Grants:IEG/Art+Feminism Editathon training materials and network building/Timeline
This project is funded by an Individual Engagement Grant
This Individual Engagement Grant is renewed
| renewal scope | timeline & progress | finances | midpoint report | final report |
Timeline for Art+Feminism Editathon training materials and network building[edit]
| Timeline | Date |
| Begin steps to establish network of +feminism ambassadors in each city; outreach to last year's core satellite event organizers; purchase plusfeminism.org and begin domain-level work to establish Off Wiki +Feminism Website; develop "Beginner I" training presentation and materials. | December 2014 |
| Create Initial Materials for event organizers: develop "Beginner I" training presentation and materials, organizer kit. | January 2015 |
| Establish Network of +Feminism ambassadors on wiki | February 2015 |
| Finalize Initial Materials for event organizers: finalize "Beginner II" training presentation and materials, finalize organizer kit. | March 1, 2015 |
| write a post-op blog post and Signpost story. Begin analytics process. Finalize content for organizer kit an all training materials. | March, 2015 |
| Begin design process. Make training videos. | April, 2015 |
| Finalize design of all materials. Finalize all analytics. Write up final report. | May, 2015 |
Monthly updates[edit]
Please prepare a brief project update each month, in a format of your choice, to share progress and learnings with the community along the way. Submit the link below as you complete each update.
Pre-December, 2014[edit]
December, 2014 & January, 2015[edit]
As librarians, Wikipedians and teachers, we realized that one of the major gaps in last year's edit-a-thon at Eyebeam in February, 2014 was a lack of training materials and trainers present on the day of the event. Edit-a-thons rely heavily on a limited number of tireless Wikipedia volunteers but a lot of the trouble-shooting that is needed during an edit-a-thon doesn't require so much expertise (e.g. "how do you open new browser tabs?" and "how do I add a citation?"), so we wanted to empower regular folks to help out with on-the-ground training during the event. To do so, we first built out a ArtandFeminism Training Lesson Plan that could be shared during our Train the Trainer events in NYC. After the first Train the Trainer in October, we realized that building out shareable training materials would be incredibly helpful for both our own events and our satellite organizers, especially those who cannot get many Wikipedians or experienced editors to their events. It's our philosophy that with a little bit of training, the average editor can run an edit-a-thon. Of course, it's always preferable to have Wikipedians present, but in the case that they cannot be there, leveraging the on-wiki resources and building out our own should suffice.
First, we decided to create re-usable Art + Feminism Training Slides that can either be used in an open source .pdf format or in PowerPoint with a notes field. Satellite organizers can use these slides to help lead or structure Beginner Wikipedia trainings. We then developed a Art + Feminism Beginner Training Video Series so that organizers can share this with local volunteers and interested colleagues. Part of what we think is important about this project is the "information activism angle." By broadening access to training materials, we're empowering people to build their own networks locally.
February, 2014[edit]
We held our third ArtAndFeminism NYC Training at CUNY Grad Center. It was really well attended, with more beginners and intermediates than we'd had in either of the earlier Train the Trainers. We spent much of the month building out our Art + Feminism Beginner Training Video Series to include Advanced training videos.
We also spent most of our time doing outreach and then responding to requests for Wikipedians. We worked pretty heavily in our shared Google Docs folder, trying to keeps tabs on all the different node event requests we had; we divided them up so that we could each take ownership over different nodes. In the future, we'd really like to think about using a CRM or project management software to organize this. Once we were up to 60 events, it became difficult to manage it all in our shared Gmail account and using Google Spreadsheets.
We also spent a lot of our time working with MoMA, building out a list of local event volunteers and doing a lot of the on-the-ground coordinating for laptops, food, childcare locally. Here, the MoMA and POWarts staff were indispensable. They helped organize lists of volunteers, manage press requests, and were incredibly organized in helping us plan the space, event and troubleshoot any tech issues.
March, 2014[edit]
We held the second annual Art and Feminism edit-a-thon. For a narrative description and list of satellite events, please see our Outcomes page. We also spent a significant portion of time responding to press inquiries. This is something we didn't anticipate being as much work as it was. Typically, we either needed to find one person to hold a phone interview or respond to their questions via email. Halfway through this process, we started recording all of our Press Answers in our shared Google folder, so that we could leverage the work we had already done. But, in the future, we should find a more manageable way to handle press inquiries. We also ended up doing a lot of work to support press inquiries at our satellite events, as well.
April, 2014[edit]
In April, we began working with a graphic designer (Valerie Gnaedig) to rethink our branding for our public site (http://art.plusfeminism.org/) and training materials. Some of this work will fall within the scope of this grant, and some will continue on after the grant. We also began sorting our list of +Feminism Ambassadors. This included sorting through our lists of previous outreach and adding new event organizers to our outreach list. We sent out additional outreach to confirm their interest and talked about next steps: best practices for communication (we decided to use our organize listserv so as not to duplicate efforts) and sorting by geographic region.
May, 2014[edit]
In May, we continued to work with our graphic designer to create a Barnstar, and Brand Guideline for satellite events to re-mix and re-use. We also talked about potential next steps for work with our designer. We will continue, after this grant, to incorporate this work into our website and training materials (PowerPoints and videos) but did not have the time to dedicate to updating our existing materials before the grant end.
We also spent a significant amount of time doing Outreach to our +Feminism Ambassador list. We confirmed their contact information and posted the list to our website and Meet-Up page. We confirmed that they can communicate with each other using our pre-existing organize listserve.
Is your final report due but you need more time?