Wikimedia Hong Kong/AP 2013/14

Wikimedia Hong Kong Annual Plan 2013/14

1. In order to improve the transparency, & organize resources better as well as comply to the requirement of FDC funding process, the Directory hereby propose an annual plan for fiscal year 2013/14. Below are the goals and plans the chapter willing to achieve between 1 Jul 2013 and 30 June 2014.

Review of current status

2. As The role of volunteers is both strategic and executive, they have run every aspect of the daily business chapter. So with limited budget & volunteer working time, the achievement of the chapter is highly rely on external opportunities, by invitation and favours of counterparts and partner, and spend on their budget. In this case we keep using the previous development plan, and just develop a small number of projects like Education toolkit for Liberal Studies, and the progress of the chapter development is rather slow.

3. But such passive model won't work well in the long term, especially lack of programme is hard for the chapter to attract donation and external funding. On the other hands, we can clear see some problem with limited volunteer working time, due to long working hours of HK's day time jobs, the chapter board and volunteers find it difficult to meet the rather demands on transparency, especially in prepare financial report in order to get funding from the Wikimedia Foundation.

Wikimania

4. Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong also expose the vulnerability of volunteer only system, as most volunteers are focusing on the conference, we can only manage to continue and step forward a bit in most of our works. With the help with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education program team, we have secure an access and help in a general course in City University in Hong Kong, which includes a Wikipedia article as student's final assignment.

5. Even in preparing for the Wikimania conference, we find it difficult to settling a meeting time with the partners and potential sponsors, so the Wikimania eventually decided that we should hire a full-time General manager to cope with this demand, and speed up the process on allocating different resources.

6. However Wikimania in Hong Kong will present a great outreach and publicity potential for the chapter's future work, and the event itself will happen in the beginning of coming fiscal year, the Chapter will provide as much as possible support to secure a successful event and create a legacy for future development

Increase outreach

7. Outreach is area we have maintain some progress, thanks for the help from generous and resourceful partners and counterparts, even in limited resources and volunteer working time, it is an area we will continue with or without staff and extra budget. But from the previous experiences, there is always some events happened during the working hours, when no volunteer is able to attend the events, and also we just managed to prepare material for the outreach causes, so we would like to improve our efficiency here.

Education

8. From the previous projects like "Liberal Studies Toolkits", we have keep a pool of contacts and advisors in the Education sectors. And it is always our chapter's focus area to work, as students are always the biggest potential pool of our volunteer, as they are more willing to embrace new technology, and the group with most free time, and most important, most of them are already "heavy Wikipedia users" for their project works. We also tend to keep our effort in Secondary Schools, as we lack of professional on engage with primary school, which may need person with extra skills to deal with primary school students

9. We had a series of school talks in secondary schools in advocacy and publicity of the "Liberal Studies Toolkits" project. We would like to continue and expand the talks opportunities to more schools. So in this case a full time staff we give us more maneuver space on schedule and preparations.

10. Last year we had a collaboration with an associate professor in City University who is teaching a General Education course, that students writing Wikipedia article as final assignment. We also exploring possibility to similar collaboration with a college in Chinese University of Hong Kong. And a full time executive will help us in speeding these process and expand the collaboration with other universities.

11. We also exploring such out reach opportunities with WebOrganic, a service provider for "Internet Learning Support Programme" by HKSAR government. Current direction is through the network of WebOrganic, we will host or join the company's workshop for secondary and primary school teachers, as well as students, to help them to establish a correct concept on using Wikipedia, as well as turn them to editor if possible. We are looking forward a long-term collaboration with WebOrganic and will try more ways to collaborate with each other. And we would also try to make ourselves present in the seminar for school teachers by the relevant school organisation to increase the reach of Wikipedia in classroom.

Ethnic minority groups

12. We will try to reach out with ethnic group within Hong Kong. The Filipinos & Indonesian have a strong network of organizations helping & supporting the immigrants and domestic workers, and as we know there is some Nepalese and Indian Wikipedians are in town, so we would try to support these groups, encouraging them use and edit Wikimedia projects.

GLAM

13. The development of GLAM-Wiki in Hong Kong is currently in a limbo due to the rather uncooperative approach of local museums, the vast majority of which are government-operated. The relevant department holds a rather conservative attitude towards collaboration with us, with various concerns on areas like copyrights issues. One particular obstacle is that exhibition content is often borrowed from museums beyond Hong Kong, which means the local museums do not claim exclusive rights on them. There is also a lack of locally sourced material for exhibits, so the approach of GLAM-Wiki working in other countries may not work in Hong Kong.

15. However, we think that after the Wikimania events, the GLAM institutions will probably have better understanding of Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, and more willing to take part in the GLAM initiative. And the chapter will start some group tour to the museums, and continue engaging with relevant government departments.

PR Sector

14. Although we tend to not seeking outreach with the PR sector, our volunteers occasionally receive calls from relevant personell, asking Wikipedia relevant questions. We think we can remain friendly to these calls, if possible, we probably can develop a tool-kit guiding them using WIkipedia correctly.

Community Support

15. Supporting the community is one of our major area to develop, and we believe we should use our resources to support the community initiatives, especially those helpful to the project, as well as promoting the Projects and Free Culture movement.

Supporting meetups

16. The Hong Kong Wikipedians community organized meetups since 2006, and now there is a regular one, once a month. The Chapter is willing to support the meetup, and provide as help as possible, including adding variation of meetups, going different places, and different events that can contribute to the WIkimedia Project itself.

17. On the other hands, the chapter is willing to help in the effort of recruiting new Wikipedians. The Chapter is considering following the Taiwan successful cases, having a series of workshop to tutor newbies, within the meetup or even an separate meetup.

Community Grant

18. The Chapter also willing to support the community, by following the example of German Chapters, by giving small amount of money from our budget to support causes, events and projects by the chapter & community members. According to current structure, the Council will be responsible on accept proposal and approve the grant, the directory, (along with staff if hired) wil be responsible for tracking and monitoring the programme progress, as well as administrative support.

Scholarship to International conference

19. Wikimania is proven a great chance for Wikipedians to learn experience from other parts of world and increase our visibility, so we would also like to sponsor around 10 community members to such global events. According to current structure, the Council will be responsible on accept proposal and approve the grant, the directory, (along with staff if hired) wil be responsible for tracking and monitoring the expenses, as well as administrative support.

20. We would also reserve budget to support our board member (or/and staff if hired) to attend Wikimedia Conference each year.

Participation in international Wikimedian initiatives

21. Also we would like to be more active taking parts in international Wikimedian initiative, we have been working closely with the rest of the global community on such initiatives like Wikipedia as world heritage. We already decided to take part in Wiki Loves Monuments this year, with preparation already started in the last fiscal years.

Annual Conference

22. In 2014, we will resume the traditional of having an annual conference, which was proven that was crucial for us to stay in touch with the partners and counterparts.

Organization & Professionalization

23. To cope with the tasks above, as most of them would be happened during working hours, it is inevitable to think about the option of staffing. Also we need to rent sort of office facility to house the staff, and provide the proper support and environment for the staffs.

Office

24. We originally thinking of an independent office, however the skyrocketing rent in the Territories makes the option high infeasible. We tend to have a number of desks and access in a local co-working space for the staff, as well as meeting space for the board, council and in case of volunteers.

Staffing

25. Even during we preparing for this plan and relevant FDC Grant proposal process, we have to encounter the lack of volunteer working time, especially on accounting and financial estimations. So we would like to, by hiring full time dedicated staff, to increase efficiency for the daily operation and better accounting, and grip every outreach opportunity.

26. We would like to hire an Executive Manager in order the take over the role currently handling by volunteer secretary of the chapter, dedicated himself in dealing with daily operation, as well as execute all the new programmes. The Manager also responsible to lead the other members of staff, benchmarking and reviewing their performance, also increase efficiency and transparency of the chapter business by better communication (reports, blog post etc).

27. We should also looking for a dedicated staffer as Accounting & Outreach Executive, preferably with at least LCCI Level 3 qualification in accounting, who spends most of their time on dealing with the accounting, especially live bookkeeping of the chapter's finance. This improves upon the current position where the accounting records are only collated at the end of the fiscal year because there is limited volunteer time. The executive also need to focus on clean up subscription and membership, look for potential alternative local funding, ie small scale fund raising, local alternative grant. The AOE is also need to support for outreach opportunities whenever needed.

28. Also considering a huge increase of the number of the chapter's money transactions, so the audit cost, as required by Hong Kong's Company law, will increase a lot as well, so we must be prepared for that.

29. As most of the events and outreach opportunities in working hours that volunteers cannot cope with , so we would like to have a dedicates Outreach executive to deal with the task. The executive's main task is to seek and execute outreach opportunities wherever possible, including attending events by counterparts and partners. The staff also need to deal a lot with education program, coordinating and expanding the outreach efforts in universities, primary and secondary schools and even the general public and prepare relevant materials.

30. At the same time, all the staff should provide administrative and other support to volunteers whenever is needed, as after all serving the community is always an important mission of the chapter.

Financial Sources

31. Wikimedia Hong Kong is operating on an absolute barebone budget in the previous years, with no expected source of income other than membership subscriptions to fund the administrative costs of the chapter. The administrative costs are currently covered using reserves from previous donations and grants, and the coming year probably the unlikely surplus from Wikimania, after return the loan from the Foundation.

32. However in order to cash in the legacy of the Wikimania we have to maintain the outreach , and free our volunteers from daily administrative burdens, and let go to deal if more crucial duties, deal with the community and share their stories to the public. So we decided to apply for the FDC grants this year, as the most obvious and easiest way we get funded now.

33. If the FDC grant is not granted, we have to switch back to previous passive and waiting approach on outreach and community. We might have enough funding to continue the initiative like WLM, but our outreach efficient will highly restricted due to limited volunteer working time.

34. In the long turn, we also need to seek local funds, like local charity foundations, or eventually public fundraising, in order to achieveas a self sufficient entity. And such plan and programmes will be helpful when we approach potential donors.

Conclusions

35. We would like to present this plan to the council and the general assembly. And we hope both of them will approve this plan as soon as possible, as such plan is really crucial for the future development of the chapter, and the Wikimedia Movement in Hong Kong as well.