Wikimedia CH/Micro Grant/Travel expenses for Wikipedia Weekend Tirana 2016

Please provide the following information for your micro-grant request:

Your Username: Albinfo

Your Country of residence: Switzerland

Amount requested: CHF 500 (probably not all needed)

Planned activity: Speach/workshops at the Wikipedia Weekend Tirana 2016 (December 3 & 4) about Wikidata and usage of mapping tools.
The grant will cover my travel expenses.

People involved:
me, Albanian Wikipedia community (from Albania, Kosovo & Macedonia), 50–100 participants of the conference

Please explain what influence your activity will have on Wikimedia Projects:
During the last year, I joined several events of the Albanian Wikipedia community (Wikipedia Weekend Tirana 2015, Open Source Conference Albania, FOSS Camp) and established good relations to the Albanian user group. I was even asked as member of the jury of Wiki Loves Earth for Albanian WP and involved in discussion about future projects of the Albanian user group. During this exchange, we noticed that nobody in the Albanian community has good knowledge of Wikidata and that they have only limited experience with geographical references (coordinates, maps). Mapping is a key activity of the Albanian Wikipedia at the moment and we already worked on this during FOSS Camp this summer.

I would love to help transfering this much needed know-how. Planned are workshops about these topics: WikiData and mapping (e.g. location maps). Improving knowledge about mapping will help to improve quality of articles in the Albanian Wikipedia, building up knowledge about Wikidata will help all Wikimedia projects as it is connected and used by all languages. The past showed that the lack of Wikidata know-how has generated many quality issues (e.g. duplicate entries because of incorrect/missing interwiki connections).

The organizers expect a lot of young students at the event. Even though my topics are not directly for new editors, they can also learn about these topics (Wikidata should be basics for everbody) and I can support the organizers during workshops and with new editors.

The conference is another good occassion to tighten the contacts to the Albanian community and members of several neighbouring countries and create new ones. During meetings and workshops in the past we were able to exhcange a lot of know-how on formal and informal ways and to launch common projects. We especially focus on lists of natural and cultural monuments we built manually because of missing data from government sources that could be imported directly.

Like during my last trips, I plan to bring back new images and add them to Commons.

--Albinfo (talk) 20:19, 30 October 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Important: AFTER having submitted your request, please write an eMail to info@wikimedia.ch with your contact details (at least: Name, Surname, Email address)

Vote

This section needs to be filled out by the Microgrants-Committee

Pro:

--Muriel Staub (WMCH) (talk) 08:05, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
Moumou82 (talk) 20:35, 7 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]
--Cassinam (talk) 17:15, 8 November 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Against:

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Abstention:

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Result: The Micro-grant committee approved this request by majority/unanimously.

Please provide links to your contributions after your project or activity ended:
Please provide the links to the categories on Wikimedia Commons, to the articles on Wikipedia or any other contributions on Wikimedia projects:
more details to follow

55 images uploaded to commons:Category:Photos of Wiki Weekend Tirana 2016
100 images uploaded to Commons

--Albinfo (talk) 00:47, 14 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Luckily, we had cold, clear weather almost all the time during my stay. On the inbound flight, the pilot did some extra curves allowing me to take many nice images from Northern Albania, and also on the flight back, I was able to take many more pictures from the air. During walks through Tirana in the spare time, I was able to take some nice sunset pictures and document the ongoing transformation of the Albanian capital. Like that, I was able to upload quite an amount of images to Commons and to illustrate several articles without picture and replaced several outdated images in other articles.

But bringing back images was not the main purpose of my trip. At the Wikipedia Weekend, the convention of the Albanian Wikipedia, I was talking about Wikidata and about adding maps to Wikipedia articles. Both are topics hardly anybody of the Albanian community has detailed knowledge. It was really important to raise awareness for these projects within the Albanian community. More about the event on my German user page.

I had the occassion to talk to the Albanian youth station en:IN TV (Albania) (Video on YouTube). In addition, Jona Azizaj mentioned me during her interview with Radio Tirana several times as kind of role model for the Albanian community. The participant "from Zurich" was also mentioned in the media release and in all press coverages. I was introduced to the Minister of Innovation, too, who came to the venue to gather some information about Wikipedia. It can be said that the organizers made use of my presence for promoting the event and the achievements of Wikipedia regarding Albania in other languages. --Albinfo (talk) 12:51, 19 December 2016 (UTC)[reply]