Wikimedia Conference 2018/Program/45

45: How will you define a successful workshop?

How to move forward

What was this session about?

The speaker and the participants talked about how do one prepare themselves for holding a workshop; what experience does Israel affiliate have; what tips and recommendations should one remember.

What are the next steps to be taken?

Feel free to reach Michal with your feedback on session or further ideas about productive editing workshops.

Photos

see the Commons category

Slides

TBA

Speaker

Michal Lester (WMIL)

Length (min)

60

Audience / Targetgroup

Program leaders, staff members, those who run programs for new editors

Session Format

Presentation and discussion

Description

How will you define a successful workshop? We run hundreds of editing workshops, edit-a-thons and courses, all over the world, every year. What's in common? And what are the differences? We’ll discuss three main parameters for a productive workshop: audience, trainer and training materials.

Desired Outcome

Sharing and discussing ideas about productive editing workshops

Documentation

Michal pointed at the vital thing for a successful workshop: Expectation Alignment, with yourself/the organizer/the participants

Aligning expectations, with:

Ourselves - why are we there? What do we expect to achieve? “What’s in it for me”?
If organizer is a local organization - What does the organization want to achieve? Organizers sometimes believe that “we’ll have a workshop and change our articles”. If expectations are not managed, people can get discouraged and not continue to edit
as for participants, it's important to understand backgrounds and proficiency: can you skip the “intro to Wikipedia”? are they experts in a specific subject matter? can we give them “homework”?

More recommendations:

Use the visual editor! Even if you’ve been a Wikipedian 25 years :D
Try and learn from participants at the end of the session, get feedback (oral is also good)
Very important to wrap up nicely and make sure that people that might want additional opportunities to contribute, get that opportunity

Thoughts from participants:

Very important to give background and facts to participants
“Prepare as you can, but expect that your plans will change”
Not to make the workshop “end”, nominate the articles to “did you know?…”, send statistics about pageviews, send gifts - - this is how you make people continue editing
Personal e-mail has a better chance of engaging
“Homework” --> People writing drafts in word - highly effective if people can find the time
Having a theme to the edit-a-thon or workshop is highly effective, as people will come if the theme is interesting to them, and will stay because they enjoy editing and contributing
Change the name of an event from “edit-a-thon” to a workshop to make it more appealing -> editations → “write-int”s :)
etc.