retaining Volunteers#Partnerships - Challenges and Practices session with Nicola Zeuner , Daria Cybulska and Alex Stinson. The session was well attended and there was a strong interest in documenting the session outcomes and continuing to work on the better practices for Partnerships and methods to get affiliates assistance specific to their stage of organizational capacity. To accomplish the follow up, the facilitators (including me) are meeting by hangouts in May to get the documentation ready to share.

Also of note was a good session on Grants:Evaluation/News/Pre-conference for Wikimedia Conference 2016/Engaging and Retaining Volunteers#Understanding Social Media by Gregory Varnum, Jeff Elder, and Maria Cruz. They introduced a new Facebook group called Wikimedia Foundation social media huddle to coordinate and discuss social media. I joined and I'm seeing loads of good cross promotion happening in the group. So, I recommend Wiki Project Med using the Facebook group to spread the word about our various projects when we are creating blogs or other announcements about them. Presentation about Social Media

Project Management Tools

Since the WMF Program Capacity and Learning staff was planning the Pre-conference, I had the opportunity to speak with Jaime Anstee and Alex Stinson about concerns that I raised on wiki about the PC&L Department strongly preferencing cultural heritage over medical and other science topics. After my on wiki comments, they made adjustments to include more medical and science examples and not just Education and Cultural Heritage. And during the follow comments after several presentations there was good discuss about science and medical projects that are happening in the wikimedia movement. So, while I still have concerns that the on wiki environment could be uninviting for science and health topic experts if Wiki Project Med don't strongly make our presence known, I'm pleased that PC&L folks are attempting to be more inclusive by mentioning science and medical topics more often. Also other WMF departments such as Communication and Strategic Partnerships are interested in collaborating with Wiki Project Med as opportunities arise.

Wikimedia Conference

The main days of the conference had three tracks. 1. How to move forward. I attended most of these sessions which discussed the recent period of crisis and turmoil at WMF, and the plans to move forward. The format encouraged freely sharing opinions and feeling with the promise that the conversions would stay in the room. The only sessions in this track with a presentation was a sessions led by Katherine Maher about 2016 WMF Strategy & Annual Plan, and a presentation by WMF Program Capacity and Learning staff and panel with Affiliation Committee members.

Short presentation by WMF Program Capacity and Learning staff and panel with Affiliation Committee members.

2. Movement Impact. and 3 Capacity Building and Learning Time permitting I attending a few sessions in the Capacity Building track.

An excellent presentation about the growth of Wikimedia Ukraine.

Private meetings

Stephen Laporte- Discussed Partnership Memorandums of Understanding.
Zachary McCune - WMF Communication
Jorge Vargas- WMF Global Reach, Strategic Partnerships
María Sefidari and Montserrat Boix- Wikimujeres- Spanish language editors with strong interest in Women's Health.

Miscellaneous

Global Women's Health Project-Wiki Women's User Group and Wikimujeres. Follow up with Lucas Rosnau about translation aspect.
Citation Hunt tool, a simple tool shows you a piece of text tagged with [citation needed], then you find and add a reference for it (or skip to another entry).