Grants:PEG/WM CZ/Presentation & Outreach II/Report2014-2

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2013-14 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/WM CZ/Presentation & Outreach II.

You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Project status[edit]

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?: YES

Is your project completed?: YES

Activities and lessons learned[edit]

Activities[edit]

2014 wiki conference[edit]

supervisor: User:Blahma

expected impact was: 100 participants plus 300 viewers of recorded talks

real impact: 128 participants, 1906 views (18/1/2015)

The conference was at Brno's planetarium (supported by planetarium itself and Masaryk's university) on 29th November. 67 of 128 participants filled in the post-event questionnaire. Most of them were aged 21-30, but 25% of respondents were older than 50. Most of them (60%) were just passive users of Wikimedia projects. Among the most often reported positives of the event were the location, opportunities to meet wikipedians, and motivation to edit and suppport WMF projects.

Links: conference talks, page at cswiki, Blog post (in Czech)

Exhibitions[edit]

represent Wikimedia projects on two exhibition/events
supervisors: User:Packa

expected impact: personal contact with 200 visitors

impact: 250 people talked to, introduced 20 to editing

We had a booth at Silesian Museum Night, where two of our members held four short presentations for the passers-by: how Wikipedia works, how to edit it, Silesia at Wikipedia, and about Wiki Loves Monuments competition. In the first two hours of five-hour opening time, they estimated that around 200 people stopped by. Even though the total attendance of the Museum Night was said to be lower than the last year, we did not observe it on our booth. Furthermore, a lot of the visitors actually talked to us. We have handed out 6 books, a little less than 50 memory games, and 30 Wikipedia leaflets. Overall, we found participation in this event more than worthwhile.

The second exhibiton we took part in was Autumn Book Fair in Havlickuv Brod. There we set up the our usual booth, demostrating Wikipedia to people, now with some low-cost promo items to give to people we talked to -- we gave out 58 of those. Apart from that, we handed out "I edit Wikipedia" t-shirts to people who found an error in Wikipedia, and fixed it directly on our booth. We hope that this might introduce people into editing by showing them how to do it, and giving them something to remind them about it. We handed out t-shirts to 20 people, and collected their e-mail addresses, together with 2 more people who refused shirts. We e-mailed those 22 on 24th February; within 4 days, we received 4 responses: two of them wrote they sometimes fix or add info to Wikipedia. There was also a talk about Wikipedia given directly at the start of the exhibition on Saturday morning, but that met with quite low effect as only three people came.

GLAM relations[edit]

establish relations with two GLAM institutions
supervisor: User:Gampe

impact: improving Wikipedia through expert knowledge, access to unique media, further propagation of Wikipedia through cooperation, increased credibility

In GLAM, have a working cooperation with Dejvické divadlo, which is an influential scene in Prague. We're still negotiating an agreement with National Heritage Institute (NPÚ) and National Technical Library, with several cooperations that should happen in 2015. There was a GLAM seminar on Wikiconference in Brno, resulting in possible future cooperation with Moravian Library in Brno, which depends on interest of volunteers in Brno. Regarding gathering of media, there are mostly private donations so far, such as on-going upload of images from archives of František Řiháček, Ferdinad Bučina and posters from Juraj Jakubisko.

Students Write Wikipedia[edit]

organize eight Students Write Wikipedia courses
supervisor: User:Vojtech.dostal

expected impact: 300 participating students writing new articles

A total of 352 students from different cities of the Czech Republic took part in our education program "Students Write Wikipedia" during the summer term of 2013/2014 and winter term of 2014/2015. Collectively, they added 1,934,143 bytes of text which amount to about 650 pages of a typical book. They also created 119 new pages on Czech Wikipedia. Our education program runs almost expense-free, is governed by volunteers and maintains a stable number of bytes written each year. Our representative is member of the international "Education Collaborative". The program was also introduced at "Šrámkova Sobotka" workcamp, where it was applauded by leading Czech education experts. A Wikimedian was invited to give a talk about the program at the ELFday e-learning forum at Masaryk University on September 11, 2014.

2014 Wiki Loves Monuments[edit]

organize 2014 Wiki Loves Monuments competition
supervisor: ~~cs:User:Frettie~~ passed to cs:User:Jagro

expected impact: 50 new media contributors, 5000 new photos

This round, we acquired additional funding of 50 000 CZK from external sources (AVAST Foundation) that enabled us to extend the focus of the project besides the contest itself. This funding allowed us to employ a part-time contest administrator and increase the popularisation of the contest with promotion material (flyers, photo exhibition). The contest was supported by Czech National Heritage Institute and Silesian Museum and 5 other companies.

Presentation video[edit]

Wikipedia presentation video for use in lectures -- introducing Wikipedia and showing how to contribute
supervisor: cs:User:NoJin

expected impact: usage on editation workshops (100 participants), school lectures (500 students), presentation at exhibitions and other events

The original idea was to commision a group of students from art/filmmaking school to create an educational video presenting Wikipedia. The project mostly consistet of the students not responding, not delivering anything usable, and requesting money up front. After ten months of these attempts our supervisor called this a failure, and we used about one third of the allocated money to fund a plane ticket for a volunteer from Finland, who shot four videos (with 597 views on YouTube as of 2015-02-17).

The videos are:

One issue of Wikimedium[edit]

1 issue of Czech Wikimedium magazine
supervisor: User:Okino

expected impact: one issue per 150 copies

The printed issue was distributed on 2013 Wikiconference, with remaining copies handed out on other events where we had presence. (This didn't work very well for Havlíčkův Brod exhibition, as it took place at the end of 2014, when the last magazine issue was 10 months old and thus not very up to date. Nevertheless, organizers of 2014 Wikiconference found it good for newcomers even though it was dates, as it was still some interesting reading that shows Wikipedia is also a community, and can be taken home.) The magazine included a poll, which unfortunately prompted very few responses. While it's pleasant to know that most of the people who did reply found the magazine useful (especially the section covering news from the "wiki world"), it's apparent that majority of people who got the magazine did not actually send any feedback, so we still have no persuasive data on the impact of printed magazine to promotion of movement goals.

Distribution of book describing Wikipedia[edit]

distribution of the book about Wikipedia to schools and libraries
supervisor: User:Gampe

100 copies of the book were to be distributed

We found out that the publisher has unsold prints of the Wikipedia book, which they were willing to sell to us for the price of print (50 CZK per piece). We bough 100 of the books and distributed them among participants of our Wikipedia courses (mostly seniors, some prints also went to students), as we consider it pretty easy way to spread the information that stay with course participants. The reception especially from seniors is very positive -- some of them taught themselves to add references, which was not covered in their basic course. Vojtěch Veselý, who is coordinating courses for seniors, is considering adding printing errata to clarify VisualEditor changes ("edit" vs. "edit source" buttons), so they can use it further.

Lessons learned[edit]

2014 wiki conference[edit]

What worked well?

Conference focused on beginners ("look under the hood of Wikipedia"). This was received well by the attendees. Experienced Wikipedians also found interesting talks in the programme, because it included many activities that happen on Wikipedia, and long-time Wikipedians usually focus only on one area. We decided to focus mainly on the public also because this was the first time Czech Wiki conference took place in Brno (as opposed to Prague, where all the previous conferences were).
Co-organization with Alumni and Friends of Masaryk University, which takes interest in Wikipedia contributions since 2013. They helped with negotiation with the venue, promotion, financially and also helped with organization during the event itself.
Cooperation with Brno Observatory and Planetarium, whose director is a member of Masaryk University Alumni Association, and arranged free-of-charge conference venue at the observatory, as well as publishing of observatory photos under the free license. The observatory has proved to be an excellent place for the conference.
Use of externally-supplied catering for lunch, instead of letting them to disperse to restaurants in the vicinity (which there were almost none). We also divided the participants into three groups by the color food voucher, which has solved the issue of not having enough regular spaces to eat in the building.
Promotion in local print; thanks to careful watch of the deadlines (which were sometimes a few months before the event), we were able to put invitation to the event into local magazines published by the city, observatory and the university. A few attendees came thanks to this.

What didn't work?

Even though we reserved an hour for attendee registration, we had difficulty to handle lots of people who came event before announced registration time. This, together with lack of second copy of registration list to make notes -- caused issues with lunch voucher distribution and prevented us from knowing the exact number of attendees.
We estimated the number of lunches by the number of people who registered beforehand and indicated they will want to eat. Unfortunately, about a third of registered people did not come, which was only partially compensated by people who came without being registered. We had to give out food vouchers and a few lunches went uneaten.
Including random members of the public -- even though the hill with observatory is a common walkaround destination, the weather day of the event wasn't very good, and we did not have many volunteers left to talk with passers-by in the lobby. Prepared automatic loop of WMCZ videos did not even attract conference attendees, perhaps because the hall was kind of distant and they preferred the main "live" conference program.
Promotion in the press. Even though we made a press release, only one journalist the Czech Radio attended.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Don't plug borrowed water dispensers to the electricity -- it's not necessary and the only thing it causes is either heating or cooling the water, which does not really help if you want to simply drink the water.
Workshop for GLAM representatives. There was enough interest, but some of the attendees had unreasonable expectations about cooperation, and some conference attendees did not know the workshop is taking place. Nevertheless, it seems useful to include some kind of GLAM cooperation focus in future conferences.

Exhibitions[edit]

What worked well?

We're getting quite good in organizing exhibition presence smoothly, and we generally felt encouraging people to directly edit is a step in the right direction, especially when we can check with people later and see how it worked.

What didn't work?

Almost nobody came to our presentation/talk, partially because its timing wasn't good.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Having a check-list of things to pack and prepare would help us set everything up (especially as we do exhibitions regularly).

GLAM relations[edit]

What worked well?

Cooperation with Dejvické divadlo works fine, as well as with Silesian museum, even though that is mostly on auto-pilot, there's are no substantial new activities besides us visiting Museum night and their support for WLM (which are both great nevertheless).

What didn't work?

Most of the work is done only by Gampe, it's hard to engage other volunteers. Sometimes someone goes to a meeting, but it does not lead to anything.
Institutions we talk with usually react in one of two ways:
1. We really like it, but nobody here has any time for that.
2. We really like it, but we cannot make anything available under a free license. (We're working very hard to overcome this obstacle, organizing seminars and exploring legal options within Czech law system.)

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

No answer, as this activity is mostly unplanned and with minimal financial expenses.

Students Write Wikipedia[edit]

What worked well?

Teachers repeatedly ask us to collaborate with them and that indicates they are satisfied with our program. The students represent a significant (byte-wise and article-wise) contribution to the Czech Wikipedia community (see graph).

What didn't work?

Not surprisingly, students rarely become regular editors (only 5% edit one year after they had registered). This is OK because we did not expect students to become regular editors.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

The project will continue running in future and some minor changes are likely but we cannot currently specify them. If better metrics are ever desired, we may consider hiring a paid education manager.

2014 Wiki Loves Monuments[edit]

What worked well?

The paid administrator did most of the paper and work (dealings with partners, authors, blog inputs, preparation of promotion materials, ...). Thanks to this progress was relatively smooth and outreach wider in comparison to previous years. This reflected in the total number of photos which exceeded 8,500 - that is 33% increase against 2013. The number of participants increased to 249 from 167 in 2013.

The chapter arranged workshop with focus on architecture photography in order to get more quality photos of monuments. The 12 workshop participants contributed with 448 photos to the contest. These already trained participants are also likely to contribute to our other projects with strong emphasis on architecture such as "Czech villages photo". The overall quality of received images was better than in previous years.

Another part of the external funding has been used to create an exhibition of the best photos from the national rounds worldwide. The exhibition consists of 20 photographs (A2 size) with descriptions (A5). Each description has QR-code that links to Wikipedia article of the monument. Another three panels tell the story of Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wiki Loves monuments and how to contribute. The exhibition has been popular amongst visitors and we plan to lend it out for free to different heritage/educational institutions.

What didn't work?

Unfortunately, we didn't manage to establish closer cooperation with educational institutions, such as high schools/colleges with focus on photography/art. We ascribe this to the late start of the project; we approached the schools in mid-July. By this time, most of them has holiday break when the institutions are not in contact with students and they are too busy in September. Our thematic category (spa architecture) has received only 257 photos and their quality was not exquisite. We acknowledge that the existence of this category was not sufficiently communicated toward partipicants.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

We would ask the schools for cooperation no later than at the end of May (preferably sooner). The topic of thematic category should be determined earlier (in April) and more accented toward participants.

Presentation video: student attempt[edit]

What worked well?

I belive that apart from the initial assumption we handled it pretty well. Our supervisor attempted to maintain communication multiple times, and we did dump money into black hole.

What didn't work?

Relying on not-really-motivated students to do something for us.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Set clear dead lines and terminate the project earlier when it's not working, maybe.

Presentation video: flown-in volunteer[edit]

What worked well?

Volunteer who finally shot it did a good job, he was a collegue of User:Aktron in one of his other activities.
Workflow based on their previous experience.

What didn't work?

One of chosen locations (library) was too small to allow for enough stock footage.
Postprocessing took too long
We lost some of the material we shot.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Cameraman could speak a bit of Czech so he can work by himself
More exterior shots
Better promotion of resulting videos

One issue of Wikimedium[edit]

What worked well?

Editorial process, one dedicated editor was able to put together an interesting read for a member of the community as well as general public.

What didn't work?

It was debatable whether all this helped get Wikipedia more editors or increased community engagement. On the other hand, we see glossy annual reports and similar materials all around the Wikimedia movement, so it's quite possible they have some use beyond the strict sense of global metrics.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Think a bit more about what we want to achieve with a magazine.

Distribution of book describing Wikipedia[edit]

What worked well?: Anecdotal evidence suggest that this is a good and cheap (we got them at ~$2 per print) material to accompany editor courses for older people.
What didn't work?: We didn't take evaluation into consideration when planning this, so we don't have much quantitative data.
What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?: If we did this again we probably should collect contacts to people we give this, so we can keep in touch with them.

Learning patterns[edit]

None were produced as part of this grant.

Outcomes and impact[edit]

Outcomes[edit]

Provide the original project goal here.: The goal of "Presentation & Outreach II" is to increase public knowledge of and participation in Wikimedia projects in the Czech Republic.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 short paragraphs.: P&O is not really a single project, but rather a group of loosely related activities, each of which heads towards a common goal. Looking at the summaries below, it can be safely said that most of them were successful in their individual ways. However, when we look at global metrics, we can see that the outcomes are not always exactly aligned with the hard numbers of acquired editors, media and other countables. Sometimes this is because it's simply not possible to relate those numbers, sometimes it's because we haven't put enough attention to structuring these activities so that we can collect such data.

Progress towards targets and goals[edit]

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
100 participants at the conference	there were 128 participants
300 viewers of recorded talks	there were 1906 views as of 18th January	Note that views and viewers are different number. Nevertheless, it appears that recordings of conference talks help spread the information beyond physical participants. For example, video of The dark sides of Wikipedia talk alone was viewed more than 600 times (as of Jan 31)
personal contact with 200 visitors on exhibitions	250 people talked to	this is a combination of our estimate from Silesian Museum night, and 58 items given out to active visitors in Havlickuv Brod
establish relations with two GLAM institutions	established relations with one, agreement talks with two other	Dejvické divadlo, ongoing negorations with National Heritage Institute and National Technical Library,
300 students writing new articles within SWW	352	This is a number of students contributing to Wikipedia in summer term 2013/2014 and winter term 2014/2015
50 new media contributors in WLM	133 new contributors	133 of WLM participants have created their accounts in August and September 2014 (i.e. the month before and during WLM)
5000 new photos in WLM	8589 photos uploaded
presentation video used on workshops (100 participants), and in school lectures (500 students)	no reported use in lectures, 597 views on Youtube	original plan went south, we had "replacement" videos quite late
150 copies of magazine distributes	no data	Magazine was handed out on various events, and we unfortunately did not keep track of how many went where. It's possible that some prints are still kept in WMCZ office, but provided that people found it useful even on 2014 conference (one year after the last issue), we can assume that even if there are some prints left, they'll find their readers eventually.
100 copies of Wikipedia book distributed	30 allocated to Senior Citizens Write Wikipedia (3 already handed out, rest will soon be), 10 went to GLAM (4 already handed out),	60 prints are still in our office, and will probably be used for another round of courses. Senior courses already used ~20 books from earlier batches and they seem interested in using it further (see #Distribution of book describing Wikipedia). 20-30 prints are requested for lecture for librarians.

Global Metrics[edit]

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees. In addition to the measures of success for your specific program (in above section), please use the table below to let us know how your project contributed to the Global Metrics. We know that not all projects will have results for each type of metric, so feel free to put "0" where necessary.

Next to each required metric, list the actual outcome achieved through this project.
Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome. For example, if you were funded for an edit-a-thon which resulted in 0 new images, your explanation might be "This project focused solely on participation and articles written/improved, the goal was not to collect images."

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	29	number of Wikipedians from were involved in at least one grant activity
2. # of new editors	22	As for Students Write Wikipedia, we calculated that the survival ratio of the preceding terms was 5% (a percentage of students who edit one year after they had registered). This way we could estimate a number of students who will survive (5% of 352), which gives us 17 expected surviving editors. From WLM we had 133 new Commons contributors (calculated as number of WLM participants who have registered on Commons the month before and during WLM; from this number, 3 have contributed to Commons between November and February). For exhibitions the number is 2 (see description). Not measured for the conference. 17 + 3 + 2 = 22.
3. # of individuals involved	627	128 participants on the conference, 250 people stopped by our exhibitions booths, 249 WLM participants
4. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	1855	GLAM: 25 (Řiháček 3, Bučina 18, Jakubisko 14), WLM: 1830, we did not monitor images in Students Write Wikipedia
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	119	119 new articles were written as part of Students Write Wikipedia (improved pages were not monitored)
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	1,934,143	Bytes added + Bytes deleted during September (Wikimetrics) as part of SWW

Learning question: Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?

We didn't ask participants about this.

Some of the organizers were visibly motivated after organizing the contest successfully, and are aware of mistakes that were made so they can avoid them in the future.

Impact[edit]

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities?

Reporting and documentation of expenditures[edit]

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation[edit]

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".: YES

Finance[edit]

In January 2014 we have received 7,876 EUR in grant funding from Wikimedia Foundation, which was converted 216,350.04 CZK (with 27.48 CZK/EUR rate). Together with 4,805 CZK which were not spent in previous P&O grant, we had total 221,155.04 CZK available.

Current spending[edit]

Number	Category/Item	Budgeted EUR	Budgeted CZK	Spent CZK	Tickets
1	Core activities	5,777	158,751.96	10 5367,57
1.1	wikiconference	1,610	44,242.8	40 075,82	654, 676, 677
1.2	exhibitions	1,170	32,151.6	21 114,5	513, 560
1.3	Wiki loves monuments 2014	1,300	35,724	32 054	642, 659, 660
1.4	presentation video	585	16,075.8	5 355,25	686
1.5	domains	312	8,573.76	0
1.6	other	800	21,984	6 768	489, 491, 504, 505, 550, 606, 630, 661, 665, 672, 674
2	Promotional materials	1,670	45,891.6	39 380,76
2.1	promotional items	590	16,213.2	16 785	559
2.2	Wikimedium magazine	180	4,946.4	7 474,06	423, 435
2.3	leaflets	300	8,244	7 163,7	621, 656, 673, 683
2.4	business cards	300	8,244	2 958	529
2.5	books	300	8,244	5 000	689
3	Administration	429	11,788.92	11 050
3.1	Accountancy	429	11,788.92	11 050	458
4	Unallocated reserve		4,805	0
Grand total		7,876	221,237.48	155 798,33

Accounts and leftovers[edit]

All P&O II grant money is at two Fio bank accounts: 2900098495/2010 (transactions, now holds most of the remaining money) and 2700141567/2010 (formerly savings). Their combined balance as of 21^th February is 65481,45 CZK, which corresponds to what we got and what we spent (actually there's 124.74 CZK more, which is mostly caused by interests).

Remaining funds[edit]

Are there any grant funds remaining?: YES

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.): 65481,45 CZK (~2378 EUR)

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.: Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.; We would like to use remaining funds on our Czech Outreach project if it gets approved.