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Wikimedian in Residence skills research and training programme plan

Introduction

This document outlines the research and planning for a Wikimedians in Residence training programme for people working with the UN and other high value international and Intergovernmental organisations. These are high value partnerships that can unlock a lot of opportunities and need a high level of skill and professionalism.

These positions are based on the plans outlined in this document Wikimedians in Residence at IGOs/INGOs – A suggested structure.

Research questions and methodology

The research used two main research questions to understand the current state of Wikimedians in Residence:

What knowledge, qualities and skills are needed to work as a Wikimedian in Residence at a UN agency and how can someone gain them?
What additional support could be provided to the residents to be successful

The research is done in the context of the Wikimedian in Residence role being done by a small number of highly skilled people in a small number of high value organisations requiring long term work to receive the maximum value. The residencies benefit Wikimedia through providing extremely high quality and often unique knowledge and content. The residencies benefit the host organisations by bringing their knowledge and content to a worldwide multilingual audience and providing skills and knowledge to their staff. The residents themselves build up a diverse range of knowledge and skills through their residencies which are highly transferable to other roles.

The research project interviewed 12 current and former Wikimedians in Residence who were paid for their time except where they refused payment e.g. they were already being paid for their time by a Wikimedia Chapter. All but one of the Wikimedians in Residence are working or have previously worked at institutions based in Europe. Almost all Residents who were interviewed worked the majority of their time interacting with English Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata.

The people interviewed were given anonymity in this report to allow them to give a more truthful picture of the current situation, quotes are not attributed to any individual.

The research was carried out by John Cummings who has worked at different positions within Wikimedia for over 10 years including Wikimedian in Residence at UNESCO, UN Food and Agriculture, The UK Natural History Museum and the UK Science Museum in London.

More information on the research can be found in the research notes section of this document.

Summary of Findings

The research mapped the skills and knowledge current WiRs use and identified support to meet the needs of Wikimedians in residence. Results are structured as;

Knowledge
Hard skills
Soft skills
Qualities

The research identified both broad patterns and themes and individual activities where each of the skills, qualities and knowledge are required. This can form the basis of the curriculum for the training programme.

Knowledge

All residents expressed that working with Wikimedia required a large amount of knowledge and that being a resident was a constant learning experience and that no one person knew everything. Many residents began their residencies with no knowledge of how Wikimedia works and were able to become successful residents. Residents described a combination of codified and explicit knowledge and that it is complex to keep documentation up to date because Wikimedia is continually changing.

“You don’t need a particularly high level of experience with or knowledge of Wikimedia to do a good job”

All activities done within a Wikimedian in Residence position required expert knowledge however much of the knowledge that was needed was outside of Wikimedia e.g. wider knowledge of the open movement, project management etc.

All residents talked about the difficulty of finding the knowledge needed to carry out their roles. Several talked about the importance of knowledge about the structure and the way the organisation functions.

“Employing from within the (host) organisation often works well, an understanding of the culture, existing trust, professionalism, knowing if they are a good fit within the organisation already”

They also talked about the importance and difficulty of transferring enough knowledge that the project could continue after they leave.

“Having all the skills and knowledge in one person means projects fail and fall apart when they leave”

Full report on activities requiring knowledge

Hard skills

A small number of residents self-identified as having a high level of hard skills and technical competency, however most other residents had a high level of technical skills in comparison to other people in the organisation e.g. using Google Doc, Sheets, Slides etc. A distinction was made by several people interviewed between hard skills (especially technical ability) and quality of work done which often requires soft skills.

Hard skills require a high level of knowledge and people learned hard skills through a combination of formal education, learning from others in the community and self taught technical skills. Many people talked about the difficulty of both learning technical skills and getting help from technically skilled people within the organisation and from within the Wikimedia movement.

“There are absolutely loads of technical skills you need to learn but they have very few instructions so you just have to find a guy who knows how to do it by asking around and if you can’t do that you’re basically stuck”.

Many residents stated that these hard skills were not fixed and needed continual professional development due to changing tools. The residents who had a high level of hard skills said that it allowed them to do a wider range of activities including highly valued activities like mass uploads.

“Technical skills are a massive enabler, mass uploads to Commons, SPARQL, Python allow you to do things. No matter how much buy in there is in an organisation, it's very very difficult to get support from technical staff”.

Full report on activities requiring hard skills

Soft skills

Soft skills were emphasised by all residents as being very important and that hard skills and knowledge could be learnt and taught more easily. The interviews produced more soft skills needed than all other kinds of skills and knowledge combined. There has been no simple way to categorise many of the skills identified, most of the skills are interlinked skills e.g. advocacy and communication. Some residents articulated soft skills through providing specific examples of activities, other residents described more abstract skills. Many of the residents identified that some of the soft skills could be supplemented by other people, especially internal champions.

The following broad categories of soft skills were identified, quotes from interviews are supplied with each one;

Build relationships

“It's like the old telephone exchanges with the women plugging in all the wires”

“We had to explain why tools often don’t work”

Inspiring other people

“We did many activities that generated the willingness to share content”

“A big part of the job is trying to get other people to do stuff for me“

Collaboration

“Having social skills in person and how they translate to social skills on the internet is an important thing to be able to do”

Advocacy

“There’s so much groundwork to do before getting the organisation willing to change, means most of the time is advocacy”

Building trust

“Interpersonal communication skills make them feel comfortable and confident talking to you, getting buy in, building a sense of trust, having negotiation skills, looking at an organisations priorities, how what you’re offering contributes to that. Demonstrating what you’re doing is helping. “

“Most institutions plan over the long term. Having existing relationships with people who trust you and invite you to be involved is very important. “

Creativity

“Defining your own problem and own project, in a way that has to be signed off by other people, being able to be autonomous in finding the opportunities and doing the projects. Maybe also freelancers would have those skills”

Teaching

“Explaining an extremely complicated things that can do many many things, not selling one product that does one thing, we are not salesmen, being open about the issues”

Communication

“The role has a lot of duality, we are representing Wikimedia within the organisation and representing the organisation within Wikimedia”

“The constant struggle to explain we rely on volunteers to do our jobs”

“The job needs a lot of intercultural competencies, working between two different cultures, being the translator and facilitator”

Problem solving

“Wikimedian has to balance and match the constraints, expectations and goals of the organisation and Wikimedia”

“You need to be a swiss army knife, solving lots of different kinds of problems”

Event coordination

“We are organising events from scratch; logistics, marketing, teaching, buying the biscuits, everything”

Experimentation

“A lot of the job is experimentation, its working with ambiguity and uncertainty”

Emotional intelligence

“Understanding people’s current position and building a bridge from there. Meeting people where they are and working with them from there”

Resolve conflicts

“Management are expecting some things, people further down are expecting something else, Wikimedia is expecting yet another thing”.

Professionalism

“You need to be a diplomat, an advocate, annoying people only works for so long”

Project management

“You’re basically running an NGO by yourself, doing all the things an NGO does from project management to communications to fundraising”

Full report on activities requiring soft skills

Values

It has been difficult to separate skills and qualities, especially soft skills and qualities. The qualities that are most helpful or possibly required to develop the skills. Many residents highlighted qualities that were used to make the most of opportunities and continue the work when it was difficult. Many residents talked about a purpose to the work, that their values aligned with free education and they connected to a sense of purpose. Whilst this is the section with the smallest amount of information, it is probably the most important set of attributes to have to be successful as a Wikimedian in residence.

“It speaks to me as an idea”

Full report on activities requiring qualities

Further Research

This research project was limited in scope, the following activities would help gather more information to further inform the training programme.

Gathering information from Wikimedians in Residence

Talk to more Wikimedians in Residence including non English speaking people.
Talk to former residents who are not in roles and understanding why they are not in roles
Understanding which of the identified issues are most important to people

Gathering information from Wikimedia chapter and Wikimedia Foundation staff

Talk to more chapter staff
Talk to existing and former Wikimedians in Residence supervisors
Understand more which hard skills and soft skills needed in the roles could be supplemented or substituted by chapter staff, other residents etc.

Gathering information from the wider open movement

Talk to satellite organisations, fellow travellers e.g. Whose Knowledge to understand their role in making information and content available under an open licence and other activities related to content partnerships.

Understanding the needs of the host organisations more

Talk to organisations who discontinued the discussion to have a Wikimedians in Residence
Understanding how much support can be reasonably promised by Wikimedia chapters.
Understanding UN staff training, what is provided, what is available? What is needed for working in the UN, staff and interns etc

Understanding what information and resources are already available

Collate and understand the quality of existing training resources within Wikimedia
Understand which modes of learning are available and the costs associated with them. A common observation from residents was that they used to learn some skills through attending conferences but those opportunities were not available during the pandemic or since.
Research more on the https://learn.wiki/ platform, how much content is available, what can be migrated, how can knowledge be curated into programmes etc.
Identify soft skills and qualities training organisations e.g. WYSE International

Understanding more about the possibilities of different modes of training

Understanding most successful modes of delivery and most accessible methods for each kind of skills and knowledge e.g.
Learn wiki and how realistic it is to use as a platform for the training materials, if they can be updated by a community of people etc.
In person programmes
External programmes e.g. WYSE International, coaching
Online resources
Adding structure to link existing resources together to make a course
Creating new resources: Identifying who in the community has the information and working with them to make the knowledge more accessible

Costing

Build a plan of action for the training programme e.g. what can be achieved in how many hours and which modes of delivery will be most effective eg an in person week long programme vs shorter term online initial and longer term support structure.

Training programme and additional support plan

The research highlights the current needs expressed by Wikimedians in Residence which are significant barriers to recruiting and retaining staff and their ability to run a successful residency and for the initial training programme. Retaining residents in professional roles over the long term is needed for them to build up the skills and experience needed to deliver successful projects.

Based on the answers and recommendations from the residents interviewed in the research the support and training could be structured as

Supporting people to develop the soft skills and qualities needed
A community manager
A fund for Wikimedians in Residence to build their own solutions
Short term training programme for hard skills and knowledge
A longer term training programme for hard skills and knowledge to expand the role

1. Supporting people to develop the soft skills and qualities needed

The research found that the knowledge and Wikimedia skills can be taught much more easily than the softer skills and qualities.

A training programme should support people to expand their soft skills and qualities, this may be most easily accomplished by external training programmes and then bringing the knowledge into the community.

2. A community manager

A community manager role would be extremely helpful in supporting the residents, activities identified as needed by the research:

Doing more research with residents to understand their needs
Help residents to connect and have a sense of community
Sharing knowledge and skills, trainings
Helping the residents to request and express their needs as a group
Help residents find the knowledge they need
Coaching, working with people to help them find their own solutions to their problems

3. A fund for Wikimedians in Residence to build their own solutions

Several issues brought up by the residents, especially around knowledge and hard skills could be made better by providing a fund for residents to work on solutions that benefit the whole community. Most residents don’t have funding to work on sharing their knowledge within the movement.

Funding residents to share their knowledge through writing documentation.
Funding more experienced residents to be mentors to less experienced residents or residents with different skill sets.

4. Short term training programme for hard skills and knowledge

One of the main findings of the research was that the majority of long term successful residents didn’t come from a background in Wikimedia and that many residents thought that the hard skills and Wikimedia knowledge were the easiest to learn of all the skills and qualities identified.

Work with Wikimedia UK and other chapters to collate the information needed to deliver a short term training programme on the hard skills and knowledge needed for a resident to start working.
Tools like WikiLearn can be used to help structure this knowledge.

5. Longer term training programme for hard skills and knowledge

A major theme for longer term residents was the difficulty in finding information on higher level technical skills e.g. mass uploads.

Provide longer term support and training on specific skills needed for Wikimedians in Residence.
Provide a service where residents can request help with more technical skills where learning them would be an impractical investment of time.

Research findings

All residents interviewed emphasised that Wikimedian in Residence roles require an extremely large number of diverse skills, knowledge and qualities to be successful. Residents discussed the importance of having a combination of all the skills identified, without the soft skills and qualities the hard skills and knowledge cannot be effectively used.

“This is an extremely skilled professional job”

“You need to be a swiss army knife, solving lots of different kinds of problems”

“soft skills are completely unvalued within Wikimedia”

Almost all interviewees recommend that Wikimedians in Residence would be more successful if they were hired from outside Wikimedia who had the soft skills and professional experience needed.

“Hire for attitude, train for skill”

Knowledge

Activities requiring knowledge

All residents expressed that working with Wikimedia required a large amount of knowledge and that being a resident was a constant learning experience and that no one person could know everything. Many residents began their residencies with no knowledge of how Wikimedia works and were able to become successful residents. Residents described a combination of codified and explicit knowledge that it is complex to keep documentation up to date because Wikimedia is continually changing.

All activities done within a Wikimedian in Residence position required expert knowledge however much of the knowledge that was needed was outside of Wikimedia e.g. wider knowledge of the open movement, project management etc.

“You don’t need a particularly high level of experience with or knowledge of Wikimedia to do a good job”

All talked about the difficulty of finding the knowledge needed to carry out their roles. Several talked about the importance of knowledge about the structure and the way the organisation functions.

“Employing from within the organisation often works well, an understanding of the culture, existing trust, professionalism, knowing if they are a good fit within the organisation already”

They also talked about the importance and difficulty of transferring enough knowledge that the project could continue after they leave.

“Having all the skills and knowledge in one person means projects fail and fall apart when they leave”

Knowledge activities

Institutional Knowledge

Who to get to know within the organisation
Know how an institution is structured
Knowing how the institution works, how decisions get made
Knowing what else is happening in the organisation and events, when to do a project
Who to talk to, the social network
Knowing people working from home that are not visible
Know what staff need and value in their job

Open movement knowledge

Which organisations in the open movement do what
Understanding metadata

Licensing and copyright

Explaining Creative Commons licences, how they work, practically how they can be applied

Subject matter understanding

Understanding enough about the topic to see opportunities

Historical knowledge

How to deal with problematic material
Working with colonial information, contextualise with content warning

Knowledge produced by the resident

How to guides
Understanding of how Wikimedia works and building new processes
How to depreciate out of date documentation

Finding information

Finding information on Wikimedia projects
Finding information within the Wikimedia community

Knowledge about Wikimedia

Practical understanding of Wikimedia rules and processes.
Knowledge of how Wikimedia works, article histories, guidelines etc.
Dashboard courses (mentioned specifically by several residents as valuable)
Wikipedia adventure (mentioned specifically by several residents as valuable)
Train the trainer for building editathons, how to make it work for each situation
Lots of mentorship, not written down stuff, not replicating effort, slides etc.
How to mitigate conflict of interest
Article for creation
DYK review
Good article

Hard skills

Overview

A small number of residents self-identified as having a high level of hard skills and technical competency, however most other residents had a high level of technical skills in comparison to other people in the organisation e.g. using Google Doc, Sheets, Slides etc. A distinction was made by several people interviewed between hard skills, especially technical ability and quality of work done which often requires soft skills.

Hard skills require a high level of knowledge and people learned hard skills through a combination of formal education, learning from others in the community and being self taught technical skills. Many people talked about the difficulty of both learning technical skills and getting help from technically skilled people within the organisation and from within the Wikimedia movement.

“There are absolutely loads of technical skills you need to learn but they have very few instructions so you just have to find a guy who knows how to do it by asking around and if you can’t do that you’re basically stuck”

Many residents stated that these hard skills were not fixed and needed continual professional development due to changing tools. The residents who had a high level of hard skills said that it allowed them to do a wider range of activities including highly valued activities like mass uploads.

“Technical skills are a massive enabler, mass uploads to Commons, SPARQL, Python allow you to do things. No matter how much buy in there is in an organisation, it’s very very difficult to get support from technical staff”

Hard skills and their activities

Documentation writing

Metrics KPIs etc. Monitoring- people are discussing on Wikimedia, asking questions etc., working with the community, being the focal point for the partner organisation.
Academic writing

Research

General Wikipedia research using data dumps etc., how people collaborate online, bias in the media
Researching how to solve a problem
Ingesting a large amount of information, synthesis
Working independently

Using tools

Uploading data to Wikibase and Wikidata, Pattypan, OpenRefine
Image uploads
Understanding the public interest in different topics, Massviews etc.
Working with their tools that the host organisation is comfortable and able to use
Converting videos to Wikimedia compatible formats

Programming

Creating a Wikibase instance
Bot article creation
SPARQL, WIkidata querying, monitoring, timelines, visualisations
Coding custom programs using Wikidata
Planning

Project Management

Google Drive
Google Sheets
Google Slides

Wikimedia skills

HTML
Wiki editing skills
Wikidata
Commons

Soft skills

Overview

Soft skills were emphasised by all residents as being very important and that hard skills and knowledge could be learnt and taught more easily. The interviews produced more soft skills needed than all other kinds of skills and knowledge combined. There has been no simple way to categorise many of the skills identified, most of the skills are interlinked skills e.g. advocacy and communication. Some residents articulated soft skills through providing specific examples of activities, other residents described more abstract skills. Many of the residents identified that some of the soft skills could be supplemented by other people, especially internal champions.

The following broad categories of soft skills were identified, quotes from interviews are supplied with each one;

Build relationships

“It’s like the old telephone exchanges with the women plugging in all the wires”

“we had to explain why tools often don’t work”

Inspiring other people

“We did many activities that generated the willingness to share content”

“A big part of the job is trying to get other people to do stuff for me“

Collaboration

“Having social skills in person and how they translate to social skills on the internet is an important thing to be able to do”

Advocacy

“There’s so much groundwork to do before getting the organisation willing to change, means most of the time is advocacy”

Building trust

“Interpersonal communication skills make them feel comfortable and confident talking to you, getting buy in, building a sense of trust, having negotiation skills, looking at an organisations priorities, how what you’re offering contributes to that. Demonstrating what you’re doing is helping.“

“Most institutions plan over the long term, having existing relationships with people who trust you and invite you to be involved is very important.“

Creativity

“Defining your own problem and own project, in a way that has to be signed off by other people, being able to be autonomous in finding the opportunities and doing the projects. Maybe also freelancers would have those skills”

Teaching

“Explaining an extremely complicated things that can do many many things, not selling one product that does one thing, we are not salesmen, being open about the issues”

Communication

“The role has a lot of duality, we are representing Wikimedia within the organisation and representing the organisation within Wikimedia”

“The constant struggle to explain we rely on volunteers to do our jobs”

“The job needs a lot of intercultural competencies, working between two different cultures, being the translator and facilitator”

Problem solving

“Wikimedian has to balance and match the constraints, expectations and goals of the organisation and Wikimedia”

“You need to be a swiss army knife, solving lots of different kinds of problems”

Event coordination

“We are organising events from scratch; logistics, marketing, teaching, buying the biscuits, everything”

Experimentation

“A lot of the job is experimentation, it's working with ambiguity and uncertainty”

Emotional intelligence

“Understanding people’s current position and building a bridge from there. Meeting people where they are and working with them from there”

Resolve conflicts

“Management are expecting some things, people further down are expecting something else, Wikimedia is expecting yet another thing”.

Professionalism

“You need to be a diplomat, an advocate, annoying people only works for so long”

Project management

“You’re basically running an NGO by yourself, doing all the things an NGO does from project management to communications to fundraising”

Soft skills and their activities

Build relationships

Ability to work with other Wikimedians

Inspiring other people

Advocating for open licensing
Express your excitement and passion on a topic
Convincing people, providing motivation

Collaboration

Being inclusive and building a sense of collaboration
Working with an international community, often in the organisation as well as in Wikimedia
Coaching
Mentoring
Working in both an in person and online environment
Building on existing relationships, knowing who might be interested and able to work on a project

Advocacy

Explaining about what Wikipedia is an how it gets made, the community level aspects
Encouraging staff, working with the time constraints of other people
Go to a professor, ask them to work with their students, looking at sharing content and knowledge on Wikipedia
Educating people about copyright and licensing
You need both the ability to be social and bring people in and also be interested in a topic
Understanding the culture and then working to change it
Public outreach

Building trust

Knowing an internal champion, having the existing relationship to build upon
Treat the person as having a domain of expertise and trust them to make good decisions
Demonstrating you know the topic well, you are a ‘safe pair of hands’

Creativity

Ability to make the project your own
Finding new solutions to problems

Teaching

Teaching wiki skills and technical skills
Teaching copyright
Running editathons
Deal with different levels of knowledge
Mainstream Wikipedia into higher education, getting lecturers interested, seminar, assignment etc.
Writing guidance and redrafting the guidance
Writing training materials
Training staff
Teaching people online
Teaching people in person
Writing guides
Running an online course
Working with students, teaching people how to add information to Wikipedia, teaching sources
Teaching Wikidata
Being able to educate people who think they know what they are talking about. Correcting people who have a lot of confidence.

Communication

Report writing, knowing how to articulate value to different audiences
Ability to understand and communicate with both audiences within the organisation and Wikimedia
Explaining one culture to another
Writing for specific audiences
Being an interpreter, translating between two communities, helping communities understand each other, very different styles, different things they value,
Finding multiple ways to communicate information to different audiences, WIkimedia and institutional audiences
Helping people understand the value of working with Wikimedia
Creating presentations
Knowing how to identify and tell a story
Being a bridge between two topics or areas
Meetings
Presentations
Blog posts
Staff newsletters
Translating between communities and audiences, Wikimedia, professional worker, management
Listening and understand
“Talking to normal people about technical stuff”
Explaining one culture to another
Writing and organising MOUs
Making the MOUs work

Problem solving

Being creative about finding solutions
Working with broken and unreliable tools
Working with poorly documented tools and resources

Event coordination

Convincing people to take part
Publicising events
Running the event

Experimentation

Experimenting, trying new things, learning from ‘failures’

Emotional intelligence

Understanding and working with people’s motivations both intrinsic and extrinsic motivations
Understanding the anxieties of ideas getting into the world and changing or being misunderstood, lack of recognition.
Empathy and understanding of people’s emotions, worries,
Working with people with competing interests
Helping feel at ease with not having expertise with something that can feel very complicated
Support people in their journey without prosthelytising
Supporting other people to feel confidence
How to help people feel that they can be included and their work is valued
Understanding people’s opinions and motivations
Supporting people to be creative
Understanding the audience you’re working with, what do they value, what are they trying to get out of it
How to make it fun

Resolve conflicts

Dispute resolution
Mediation
Managing expectations
Dealing with internal conflicts within the organisation
Dealing with many different layers of bureaucracy and explaining what is happening and why it's important to them
Dealing with legal reputational issues
Dealing with misunderstandings
Working with people with lots of competing agendas and priorities
Finding a way to tell people something isn’t possible, the rules of Wikimedia don’t allow it
Knowing how to deal with toxic and difficult people on

Wikipedia

Fulfilling the expectations of multiple audiences,

Professionalism

Have to be comfortable and confident work on your own, be self motivated and self driven
Being diplomatic
Being able to negotiate

Project management

Planning a project
Coordinating between many different teams with different interests and priorities
Managing people
Matching activities to the goals and expectations of the funders
Dealing with admin
Applying for grants
Hiring people and managing them
Organising working groups, external speakers, discussions and presentation
Connecting to other parts of Wikimedia to open up opportunities for them
Learning from mistakes and things that could be improved
Answering community questions, being the focal point for the organisation
Willingness to work in a transparent and public way

Qualities

Overview

It has been difficult to separate skills and qualities, especially soft skills and qualities. The qualities that are most helpful or possibly required to develop the skills. Many residents highlighted qualities that were used to make the most of opportunities and continue the work when it was difficult. Many residents talked about a purpose to the work, that their values aligned with free education and they connected to a sense of purpose.

“It speaks to me as an idea”

Qualities and their activities

Creativity

Being comfortable with creativity and imagination
Experimentation, acceptance of failure, learning from activities and improving
Seeing and taking opportunities
Finding new ways to achieve things

Values learning

Flexibility, learning as you go, willingness to learn
Positive attitude
Focussing on the positives of a situation especially when things go wrong
Knowing the meaningful achievements can’t always be measured

Empathy and compassion

Empathy to your audience, their needs and motivations
Understanding other people
Knowing about what makes other people passionate and interested

Resilience

Tolerance of lots of repetitiveness, lots of the same kind of work, reporting, kpis require repetitive work
Tolerance to frustration
Ability to work in a toxic environment with hostile people and harassment

Curiosity

Find it satisfying to solve problems, keep trying things till you make it work
Curiosity about both people and the topic

Patience

Knowing things take a long time sometimes
Knowing that the community can make extra work for you

Vision

Ability to see opportunities
Ability to see the bigger picture, how to get there and to fit work into that

Confidence

Asking for help
Comfort with learning new skills and getting things wrong
Internal motivation through connecting to a purpose

Research notes

Questionaire

The questionnaire was written and sent to all participants before the interviews, the discussion was shaped by the interviewees interests, all areas were covered, more detail and more time was spent on different areas depending on the participants experience.

Intro: Explain what we are trying to achieve, explain skills, qualities etc.

Appreciation:

What are the best things about your job?

Experience:

Can you talk about what activities you do as part of your job?

What does the average day look like?

What projects have you done that were the most complex?

Has this changed over time? What activities have you done before ?

Understanding knowledge, skills and qualities needed:

In your list of projects, what knowledge, skills, qualities and other resources does your job involve now and in the past, go project by project e.g. hard skills, project management/planning, soft skills etc.

How to measure the success of the programme?

What Institutional support do you receive, what else would you have liked?

How would you pick someone for this role? What are your criteria?

Understanding what resources exist and what qualities are needed:

How did you learn these? Resources, asking people, trainings, workshops, experience, etc.

How long did it take you to learn what you need to do your job?

What has gone well, how did you achieve the good outcomes, what resources did you use?

Understanding gaps in support and resources:

What are you able to get support on? From within your organisation and from within Wikimedia in general.

What are the most difficult challenging things about your job

What do you think would help make these better?

What has gone wrong, How did you deal when things went wrong?

What could have helped make that better you didn’t have access to?

Understanding structural issues:

What do you think are the main barriers for people becoming WIRs

What are the main barriers for people continuing to be WiRs?

What are the main problems and potential problems you face in your role?

Closing

What is your favourite WiR project you’ve seen?

Is there anyone else you think I should talk to?

Next steps

Request

Paid research request: Understanding your work as a Wikimedian in Residence

Hi

I wanted to ask you if I could talk to you about your work as part of some research work I’m doing at Wikimedia Sverige. Here’s some more info:

Wikimedia is starting to do more with UN agencies and other Intergovernmental Organizations, who are really high value partnerships due to their expertise and content.

Wikimedia Sverige wants to help make people ready for these positions by creating a training programme for these positions. We are aware of the high level of skill and qualities needed for these roles, which take years to develop.

They’ve employed me to research this training programme and I’m currently interviewing people to understand more about what makes Wikimedians in Residence positions successful, what knowledge, skills and qualities are needed and the resources and support available and missing and any structural issues.

I’d love to talk to you as part of my research and I can pay you for your time if it's not covered by your organisation; £20 an hour for up to 2 hours. If this is possible next week on either Wednesday, Thursday or Friday or in the first few days of the week after please let me know. I can share a list of questions with you before the interview. All your answers will be anonymised, we won’t share anything that can identify you in any documentation we write as part of the process.

Thanks