Wikimedians for Disaster Response/Events/Workshop scaffold

This page provides a template for workshops on interactions between the Wikimedia and disaster management communities.
It follows the structure of such a workshop that was held on 20 March 2018 in Berlin (English summary).

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  When disaster strikes, many are lending a hand, experts and volunteers.
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  While some concentrate on missions in the disaster zone
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  and comprehensive prevention measures on-site,
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  others are taking to their keyboards to improve maps or to
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  curate and update relevant information in multiple languages
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  or to complement it with suitable illustrations.

This workshop is intended to facilitate interactions between on-the-ground and digital activities around disaster management and preparedness.

What

• We want to organize a one-day workshop to bring together Wikimedians with organizations active in disaster management in order to explore opportunities for collaboration.

Why

Wikimedia communities are interacting in multiple ways with topics around disaster management. In particular, they document disasters, their causalities and reactions to them, as well as preventive measures, legal frameworks and technical, sociological or other relevant aspects. Especially for events that unfold over extended periods of time, Wikipedia and its sister projects are increasingly becoming key pillars in the information ecosystem that is developing around the event, as described in this New York Times article on the activities of Wiki Project Med around the West African Ebola virus epidemic. So far, such activities are often developing spontaneously, with little coordination within Wikimedia communities and even less with other communities engaged in disaster management, like the International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement or OpenStreetMap.

A session at Wikimania 2017 was aimed at improving the preparation and coordination of Wikimedia activities in the area of disaster management, and exchanges with external partners ranked highly on a list of ideas that participants had come up with.

In response to that, the workshop proposed her aims to bring together Wikimedians active in the area of disaster management with representatives of such external organizations, so as to explore how the respective workflows and activities could benefit from closer interaction. One such workshop is currently being planned to take place in Berlin in February 2018, and we envision running similar ones in other places around the globe in collaboration with local Wikimedia communities and under the coordination of the globally active Wiki Project Med as well as the nascent group Wikimedians for Disaster Response.

When

• indicate date and agenda

Where

• indicate location

Who

• Participants
  • give an estimate of the number of people expected to attend, and how many of them might have a Wikimedia background
• Organizers
  • list them by name and/ or Wikimedia user name

How

• list concrete next steps in the preparation of the event