WUGN/Events/2025 Staff and Leaders retreat/Day 1

2024 Staff & Leaders Retreat

WUGN staff and leaders retreat 2025 is a retreat to mark the beginning of a new fiscal year and provides the staff and leaders the opportunity to align goals, brainstorm new initiatives, and foster teamwork.

2025 Fiscal year
Date: February 18th-22nd 2025
City: Lagos
Venue: Wikimedia UG Nigeria office and Nomase Hotel, Lagos

Wikimedia User Group Nigeria (WUGN) Annual Staff Retreat 2025 - Day 1

Date: 18th of February, 2025
Venue: Wikimedia User Group Nigeria Offic, Lagos.

Attendees

Session One (1): Welcome and Introduction (10:30 AM - 11:10 AM WAT)

Opening Remarks Ambassador Olushola commenced the retreat at 9:53 AM with a welcoming address, extending his greetings to all staff members. He emphasized that the purpose of the retreat was to reflect on past achievements, realign strategies, and plan for the future. He highlighted the retreat as an opportunity for reconnection, collaboration, and strengthening commitment to the organization’s shared mission.

The key objectives of the retreat, as outlined by Ambassador Olushola, included:

● Assessing progress over the past year.
● Identifying challenges and developing actionable solutions.
● Enhancing teamwork and fostering a culture of collaboration.
● Aligning future plans with Wikimedia’s global objectives.
He also outlined the expectations for staff participation, which included:
● Active engagement in discussions and contributions of insights.
● Openness to feedback, as constructive conversations drive progress.
● Commitment to collaboration in building a stronger team.
● Encouragement of innovative thinking to improve organizational impact.
● Dedication to upholding Wikimedia’s values and objectives.
The key discussion points for the retreat as he stated are:
● Our achievements and milestones; celebrating successes.
● Challenges and learning; understanding obstacles and how to overcome them.
● Future goals and strategy; defining oiur visions and next steps.
● Strengthening internal communication; enhancing teamwork and efficiency.

In his concluding remarks, Ambassador Olushola emphasized the importance of summarizing key takeaways from the retreat and assigning actionable items for implementation. He then officially declared the retreat open. Agenda Breakdown Mr. Kayode provided an overview of the retreat’s agenda, detailing the planned activities for both staff and community leaders. He stressed the importance of incorporating challenges and insights into report-sharing sessions.

Session 2: Executive Director's Presentation (11:20 AM - 11:25 AM WAT)

Review of the 2024 Fiscal Year Mrs. Omolayo, the Executive Director, presented a comprehensive review of the 2024 fiscal year. She highlighted the various projects initiated in February 2024, as documented on the WUGN Meta page. Ambassador Olushola inquired about the progress of the collaboration with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), to which Mrs. Omolayo responded that discussions were ongoing. Mr. Kayode commended the progress made in 2024 and suggested the inclusion of a graphical representation of completed activities by month. Mr. Ayo proposed the development of a general report summarizing all meetings for better documentation. Barakat recommended periodic updates to the group, similar to Ambassador Olushola’s practice. Mr. Medi suggested including reports or statistics on failed projects to facilitate assessment and improve future initiatives. Ambassador Olushola emphasized the importance of reporting on projects and their challenges in future retreats.

Session 3: Project Summary (11:40 AM - 12:20 PM WAT)

Ayokanmi Oyeyemi, the WUGN Programs Lead, presented a summary of the programs for the 23/24 fiscal year.
He reported on the programs from April 2024 to December 2024, highlighting the executed initiatives, including:

Project Summary - 2024 Fiscal Year Mr. Ayokanmi presented an overview of the projects executed during the fiscal year, noting that the cycle began in April 2024 and ended in January 2025 due to a calendar reset. While all planned projects were completed, the International Day of Banks initiative was not executed due to late preparations. Key activities included:

● Audio-visual language history project
● Wikiboost program
● Train-the-Trainers Program – South-South Edition
● International Day Symposium celebration
● Nigeria Wikimedia Community Distinguished Awards
● Wiki Loves Photography events
● WikiConference Nigeria
● Wikidata edit-a-ton

Challenges Encountered:

● Low attendance at physical events in Lagos.
● Recent changes in copyright laws.
● Challenges in aligning national campaigns.
● Limited manpower.
● Over commitment to multiple projects simultaneously.
● Low engagement and participation from community members and fan clubs.

Recommendations:

● Strengthening collaboration and coordination.
● Assessing the impact of legal changes.
● Recruiting volunteers for the programs team with potential data reimbursement.
● Enhancing communication with communities and fan clubs to increase engagement.
● Setting a limit on the number of projects/edit-a-thons per month to maximize impact.
● Expanding and maintaining existing partnerships.

Dr Isaac observed that not all the projects carried out in the 2024 fiscal year was included in the sketch. He also suggested that in 2025 there should be more non-campaign projects implemented. Mr Medi asked if there is a statistical representation of people that attend physical events. Mr Ayo stated that reimbursement of transportation for participants at physical events may not be sustainable, he also stated that there isn’t a concentration of volunteers in Lagos asides institution. Dr Isaac emphasized Mr Medi’s question of the availability of data to show the number of participants at events, to which Mr Ayo confirmed. Dr Isaac asked that Mr Adetola works with the Programs team to evaluate the reasons for the poor turnout at physical events. Mr Adetola commented that the challenges experienced in the south west may be as a result of majority of the population of volunteers being from Fan clubs and could be related with the school calendar. Dr Isaac suggested mobilization of Community leaders to help in increasing the turnouts at physical events, this was seconded by Mr Medi. Dr Isaac recommended that the programs team improves on mobilization towards physical events. Amb. Olushola admonished the programs team to engage more in the publicity for physical event, he also stated that both successful and failed projects be added in the calendar. He called for bigger partnerships on projects to give more visibility to WUGN, and earlier preparations for projects. Dr Isaac suggested that physical events also be done in other regions with proper mobilization and supervision highlighting the Wikiboost program. Amb. Olushola stated that it can be experimented on. Mr Medi asked for ways to manage volunteers, so as to avoid seeing different faces at events. Mr Ayokanmi recommended that focusing on newer editors may be more beneficial. Dr Isaac suggested that Mr Ayokanmi sets up a strategy to manage old editors so as to bring them back on board, He also recommended that the recommendations on the report be synced with the evaluation team. Mrs Omolayo stated that the leadership plays a large role in participation at events.

Monthly Outstanding Editors Recognition (MOER) Barakat provided an update on the Monthly Outstanding Editors Recognition (MOER) initiative, which acknowledges the contributions of Nigerian volunteer editors on Wikipedia. WUGN collaborated with leaders from Nigerian Indigenous Language Wikipedia groups (Yoruba, Hausa, Igbo, Fulfude, Tyap) to ensure the accurate selection of top contributors. She stated that there are 100 editors registered on the outreach dashboard with 27.3K articles created, 153K edits and 64.5K articles edited. Dr Isaac asked how the registration is done, to which Barakat replied that a post is sent out on social media platforms. which includes the link to the dashboard. Dr Isaac also suggested engaging the leaders on the social media posts to ensure proper dissemination of information. Barakat responded saying that the leaders stopped responding to messages. Amb. Olushola recommended getting ambassadors from the different languages user groups to help with the dissemination and implementation of information. Dr Isaac called for better control of the Wikimedia Nigeria Whatsapp group chat. Rita was given the responsibility of implementing policies to regulate the group chat. Mr Kayode asked if the dashboard link will be used throughout the year or will be changed monthly. Barakat replied that the same link is used throughout the year. Mr Kayode observed that there hasn’t been new registration, Barakat stated that it could be as a result of the link being shared on the whatsapp platform where there are no new members added recently. Barakat mentioned that the challenges faced are; ● Very limited response from Indigenous languages User group leaders. ● More top newbie editors need to be registered. ● Initial delay in prize distribution due to logistical setbacks.

Session 4: Barakat Report (2:08 PM - 3:25 PM WAT)

Wiki Re-Imagine Lagos Barakat gave a report on the Wiki Imagine Lagos project, she stated that it is a project in partnership with the “Lagos state ministry of Tourism art and culture” with the goal of documenting tourist sites in Lagos state. Beginning in July 2024. She gave a rundown on the timeline for the project. After working with the 7 departments in the ministry a total of 163 names of monuments were collated. 126 did not have Wikipedia articles and no mentions on wiki commons. 100 tourists sites were identified and documented. She stated that the end goal of the project was for the Lagos State government to create a QR code which will be placed at the tourist sites and will be the links to the Wikipedia articles. 3 projects were created in order to achieve this goal; ● Webinar session with a 5 person panel to kick-start the Wiki Re-imagine Lagos writing contest. The webinar had a topic;” Documenting Lagos: The role of journalism in tourism and cultural preservation”. The writing contest spanned 2 weeks with 14 articles created and 109 registered participants. Due to poor turnout of the contest, other journalists were reached out to in order to get more articles created. Mr Pelu Awofeso offered to reach out to Journalists and researchers within his network. The challenges faced were observations that some of the tourist sites were no longer in existence. The list of tourist sites from the ministry of tourism, art and culture appeared to be outdated. ● Launching of a photography contest for photographers to upload their pictures of the tourist sites. It was observed that multiple images of already documented sites were being sent in have been documented multiple times. Barakat stated that a the undocumented sites were identified and a team of Wikimedia Nigeria photgraphers were divided into groups and a group of photographers alongside herself and Mr Ayokanmi went out to Badagry to document some sites that were identified. It was realized that 8 of those sites were no longer in existence. Dr Isaac asked if a list of the non-existing sites is available in order to include it in our report, Barakat replied that it would be worked on. ● Edit-a-thon to create and edit articles on Documented sites, which has not been carried out due to references not being created. The edit-a-ton is proposed to be carried out on Saturday at the close of the retreat.

Dr Isaac suggested to make recommendations to Lagos state government to visit the tourist sites so as to get an updated record of these sites. Mr Ayokanmi suggested creating a diff for the project, Dr Isaac recommended to wait till the final outcome of the QR code before creating a diff. Amb. Olushola stated that the articles for the edit-a-ton be sent out beforehand. He also recommended reaching out to other states for the Re-imagine project.

Session 5: 2025 Annual calendar was presented by Mr Ayokanmi

Mr Ayokanmi, He stated that the calendar is grouped 3 months. He gave a rundown on projects and activities for the year. UN Observance Days: International Women’s Day 6th,7th & 11th International Day of Parliamentarism 30th June International Day of Translations 30th September International Day of Banks 4th December He stated that for these days there must be partners, edit-a-tons/ trainings and contests. Amb. Olushola noted that we need to identify and partner with embassies for each of the UN observance days. He also added that it applies to other projects as well. Mr Ayokanmi suggested that some of the advocacies be done monthly instead of weekly, in order to help it carry more weight and be less exhaustive. Dr Isaac recommended that the project timelines be synced with the grants team. He added that the Fellowship program be added to the calendar. Mr Ayokanmi suggested that Wiki Loves Festivals be kick started in 2025. He also stated that more volunteers will be brought on board to coordinate each project, He also stated that there will be project trackers created to track the progress of the projects. Dr Isaac recommended that the Wiki Loves Monuments campaign be carried out based on discretion as there are no grants originally allocated to the campaign for 2025.

Session 6: Social Media Annual Report for 2024 presented by Rhoda

Platform overview; Twiter/x:@WikimediaNG, @wiki4naijawomen Facebook: Wikimedia User Group Nigeria Instagram: @Officialwikimediang, @wiki4naijawomen LindedIn: Wikimedia User Group Nigeria. She stated that according to statistics, facebook gets more engagement, followed by twitter. She stated that getting access to instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter account was a challenge. Instagram and LinkedIn gets the least engagements. Mr Ayokanmi asked why there is more traction on Facebook compared with other platforms, Rhoda replied that it is due to the late access gotten on other platforms, as well as a larger population of users on facebook are more active, and more active Wikimedia User Group communities, this brings in more engagements. She stated that the total number of followers across all platforms is 7,298 with a higher number of them being from twitter and the least from LinkedIn.

The age demographic for engagements as She stated; 18-24 10.8% 25-34 43% 35-44 25% 45-54 10.2% 65+ 11%

Mr Olushola suggested a survey to know what people have to say concerning our social media posts. Rhoda stated that 66% of people who engage are Nigerians, while 34% are from other parts of the world, 68% of the people who engage are male while 32% are female. Mr Kayode recommended creating another slide for the reason of the gender disparity. Peak activity times were Friday, Saturday 3pm 6pm and 9pm Sunday, Friday 4pm-9pm Mr Medi suggested looking into peak times for everyday of the week. To weigh productivity. Dr Isaac suggested allocating budgets towards promoting our social media accounts. Mr Olushola agreed to having a meeting with social media experts/ influencers so as to tackle the social media challenges. Rhoda cited an observation about the sponsored post during the Wiki Re-imagine Lagos that gained a lot of traction. Mr Kayode suggested trivia which will be accompanied by rewards. Rhoda stated that after analysing engagements across all platforms, Facebook ha the most engagements with a total of 5,673 people reached, 15,956 impressions and 3,467 engagements. The top audience interests were photography and culture. She stated the strategies that worked well in 2024 and she suggested some areas for improvement. Mr Kayode suggested reaching out to Mr Ayokanmi when feedback is not received in time. Mr Ayokanmi recommended more creativity in the uploading of graphics for event, he cited an instance with a different graphic for each naija office hour. He also recommended a leaderboard for registered participants, as well as integration of posts on social media so that the same post is uploaded across all social media platforms. Amb. Olushola asked if there was a metric or a means of comparing the growth in engagements across our social media platforms, to which Rhoda replied that she wasn’t handed over any prior metric, hence a lack of data for the analysis.

Major Campaigns, Activities & Highlights that brought in engagement as She state are; Partnerships Wikiloves (Earth,Africa, Monument) Wikiboost Community activities highlights Nigerian Oral History WikiConference Nigeria

Achievements; Follower growth that reflected more on the LinkedIn page, Instagram due to the photography contest… Collaborations Knowledge promotion Community Engagement Security of the Social Media Platforms

Rhoda asked some questions that would help in bretter management of the social media accounts: Primary goals for the social media?: Dr Isaac replied; To create visibility for WUGN To recruit new members

Are there emerging platforms or trends to explore?: Dr Isaac; Threads app, Tiktok app Mr Ayokanmi suggested developing more on the platforms we already have before moving to newer ones. Mr Kayode recommended getting younger community members to contribute to contents on newer platforms like tiktok. Also collaborative posts. Mr Olushola recommended optimizing older platforms. He also suggested creating a database for the platform which will contain the usernames and passwords. Mr Kayode suggested streamings on Youtube. Mr Obinna suggested getting a content creator, as social media managers and content creation are different job descriptions. Mr Kayode recommended creating spaces on twitter for discussions, Dr Isaac added that this spaces be regulated to avoid negative backlash.

Next steps as proposed by Rhoda: ● Content calendar; implenenting a quaterly content strategy aligned with Wikimedia milestones. ● Interactive Campaigns; Launch Q&A sessions and polls to engage audiences. ● Audience Growth; Initiate outreach efforts to engage new demographic groups. ● Continuous performance tracking; Regular review analytics to inform future strategies.

She also made some recommendations: ● Community activities be reflected on WUGN social media. ● Encourage members to share their Wikimedia projects contributions and feature them on personal platforms. ● Create short videos explaining how to edit Wikipedia or contribute to Wikidata.

Conclusion:

Day 1 of the retreat concluded with plans for the future.
The agenda for Day 2 will include continued presentations from the Grant Officer, Learning and Evaluation Officer, Social Media, Programs, and Report Teams.

Next Steps:

Teams to follow up on action items discussed.
Preparation for Day 2 of the retreat.

Session 7: Communities Report presented by Kayode

As at 2024, the network with issues include; Gombe University Fan Club, He suggested shutting down the Gombe University Fan Club ax there is only one active member who is mostly unavailable. Osun Network leadership was changed due to the inactivity of the network. Rivers Network (formerly Niger Delta network) leader did not submit their reports, change in leadership. Adekunle Ajasin University Fan club, concerns as the president is mostly busy, and the retreat will be attended by the Vice President. LASU fan club had a transition in leadership. NIJ Fan Club to be monitored. Gender representation; 7 Females and 10 Males. Mr Adetola suggested a research as to why the number of female representation is reducing. Mr Kayode stated for stated that each community need to have a meta page, supporting leads. The students are to be registered with their student affairs with emergency funds provided for those who would want to register. Communities also need to submit their monthly reports, identifying and tackling conflicts in communities citing friction in the Akwa ibom network. Amb.Olushola recommended that a column for succession plans be added to the report, Mr Kayode replied that it will be put in the charter which is to be reviewed. Mr Kayode also reported that a membership drive was started in 2024 with 314 registrations but due to setbacks with the payment system, no payments have been made so far. 4 new communities were created, change in leadership in 7 communities. He stated that the plans for 2025 include; strengthening communities, supporting leadership, pushing for more registration of new members, supporting individual members. He also mentioned some of the challenges faced which are; leadership, knowledge on editing, projects and other local challenges faced in the communities. Mr Adetola commented that there is minimal traction from communities in the South West. He also stated that some communities complained of emergency grants not being funded, Mr Kayode replied that the reason for this was the late application, as the office was closed for the year in December, Mr Medi added that they were responded to in January of 2025.

Mr Kayode asked for Feedback for day one of the retreat: Mr Adetola noted that there was no inclusion of the WUGN 10 years anniversary in the calendar. It was agreed that there would be deliberations for the WikiConference in 2025.

Day one of the retreat came to a close at 6: 10PM with staff being served dinner.