Programa Catalisador do Brasil/Planejamento 2012-2013/Short term contractor - Data analyses and collaboration

About the job

Data and experiments part time contractor will develop a timeline establishing connections between internal and external events and Wikipedia editors retention. He will also support the work of the data and experiments analyst, by creating, in partnership with the community, an online environment where collaboration towards data analyses will take place.

Every community has its members who are engaged in data analyses, but most of them like doing that as volunteers and have one or other special area of interest. How can we improve and intensify collaboration among engaged volunteers that regularly produce analyses, many times on their subpages? How can we enhance convergence? How can we create an organized environment for researchers in Universities who are not very familiar with Wikimedia channels or even with English Language? Can we work in collaboration with other researchers more often?

A welcoming environment and a portal with organized information is what Jonas Xavier has been asked to develop in the next three months, when he'll be working closely with the Brazil Catalyst Program and the community. He'll also support the community in developing a timeline of editors' retention rates and internal and external events that may have contributed to change trends in the Portuguese Wikipedia so we can raise hypothesis and and test them, supporting the Data and experiments consultant in his task of better understanding what impacts the community growth.

This is a part time (from 15 to 18 hours / week) and short term (three months, renewable for more three months) contract job.

About Jonas Xavier

English

Jonas is a undergraduate student in information systems, and has been focused on trying to find news ways for collaborative research for models like Wikipedia. He worked on simulations of petroleum reservoir for the Laboratory for Computational Mechanics and also developed works on signal processing to find patterns on clouds behavior. Jonas co-founded a hackerspace at his school, where geeks used to explore Arduino and huge databases. He also taught remote communities how to use free software for cultural activities, like music and video production.

Jonas has been an active volunteer in the Wikimedia movement. He was registered in 2008 and not only edits Wikipedia, but has also helped the community in organizing offline activities to engage more editors and volunteers in the projects. He's a very young contributor and has already done independent research with data on Wikipedia, finding co-relations between Dengue's epidemy cases and access to Dengue's article.

During the selection process to the Data and Experiments consultant, to which he applied, Jonas has proved to have a very good understanding of the community challenges for growing. As a volunteer and an information systems student, he has been concerned about finding patterns on collaboration, and we believe his involvement in the Brazil Catalyst project can help community knowledge sharing improve when it comes to data analyses. We see having him onboard as a great opportunity to catalyse and strenghten community driven analyses.

His goals for the next year include run a 10,000 meters competition and teach basic algorithm for kids.

Jonas has signed a contract for a short term contract of three months, renewable for more three months, to work from 15 to 18 hours a week.

Though many of you already know Jonas from the Wikimedia community, please send him a warm welcome into this new position. We hope we can do much more together.

Português

Jonas Xavier é estudante universitário de Sistemas de Informação na Universidade Federal de Pernambuco e tem trabalhando bastante para encontrar novas formas de desenvolver colaboração em pesquisa para projetos como a Wikipédia. Ele trabalhou em simulações de reservas de petróleo para o Laboratório de Mecânica Computacional e também desenvolveu trabalhos em processamentos de sinais para encontrar padrões no comportamento das nuvens. Jonas é co-fundador de um hackerspace em sua escola, onde geeks costumam brincar com Arduino e imensas bases de dados. Ele também ensinou comunidades remotas a como usar software livre para atividades culturais, em especial pra produção de música e vídeo.

Jonas é um voluntário ativo no movimento Wikimedia. Regisgtrado desde 2008, Jonas não só edita a Wikpédia como também colabora com a comunidade na organização de atividades offline para envolver mais editores e voluntários de forma geral nos projetos. Ele é um colaborador muito jovem e já desevolveu pesquisa independente, por exemplo buscando relações entre o fenômeno da dengue (casos de dengue) e o acesso a artigos sobre a doença na Wikipédia. [1]

Durante o processo seletivo para a vaga de Data and Experiments consultant, à qual concorreu, Jonas demonstrou ter um bom conhecimento dos desafios postos para o crescimento da comunidade. Como um voluntário e estudante de sistemas de informação, ele está preocupado em encontrar padrões nos incentivos, motivações à colaboração e acreditamos que seu envolvimento no Programa Catalisador do Brasil pode ajudar a melhorar o compartilhamento de conhecimento da comunidade no que se refere a análise de dados. Vemos sua participação na equipe como uma grande oportunidade de catalisarmos e fortalecermos a análise de dados feita pela comunidade.

Dentre suas mestas para o próximo ano estão correr uma maratona de 10 mil metros e ensinar algoritmo básico para crianças.

O Jonas tem um contrato conosco de três meses, renováveis por mais três, de 15 a 18 horas semanais.

Embora muitos de vocês já conheçam o Jonas da comunidade, vamos dar a ele as boas vindas em seu novo trabalho? Esperamos poder fazer muito mais juntos.

Background

As stated in Henrique Andrade's announcement, we have decided to hire a data and experiments consultant in the Brazil Catalyst Program 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.

While Henrique will be creating ways of measuring the impact or our work and experiments, as well as identifying trends within the community and editor engagement, turning ideas from the community into some kind of reasonable experimental design and replacing anecdotes on the impact of feature or policy changes with basic empirical evidence, Jonas will be supporting the community in creating an easy and collaborative environment in partnership with the community. As a member of this community, we expect him to work closely with other volunteers who are already engaged in data analyses regularly.

Jonas Xavier applied for the Data and Experiment job position and had a good performance in all phases, showing interest and capacity of learning very fast, as well as a good understanding of the needs of the community and a good knwoledge of how to build a collaborative work environment.

Having achieved the last phase of the selection, we decided to set up a short term contract with Jonas Xavier, so he can help us build channels not only with the existing Wikimedia community, but also with universities and researchers, as well as to research relations between internal and external events and the comnmunity growth creating a timeline of Wikipedia since 2008.

FAQ

What has been the process in place to hire Jonas?

Jonas applied for the Data and Experiments Consultant position 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 interviewd 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. Jonas' task development can be checked at a subpage of his user account at the Wikimedia Brasil website.

The finalists were then interviewd by Jessie Wild. Although Henrique Andrade was chosen for the job, we came to the conclusion Jonas would be helpful in supporting our job in analytics by further developing the task he worked on during the selection process and by creating a page organizing sources of data as well as a step-by-step on how to make researches for academics and other interested data miners.

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 will be Jonas's main duties?

• Create a timeline identifying internal and external events, in relation with the community growth and/or decline
• Create a Wiki portal/page with a step-by-step on how to access data, where to find information, where to find existing resources and researches, both for external collaborators/researchers and volunteers engaged (or interested) in data analyses
• Provide support to document pilots and capture/share learning from pilots within the community
• Identify bottlenecks for the growth of the Wikimedia projects and work with the community in building strategies to overcome them

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