Programa Catalisador do Brasil/Planejamento 2012-2013/Data analyst consultant/Results

The selected candidate is Henrique Andrade.

About Henrique Andrade

English

Henrique Andrade is an Information Technology (IT) professional and teacher of Web Technologies, Distance Learning Skills, Entrepreneurship and Digital Culture for graduate and undergraduate students. A researcher who is interested in free software, free culture, distance learning, entrepreneurship and databases.

He holds a Bachelor's Degree (BS) in Information Systems degree in UNIRIO (Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro) and is a Masters's student in Computing and Society in the Computing and Systems Engineering Program, COPPE/UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). He has also taken undergraduate course in Business at UFRRJ (Federal University of the Countryside of Rio de Janeiro).

Henrique has been the DBA (DataBase Administrator) at UNIRIO and the Lead Developer of e-UNI (electronic UNIversity), a Learning Management System customized for universities developed over the free software Moodle platform. He is a registered user of Wikipedia since 2009, and is familiar with wikis since 2003, using TWiki in nationwide projects.

Henrique has also a lot of experience in public speaking, and has spoken in many major Brazilian IT conferences, such as FISL, LATINOWARE, CONSEGI, ENTI and CSBC. He is been part of Brazilians free software communities, such as PSL-Brasil and SLRJ and was a member of the Free Software Implementation Technical Committee of the Brazilian Federal Government.

Since life is not only made of working hours, Henrique also likes to brew his own beer (and drink it, I guess!) and plays basketball at the Campo Grande Athletic Club amateur team (we're not going into details on physical profile here, but I can assure that thanks to him we considerably increased the average height of the Brazilian team).

I wish Henrique very good luck on his job. Let's welcome him and I hope we can all work together on the challenges we'll face to improve our data analyses capacities.

Português

Henrique Andrade é profissional de tecnologia da informação (TI) e professor de tecnologias Web, técnicas de educação a distância, empreendedorismo e cultura digital em cursos de graduação e pós-graduação e pesquisador nas áreas de software livre, cultura livre, educação a distância, empreendedorismo e bancos de dados. Foi o DBA (DataBase Administrator) da UNIRIO e coordenou o desenvolvimento do e-UNI (UNIversidade eletrônica), um ambiente virtual de aprendizagem customizado para universidades desenvolvido a partir do software livre Moodle.

Bacharel em sistemas de informação pela UNIRIO (Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro) e mestrando em informática e sociedade no programa de engenharia de sistemas e computação na COPPE/UFRJ (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro), Henrique também estudou administração na UFRRJ (Universidade Federal Rural do Rio de Janeiro).

Tem também bastante experiência com palestras e apresentações, tendo participado de grandes conferências de TI brasileiras como o FISL, LATINOWARE, CONSEGI, ENTI e CSBC. É membro de comunidades de software livre como PSL-Brasil e SLRJ e foi membro do comitê de implementação de software livre do governo federal. Usuário registrado da Wikipédia desde 2009, trabalha com wikis desde 2003, usando o TWiki em projetos de abragência nacional.

Como a vida não é feita só de trabalho, vale dizer que o Henrique gosta de produzir sua própria cerveja (e bebê-la, imagino!) e joga basquete na equipe amadora do Campo Grande Atlético Clube (não vamos entrar em detalhes do perfil físico dele aqui, mas posso garantir que, graças a ele, a altura média da equipe do Brasil aumentou um bocado ;-) ).

Desejo muita sorte ao Henrique nesta empreitada. Vamos dar as boas-vindas a ele e espero que possamos trabalhar todos juntos nos desafios que enfrentaremos para melhorar nossas capacidades no que diz respeito a análise de dados.

Background

The Wikimedia Foundation is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Our commitment: Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in the sum of all knowledge. According to comScore Media Metrix, Wikipedia and the other projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation receive more than 482 million unique visitors per month, making them the fifth-most popular web property world-wide (comScore, January 2012). Available in 282 languages, Wikipedia contains more than 21 million articles contributed by a global volunteer community of more than 100,000 people. Based in San Francisco, California, the Wikimedia Foundation is an audited, 501(c)(3) charity that is funded primarily through donations and grants. The Wikimedia Foundation was created in 2003 to manage the operation of Wikipedia and its sister projects. It currently employs 150 staff members. Wikimedia works with local chapter organizations in 39 countries or regions to advance the mission of the Wikimedia movement.

How can we experiment, test and track solutions and best practices among the editing community about the social norms, policies, and initiatives that will create renewed openness and promote general community health? How can we better fulfill the mission statement of the Foundation and attract more editors, especially from under-represented demographics? What type of initiative better fits improvements to be made and how can we make sure they are reaching our expected goals? What are and how to develop new tools for the community to make their editing experience better?

The need for this position emerged from a debate with the Brazilian community regarding WMF activities in Brazil. While we had previously planned to have a community organizer, to catalyse processes which had been stagnant in the Portuguese Wikimedia projects, the community demanded as a priority position to provide support in collecting data and allowing data driven decisions to be taken.

The Portuguese Wikipedia has been seen significant decrease of active editors in the last 2 years – While the average of active editors was of 1678 per month in 2010, in 2011 this average was of 1588 – a decrease of 5,4%. The Brazil Catalyst Project was created to contribute enabling a better environment so recovering losses and even growing becomes possible.

The Brazil Catalyst Program contractors, together with the community, have worked throughout a planning of activities that would help improvements on the Portuguese Wikipedia regarding collaboration, attracting new editors, retaining new editors as well as improving quality of content. However, the Brazil team has very much little data to 1) measure the impact of the its projects and work; 2) identify pros and cons on experiments and changes on the Portuguese Wikipedia; 3) lead rational and data driven discussions on the impact of projects and policies.

For this reason, we agreed on hiring a data and experiment analyst, in order to provide us with qualified information and data to develop projects and address changes.

FAQ

What has been the process in place to hire Henrique?

The Brazil Catalyst Program started debating a planning with the Portuguese community in May and its original proposal was to hire a community facilitator to organize, systematize and engage the community in creating an agenda for improving the editor's experience in Wikipedia. Many volunteers expressed some discomfort with this position and, in Wiki meet-ups (in Wikimania) as well as on the Meta wiki page, we decided in common agreement that the community needed more data on experiments they were carrying out, as well as on regular activities, to better analyse trends and to make data driven decisions. We therefore decided to open a Data and Experiments Consultant, which was actually opened in September.

We created a comission with volunteers to support and participate with the Brazil Catalyst Program coordinator in the hiring. That worked well during the period of analyses of resumés. After that, User:Ocastro decided to go ahead with interviews with the help of other WMF staff members: the selected candidates were interviewed by Oona Castro (Brazil Catalyst Program), Steph Tommem (HR) and Evan Rosen (Learning and Evaluation).

Three pre-finalists were invited then to develop a proposed task on the Wiki. Henrique's task development can be checked at a subpage of his user account at the Wikimedia Brasil website.

The finalists were then interviewed by Jessie Wild. And the finalist, Henrique Andrade, was also interviewed by Sue Gardner (Executive Director) and Dario Tamborelli (Editor Engagement).

This long process has taken us to select Henrique Andrade with confidence that he'll make a great job.

Main criteria for selection and requirements

• Clear commitment to Wikimedia's mission
• Ability to work well in a collaborative environment
• Availability and capacity to create methodologies in partnership with the community, documeting it in a public and transparent way.
• Knowledge on analyses development
• Ability to extract data from different types of information sources
• Ability to lead his/her own work and to work well remotely, but in close online contact with the team and the community
• Willing to learn

Required Qualifications

• Bachelor's degree or equivalent experience
• High energy for, drive and commitment to the Wikimedia mission
• Experience in communities on collaborative projects
• Excellent oral and written communication skills in Portuguese
• Fluency in English Language
• Knowledge about the Wikimedia and Portuguese Wikipedia communities and history
• Demonstrated skills in engaging, motivating, coordinating and supporting volunteer communities, and in managing the sometimes chaotic and quasi-anarchic nature of free-thinking communities is important
• Extensive technical background in research and experimentation (BS/MS in computer science and/or mathematics, statistics or equivalent experience).
• Knowledge of MediaWiki.
• Demonstrated ability to turn data into actionable insights for Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Community.

Extra Points if you have

• Experience on editing and participating in communities of Wikimedia projects (our ideal candidate would be an existing Wikipedian with a strong reputation in the community, however candidates need to meet the requirements of the position)
• Experience in a Linux/Unix server environment.Experience with scripting languages, such as HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP, Python or shell scripting.
• Proficiency with database storage systems, ability to perform SQL queries on a database.
• Understanding of statistics and experience with using statistical software. Strong ability to analyze and synthesize quantitative data from primary and secondary sources, and proven ability to create simple, meaningful reports.

What is Henrique's background?

As stated in the announcement piece, Henrique Andrade is an Information technology professional and teacher of Web Technologies, Distance Learning Skills, Entrepreneurship and Digital Culture for graduate and undergraduate students. A researcher who is interested in free software, free culture, distance learning, entrepreneurship and databases.

He holds a bacharelor's degree in Information Systems degree in UNIRIO (Federal University of the State of Rio de Janeiro) and is a Masters's student in Computing and Society in the Computing and Systems Engineering Program, COPPE/UFRJ (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro). He has also taken undergratuate course in Business at UFRRJ (Federal University of the Countryside of Rio de Janeiro).

Henrique has been the DBA (DataBase Administrator) at UNIRIO and the Lead Developer of e-UNI (eletronic UNIversity), a Learning Management System customized for universities developed over the free software Moodle platform. He is a registered user of Wikipedia since 2009, and is familiar with wikis since 2003, using TWiki in nationwide projects.

Henrique has also a lot of experience in public speaking, and has spoken in many major Brazilian IT conferences, such as FISL, LATINOWARE, CONSEGI, ENTI and CSBC. He is been part of Brazilians free software communities, such as PSL-Brasil and SLRJ and was a member of the Free Software Implementation Technical Committee of the Brazilian Federal Government.

What will be Henrique's main goals and duties?

We expect Henrique to support the community and the Brazil Catalyst Program contractors in tracking results of our actions, projects and experiments, so we can better analyse and learn from them. Sometimes we develop activities with little effort to measure their impact and results in the short and middle term, and we also struggle with data that may contribute to long term results analyses.

The purpose of his job is therefore to work closely with the community, the WMF staff and the Brazil Catalyst Program contractors in creating ways of measuring the impact or our work and experiments, as well as identifying trends within the community and editor engagement. He is meant to do that by turning ideas from the community into some kind of reasonable experimental design and by replacing anecdotes on the impact of feature or policy changes with basic empirical evidence. We also expect he'll engage with the community (and with volunteers already engaged in data analyses) in order to build a plan for the next years and deploy it in a collaborative way.

Duties include, but are not limited to

• Work with the WMF Brazil lead program consultant and other consultants in recommending and executing key programs
• Evaluate community experiments by defining and analyzing metrics. Build and sustain a detailed, data-driven picture of what is really going on day-to-day among contributors to Portuguese Wikimedia projects
• Provide support to document pilots and capture/share learning from pilots within the community
• Participate in and support discussions about prospective pilots, helping ideas to become possible experiments
• Provide support to the community in gathering metrics towards volunteer-led change in the social norms, policies and practices that prevent openness and growth in the projects
• Identify bottlenecks for the growth of the Wikimedia projects and work with the community in building strategies to overcome them
• Track, monitor and measure the impact of actions of Wikimedia programs and activities that result on online projects (such as the Education Program and Outreach activities)
• Provide general support to the Brazil team and in community events
• Collaborate with the Wikipedia community members to develop data monitoring, tracking and analysis processes
• Develop reports and present analysis findings to WMF staff, the Wikimedia community and, where appropriate, external conferences

How to contact Henrique

Henrique can be contacted at handrade@wikimedia.org. Soon he'll have a username on the wikis to work as a WMF contractor. His current username is Crang115.