Wikimedistas de Colombia/Grupo de usuarios/Report 2015-2016

This report condenses the activities that the Wikimedians of Colombia User Group developed during the jul/2015-jul/2016 period.

Activities & event participation

2015

CIINATIC 2015

The group participated in CIINATIC 2015 in San Gil, an academic event focused on Information and Communication Technologies. Its participants are mainly university students, professors and researchers. During the event, Oscar gave an 1-hour talk in the conference main track, as well as a small workshop. Both activities were focused around the creation and use of bots and software tools for aiding the work of the Wikimedia movement members. About 150 people attended the talk, and about 10 people got involved in the workshop (it's worth to note that the workshop was planned for a small group).

For this participation, Oscar requested a TPS grant, which was funded. You may check the report here.

Editatón de Mujeres científicas colombianas

On October 28, the group got involved in the development of an edit-a-thon arount scientific Colombian women, which was organized by the Red Colombiana de Mujeres Científicas and the Academia Colombiana de Ciencias Exactas, Físicas y Naturales. The event was called "Mujeres científicas colombianas, ¿cuántas conoces?", and was aimed at the visibilization of scientific Colombian women in Wikipedia through the creation of articles.

Wikivacaciones 2015

Wikivacaciones was a photographic and writing contest in which participants had to submit photos or write reviews of their vacations. Places, food, activities, people, and so on, a lot of different topics were allowed to participate.

The photographic category worked pretty much the same way as Wiki Loves Monuments Colombia: during the participation period (December and January) people uploaded photos through an Upload Wizard; after that (February), a team of jurors picked the best photos in a process that comprised several rounds. On the other hand, the writing competition worked in a similar way as traditional wikicontests and contests like La mujer que nunca conociste: during the participation period (December and January), participants wrote reviews of elements found during their vacations in the Spanish Wikivoyage; after that, each review was scored by a juror in two factors (writing quality and usefulness), and those scores were weighted with the review length to produce a score; the participants with the highest final scores won the contest.

Aditionally, a "Public Pick Prize" was given. Participants could nominate one of their photos in Wikimedistas de Colombia's Facebook Page, and the photo which had more likes at the end of the participation period won the prize. As a restriction, people needed to follow the page before voting; this allowed us to get new followers.

In the end, 175 people shared 4311 photos from 305 different places, and 6 people wrote 42 texts (including reviews, itineraries and full articles) in Wikivoyage.

For communication, we had the following resources:

A Contest website.
A real-time statistics page created by Racso.
Wikimedistas de Colombia's Facebook Page
Wikimedistas de Colombia's Twitter.

As extra activities, we made the following:

We made a Workshop at Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Bucaramanga, where participants were explained about the contest and how to participate. The workshop was streamed, too.
We categorized a lot of the contest images in Commons. Uncategorized images are one of the main issues that massive-photo-uploading contests have, and we solved it by ourselves this time.

For enabling this contest, the group requested a PEG. You may check the report here.

2016

VIII Simposio Líderes Culturales por el Desarrollo

On February 6, the group participated in the VIII Simposio Líderes Culturales por el Desarrollo, a symposium organized by the Antioquia Museum in Medellín. During the event, Oscar gave a talk about the user group and the role of the Wikimedia projects for saving the history and culture of the country for the future.

Taller Advocacy+Tecnología

On May 20, the group was among the institutions invited to attend the "Advocacy+Tecnología" workshop in Bogotá, an event organized by Fundación Karisma, and executed by the Chilean NGO Derechos Digitales. The group was represented in the event by Ivan.

WikiFemHack Bogotá

On August 27, we participated actively in WikiFemHack Bogotá 2016, and event that Fundación Karisma developed as part of the global FemHack initiative, that aimed to create an environment for women to create, discuss and collaborate. Oscar gave a Wikipedia workshop for the attendants, who created Wikipedia articles of women and digital-centered institutions.

CIINATIC 2016

The group participated in CIINATIC 2016. This was the second time we were present at the event. This time, we participated even more actively than in 2015:

Oscar gave a main talk about the uses that Wikipedia has had in Education all around the world, and the ways Wikipedia can be used as a tool for helping the preservation of indigenous languages of Colombia and other countries.
We invited Stéphane Coillet-Matillon, from Wikimedia CH, to come to Colombia and attend the event. He gave a talk about Kiwix and the potential of offline Wikipedia for aiding all kind of communities to access free knowledge.
Oscar and Stéphane directed a workshop aimed at teachers of schools with low or no internet connectivity. The workshop explained how to used Kiwix, and Wikimedia CH gave the participants USB sticks with Kiwix, Wikipedia, Wikibooks and Project Gutenberg in Spanish.

Fiesta del Libro y la Cultura de Medellín

We were invited by #Bibliolabs to develop some activities during the 10th Fiesta del Libro y la Cultura de Medellín, between September 9 and 18. Alejandro was in charge of the activities, that showed the attendants how Wikipedia works as an open collaboration tool, and the distinct ways that people can work to improve an article. Also, there was an analysis of the Spanish Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects, and how they stand when compared to the projects of other languages.

Organizational changes and improvements

We created some coordinator figures for the group, which are aimed at giving it a lightweight but defined structure.
We created a blog that we actively use to showcase all our activities: http://wikimediacolombia.org.
We renewed our mailing list in preparation for beginning to use it actively. Also, we simplified and heavily updated our website.