Grants:APG/Proposals/2019-2020 round 1/Wikimedia Sverige/Progress report form

Metrics and results overview - all programs edit

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees' programs. Please use the table below to let us know how your programs contributed to the Grant Metrics. We understand not all Grant or grantee-defined Metrics will be relevant for all programs, so feel free to put "0" where necessary. For each program include the following table and

  1. Next to each required metric, list the outcome/results achieved for all of your programs included in your proposal.
  2. Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome.
  3. In addition to the Global Metrics as measures of success for your programs, there is another table format in which you may report on any OTHER relevant measures of your programs success

For more information and a sample, see Grant Metrics.

Metric Achieved outcome Explanation
1. number of total participants 1184 (out of 2,500) Breakdown by gender:
Women: 233
Men: 217
Non-binary: 1
Un-known:733
These numbers do not yet include the WikigGap events around the world we helped to organize where we still expect 500-600 participants. Overall we have had a smaller number of participants than expected due to the COVID-19 limitations.

We expect to have thousands of conversations through the face2face fundraising but are still thinking what is reasonable to include and how to best capture it.

2. number of newly registered users 285 (out of 800) Breakdown by gender:
Women: 52
Men: 17
Non-binary: 1
Un-known: 215
These numbers are largely through the Wikipedia in Education project. We do not expect to reach the goal for the year due to limitations of outreach events when COVID-19 is still taking place.
3. number of content pages created or improved, across all Wikimedia projects 31,497 (out of 40,525) Breakdown by project:
Wikipedia: 3,756
Commons: 10,215
Wikidata: 16,791
Other: 735

The datasets and batch uploads we have worked on has been valuable, but smaller in size than previous years. There are a number of datasets lined up, that will add many thousands of improvements. We are also planning to edit 250,000 files on Wikimedia Commons to improve Structure Data on Commons by mid-2021. Most of that work will most likely happen in early 2021, but some might happen already in 2020. Hence, we hope to surpass our goal of 40,525.

4. Diversity[1] 270 (non-unique) (compared to 740 in our Progress report from 2019) We have approximated ~70% to be women during the WikiGap events internationally as these are not yet included in this number.
5. Reach[2] (new grantee defined metric) 1,735 (non-unique) (compared to 2,138 in our Progress report from 2019) This is lower which we believe is due to COVID-19 limitations. Last year the amount of participants increased significantly during the second half of the year.


Introduction edit

As for the rest of the world 2020 had a bumpy first 6 months due to Covid-19 with many significant changes in plans and activities. However, much of our work could either be rearranged in time or taken online and we have continued to execute well during these times, with all of the 12 staff members working the same amount of time per month as usual.

The four programmatic areas developed in 2016—Access, Use, Community and Enabling—have continued to form the base of the project structure. The first quarter the chapter had a large number of events and activities planned and successfully executed on them. We had a few major trends this year.

  1. We grew to continue growing
    1. We successfully onboarded five new great staff members: Josefine Hellroth-Larsson (project manager education and trainings), Karl Wettin (developer), Maria Burehäll (organizational assistant), David Haskiya (organizational strategist) and Jenny Brandt (organizational assistant).
    2. Work to develop a new stream of funding from Face2Face fundraising has been an increasing focus this year. We aim to launch a set of experimental events in the autumn of 2020, and if successful we will significantly increase the local fundraising work in the future. For this fundraising work 3-6 additional staff members working part time will be hired with short term contracts.
    3. Policies and procedures were reviewed and supplemented when needed to allow not only for a larger team, but for a more diverse and distributed team. Planning for a comprehensive effort to translate existing material into English is ongoing.
  2. We further internationalized our work
    1. The work to prepare to become a thematic hub and increase our chapter’s international activities with content partnerships continued. Even though it was delayed due to COVID-19, see below, we manage to make significant improvements in our planning and operations to allow for a significant increase in staff and capacities with a short notice.
    2. We actively participated in the development of the final version of the Wikimedia movement’s strategic recommendations and of the implementation work that followed. This work will also influence the development of Wikimedia Sverige’s new multi-year strategy.
    3. The WikiGap campaign was successfully organized for a third year in a row. Originally events were planned in 40-50 countries, but many had to be cancelled last minute due to COVID-19. What was new this year was that we partnered with UN Human Rights to identify articles to focus on for our online challenge. To engage partners to identify missing articles is something we think can be scaled significantly next year and we have initiated discussions with a few interesting organizations for the international work.
    4. A new long term partnership with UNFPA was formalized. We initiated our joint efforts to design a way for UN agencies to contribute with knowledge in a crisis situation, with COVID-19 as a first test case. We will also work to share their content on the Wikimedia platforms and to work around WikiGap. This is a model we hope can be used in other UN cooperations in the coming years, as a number of UN agencies have been in contact with us. We continue to discuss with them but have chosen to not rush into any new major partnerships, but instead to continue to develop the partnership model before we move forward.
    5. Over the year we have deepened our partnerships with Wikimedia Deutschland around technical development, we have also supported Wikimedia Israel in their work to develop a new tool for GLAM partnerships, and we also have one of our staff members now working from Wikimedia Norway’s offices, which we now cover some of the costs for, and we hope that we will be able to deepen our cooperation around languages and technology with them.
  3. We increased our volunteer engagement
    1. Preparatory work has been done to allow for an expansion of the volunteer engagement in late 2020 with the development of a long term strategy and new training material.
    2. More than a hundred librarians trained to use and contribute to Wikimedia projects and to organize local activities at the libraries.
  4. We increased political activities
    1. The implementation of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive of the European Union into Swedish law continued.
    2. We met with European Commission representatives around the future of digitization of cultural heritage a number of times and provided feedback on material that they produced.
    3. As UNESCO’s new OER recommendations was adopted by the Swedish government we worked to create and facilitate a network of engaged experts in Sweden to support the implementation of the recommendations at different authorities in Sweden.
  5. We got more digital
    1. As we closed down our office we had to implement a number of new procedures and tools to continue working effectively. Already before COVID-19 we were a very well developed digital organization, but there were a number of missing pieces that we worked to put in place allowing us to go fully digital as an organization.
    2. Due to the physical risks with meeting in person the board took the decision to adjust our Annual General Meeting to become fully digital. This was the first time in the history of the association and there were a lot of practical issues to solve. The feedback from the participants were very positive, and we shared our learnings with the wider Wikimedia community and Swedish civil society organizations as many other organizations were planning digital AGMs (after ours had already taken place).
  6. We continued to innovate
    1. We joined a number of research initiatives with the hope for funding in the coming years, e.g. around article quality, around natural language processing and of cultural heritage digitization.
    2. Our work around natural language processing and audio on Wikimedia’s projects continued and we experimented in a number of ways in this underexplored area. We did deep dives regarding both musical recordings, sheet music, lexical resources and speech recordings.
    3. We participated in the digital version of the LIBER 2020 Annual Conference, where we were honoured with the price LIBER Award for Library Innovation.

Financial changes edit

The funding we already have secured is covering our costs until late 2021, but do not allow for increase in operations and if no further funding is secured the current spending would deplete our reserves which we started rebuilding just two years ago.

We struggled with ensuring the long term funding we had hoped to secure starting 2020. The work to become a thematic hub, and as such take a larger role in the Wikimedia movement around content partnerships was delayed. The plan was originally to scale up the work in 2020, but Wikimedia Foundation decided last minute not to increase funding for any new initiatives due to the Covid-19 crisis and its effect on their fundraising efforts. After negotiation we secured the same funding as previous year, which allows us to continue ramping our efforts to be even more ready to scale up our operations in mid-2021 instead.

We also received negative news regarding our application to the Swedish Postcode Lottery to become beneficiary of their ongoing funding support. The Lottery scaled down their funding for the year and only accepted one new organization (out of 40 qualified organizations applying). We are fulfilling all the formal criterias and will reapply next year.

To combat this reduction of funding we hoped to secure we have significantly increased our work with fundraising. Both with grant applications but also with face2face fundraising. We also intend to organize an online fundraising campaign on social media. Applications for close to 1 million USD are being worked on and are in different stages of completion.

Access edit

  Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Access A.1.1 Enrich the Wikimedia projects,[3] with 25 new resources, through the creation and distribution of materials and by providing support and performing batch uploads. 8 9 resources out of 25
Below target: 20 We have a few more datasets lined up, but to a large extent we will work to improve earlier uploads with Structure Data on Commons.
A.1.2 150 identified[4] subject experts contribute to the Wikimedia projects with at least 1 productive edit each, through the dissemination of information, maintaining relationships or arranging thematic edit-a-thons. 78 129 experts out of 150
Above target: 180 The experts are mostly through the Wikipedia in Library project. As both Wikipedia in Education and the Wikipedia in Library project have activities planned for the second part of the year we expect an increase from the previous year.
A.1.3 Involve 10 courses in the Wikipedia Education Program,[5] through educating motivated teachers and providing expertise on the Wikipedia tools for education. 3 3 courses out of 10
Below target: 6 courses Due to COVID-19 this work has been limited the first half of the year. We have also adjusted the focus of this project to prepare educational material and a course format to train volunteers so that they will be able to support educational institutions in the future.
A.2.1 To increase the use of free licenses ensure that 50 organizations[6] are reached with information on free licenses. 29 145 organizations out of 50
Above target: 175 The majority of organizations received information at events connected to the FindingGLAMs project early during the year such as the permanent delegations at UNESCO. A number of organizations also received information through the Wikipedia in Libraries project, where we expect a few more to be reached later during the year.
A.2.2 Work actively to nurture and develop the relevant networks and contacts with people who can influence license choice of material in order to safeguard the topicality of the issue. This is achieved, in addition to regular activities, through active participation in or the organization of at least 10 new events and at least 10 new direct contacts with content owners, organizations and politicians. 11 events, 13 contacts 16 new events out of 10

39 new direct contacts out of 10

Above target: 20 events

Above target: 46 contacts

Our definition of someone belonging to our network is when they have met a representative of the association and staff has some way of contacting them, they have received information about what we do as an organization and how they can reach us. We were very active in our activities in the first months of the year. We expect a lower amount the second half of the year as many events have been cancelled due to COVID-19.

Our Access program focuses on improving the free content on, or available to, the Wikimedia projects both short and long term. This continues to be our largest program, both in number of ongoing projects and initiatives, and in budget. Preparations to further scale this program in 2020 and onwards are taking place. However, it is worth noting that a lot of work that also supports the community happens as an integrated part of the program – for example in the FindingGLAMs project support was provided to local volunteer communities in five countries.

We have over the years established strong practices around expert engagement, partnerships and technical support and we have successfully continued to build upon them this year. We have continued to experiment and develop our toolbox to allow for new types of partnerships or activities to happen. Some of the learnings have been presented in our white paper based on the experiences gained during the 18 month long FindingGLAMs project and they form a foundation for our thinking and planning for what technical development is needed in the movement to support GLAMs better. We continued to develop these ideas into a technical direction for the thematic hub (still to be published and distributed widely for feedback) and to a number of external grant applications that we are currently in the process of finalizing.

The interests from GLAM professionals to learn about our work and discuss possible partnerships was very large and seemed to be steady during the pandemic. There seems to be an increased interest and understanding about the values created with digital representation and activation when the physical activities have been rendered impossible. Our discussions have been very positive with many organizations and we have had a large participation at our online trainings. That said, it is not as large as it could have been and we see many opportunities for further engagement and discussions. Our experience in this area has given us an opportunity to take a leading role and we hope to keep this momentum going.

As staff from our partner organizations work from home and focus more on the digital aspects we have seen quick responses and interest to work on different initiatives around batch uploads and the support to prepare the metadata to different collections have been very good. We will still have to see how the reduced financial strength amongst the GLAM institutions, due to lower levels of visitors etc., will affect their willingness to buy our services around batch uploads this year. That might reduce the number of collections we can work on as well as our bottom line.

Wikimedia Sverige is in this for the long run. We aim to change the way organizations and the society think about knowledge dissemination and production. Creating that kind of change in attitudes will allow for the full impact of free knowledge. By convincing decision makers to adopt different forms of policies around openness we are laying the foundations for accessing new material in the future. One interesting area is to target the wallet and this year we had the opportunity to engage with the European Commission’s next 10 year fundraising strategies, the Horizon Europe and Digital Europe programs. We have participated in meetings and send written feedback on documents to them. We hope to continue the conversations in the second part of the year.

We continue to support the staff at our partner organizations with trainings. We intend to broaden the offers we have to them with e.g. more networking opportunities and to take part in different reference groups where their expertise can guide our work. We established our first network around open educational resources (OER) in the spring and will evaluate it in the autumn and possibly scale to other areas of relevance to our organization where there are currently missing support to the experts interested to further engage in an area.

Story: Raise your voice edit

In this Story we are focusing on the continuous work done by Wikimedia Sverige to improve the structures for audio files on the Wikimedia projects, which includes support to share newly recorded music, batch uploads of out-of-copyright music, inclusion of sheet music, information about musicians and tools and structures for speech recordings.

 
One of the pieces of sheet music shared by the Swedish Performing Arts Agency.

The Wikimedia projects are currently not well developed to handle audio files and supporting material; as a result, there is not much audio material available and potential contributors do not have access to sufficient resources and guidance. We have tried to address this gap for a couple of years now through a number of initiatives which we are continuing and scaling up in 2020. The issues include how to compile the information about audio files in a structured way to make it useful and searchable, how to ensure full coverage of a thematic area, how to source the information and files properly and how to be able to both upload existing recordings and to encourage the production of new recordings in a fast and efficient manner.

We believe this to be of crucial importance as music has been part of civilization for a long time, and this is true in most cultures. As a phenomenon in society, it has an increasing value and is generally perceived as positive. Music is played by many people and it can be said to belong to the cultural expressions that both distinguish and unite groups of people all over the world.

Playing music is a way of preserving local and national culture and it is an area that is closely associated with other cultural expressions such as film and dance. As digital production of media increases, so does the need for more free material that can be used.

The Swedish cultural heritage institutions have been good at documenting music and especially Swedish folk music. There is no clear definition of folk music as it is alive and developing while it is being played. But one way to preserve knowledge about it is to document live performances. Together with the Swedish Performing Arts Agency, we have been able to share some of the recordings made by the Swedish Radio in the 40’s and 50’s under a free license.

There is another possibility here as well: creating new recordings of old music. In this way we get a modern interpretation of sheet music and works that were created hundreds of years ago. It is very fun that both old music and new interpretations can be found on the Wikimedia platforms, allowing users to hear music while reading an article about it. Since music is a common and popular way of expression, many can participate and contribute. We would like to see that music played locally across the world can also have an obvious place in the free knowledge sphere.

By describing the audio files in a structured format and connecting them to other resources we believe that the Wikimedia platforms will be able to provide a unique learning environment while also improving searchability overall around some specific areas of music and speech recordings.

The work we are doing with audio files of music will also help us to prepare for structuring speech recordings, which we hope to collect as part of the project Wikispeech – Speech Data Collector 2019 in 2021. In this project we will collect speech data to build better natural language processing solutions. This will also allow us to improve the different Wikimedia platforms by adding pronunciation recordings to Wiktionary and Wikidata lexemes, as well as to Wikipedia articles (e.g. pronunciation of place names). The structure of the recordings might also be possible to reuse for oral citations later on.

Story: Expectations are changing edit

In this Story we are focusing on how COVID-19 seem to have increased the speed of change in the GLAM sector towards more digital meetings and activities. There is an opportunity for the Wikimedia movement to move faster with new partnerships across the world and supply an interesting addition to digital engagement that all organizations currently are struggling with.

With the global pandemic, the GLAM sector is also undergoing major changes. The needs and expectations are changing towards becoming more digital. There is a tendency for increasing dissemination of digital knowledge and although digitalisation has long been on the agenda, digital development is a requirement to be relevant.

Experience amongst GLAM staff to organize digital meetings with partners are likely to have increased substantially which would in turn increase our possibilities to support partners across the world in our international GLAM work as they are comfortable to organize video meetings and not just physical meetings. It seems that this could shorten the initiation time for projects as subsequent meetings can be scheduled more quickly than before. It will be interesting to see how this development will continue as the pandemic calms down and we return to a more normal existence where the institutions are meeting places.

One of the strengths of Wikimedia platforms is that they are collaborative areas. In collaboration with the libraries, we have seen that tools for communication and platforms for structured collaboration are needed. It is mainly through video meetings that communication has been developed and together worksheets and version management tools make this integration very effective.

We have received more spontaneous inquiries from organizations that develop their presence digitally. There may be e.g. festivals, meetings and other physical events where the organizers have reached out to us and wondered what we can offer and if you cannot simultaneously write articles or upload media when you are still running and planning your digital engagement.

Story: Envisioning the technical future of content partnerships edit

In this Story we are focusing on how Wikimedia Sverige is trying to move the needle in the right direction for the Wikimedia movement to become a key partner to organizations that have content they would like to share with the world. We believe that our current technical infrastructure prevents us here in Sweden to get as far as we could get. However, the problem is even larger if we, as a movement, want to form content partnerships in other less digitized countries across the globe. The increase of efforts we hoped to start in 2020 have been postponed to 2021 due to the pandemic and the uncertain financial situation, but we are hopeful the work will happen next year.

Over the years WMSE have had many types of interesting and valuable content partnerships. We have worked hard to engage our partners in every step of the process and to encourage them to work with us continuously and to share their experiences with their peers. This has in many ways been successful, but we have identified many areas for improvement together with them. If these improvements could be made the Wikimedia movement could become the main go-to place for content owners that want to share their knowledge with the world. For partners with limited digital presence more support from the Wikimedia movement would be needed. Dedicated support would greatly benefit the partners that currently do not have the infrastructure or the means needed to bring their knowledge online. This would also allow smaller Wikimedia affiliates and volunteers in more parts of the world to form successful partnerships with local actors.

In 2019-2020 our chapter tried and tested uploading a large number of different types of data to the Wikimedia platforms to explore what can be done and what still needs to be developed. Our learnings were summarized in a white paper consisting of seven case studies.

Together with Toby Negrin, Ben Vershbow and their teams at Wikimedia Foundation we worked on developing a technical direction for content partnerships. In it we outline areas we believe could be improved upon significantly in a 12 month period. After the initial development sprints the tools would need long term maintenance and support to cover gaps that currently exist for content partners across the world.

Due to COVID-19 and the uncertainties around the yearly fundraising WMF halted all expansion of teams and projects in 2020. This directly affected our plans and the project was extended for an additional year without increasing the budget contrary to the original plan in which the budget was set to increase significantly. With the current budget we will continue to work with affiliates and teams that are working on tools for partnerships and refine our technical direction and support the other affiliates to the best of our abilities.

Detailed project overview edit

Below all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories have been presented more in depth as case studies above.

For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).

We are also outlining where the project will have an impact in the Wikimedia universe and who we are partnering with to deliver the best possible result.

We also have information about the importance of each project., e.g. if the project is core, essential, one-off or experimental. In this context, a project is considered to be core if it is part of our identity as an organization. The project will be organized even if impact is less in the short term and will only be cancelled after a consensus has been reached amongst our community. A project is essential if it actively contributes to one or many of the goals that have been outlined for the year or the long term strategy. Most projects should belong here. A project that is considered a one-off is organized because it is delivering a specific benefit to the organization but it is unlikely that we will repeat it in its current form. This type of project might continue over the years, but the content will intentionally change significantly over time. The experimental projects are testing a new idea, method or technology and are often externally financed. They might be a one-off or, if proved successful, become an essential project.

FindingGLAMs 2018 edit

What is the project: This is a major global externally funded project aiming to add information about GLAM institutions from around the world, and the collections they hold, to Wikidata, Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons. The database will be the first one of its type and will provide a service for both the GLAM sector, for organizations working with crisis situations and for Wikimedia affiliates to find potential partners. Case studies regarding batch uploads and other activities with different types of GLAMs will be developed to summarize the learnings and analyse the effect and future possibilities. We hope to outline what needs to be built in the future to ensure more and deeper partnerships with content partners and around cultural heritage. As part of the project we will do a lot of preparatory work for Wikimania, as the conference will create a lot of value for the project.

What’s been done: The project was extended until February 29, 2020. In the two first months of 2020, we focused on summarizing and spreading our experiences both within and outside the Wikimedia community:

  • We wrote and published a white paper based on several case studies from our work. We used our experiences from working with different Swedish and international GLAMs’ materials on the Wikimedia platforms to reflect upon the current practice and propose future directions for the Wikimedia community and developers.
  • We met with the permanent delegations at UNESCO, where we informed the countries’ representatives and ambassadors about our work. This was received very positively and we were invited to organize another event with delegations from Africa in early 2021.
  • We continued uploading data from GLAMs to the Wikimedia platforms, the highlights including a collection of photographs from the National Museum of Science and Technology in Stockholm and a dataset of archival institutions from Archives Portal Europe – which was released as CC0 as a result of our collaboration.
  • We organized the FindingGLAMs Challenge to inspire more users to edit GLAM items on Wikidata. 90 participants edited over * 16,000 items!
  • We followed the participants in our global Minor grants program, aimed at Wikimedia organizations outside of the Global North, as they organized events for GLAM professionals to introduce them to Wikidata and open data.

What's next: The project ended in February 2020. The project Tools for Partnerships 2019 – Blueprinting is a spiritual successor where we continue the planning and work based on the findings in our white paper.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Large

Importance: Experimental

Project impact: Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, Wikisource

Partners: UNESCO, Wikimedia Foundation, GLAM institutions in Sweden and abroad

Link to the project: FindingGLAMs 2018

Wikipedia in Education 2020 edit

What is the project: This project aims to engage the educational sector in contributing to free knowledge and to develop ways for us to work together. In 2020 we will focus the work on forming long-term strategic partnerships, affecting policies, developing insights through research and building capacity for other actors (non-staff) to work with educators across the country. More specifically, the project will increase the work around Open Educational Resources (OER) and Open Access in Sweden. We will start planning for a national OER meeting to further engage the Swedish OER network and highlight the value of Open Access and work to bring more scientific material and sources to the Wikimedia platforms. Through the hub the relevant tools can be developed.

Furthermore, we will continue to support educators to implement Wikipedia-based assignments where students improve Wikipedia as part of their curricular activities. We will actively highlight and communicate Wikipedia in classroom settings. Less staff focus will be directed to support educators to organize events, but instead focus will be directed to support peer-to-peer learning and to empower volunteers, students and WiRs to work with educators.

What’s been done: We have organized training with three courses in the beginning of the year. The main focus has however been on starting the development of a standardized training program, so that we can train the trainers in the future. We have also launched the OER network which is off to a good start with a joint effort to translate the OER recommendations from UNESCO into Swedish.

What's next: We will continue to provide support to the OER network. We will also organize a number of activities for our partners in the educational sector (they are all planning to fully open up for physical meetings in the autumn). The main part of the remaining project time will however be dedicated to creating the educational packages needed to be able to scale with volunteer support in the future.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Importance: Core

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: Nordic Museum, Enskilda Gymnasiet, Anderstorpsgymnasiet, Stockholm University, Vetenskap och allmänhet, Volontärbyrån, the folk high schools in Jönköping County

Link to the project: Wikipedia i utbildning 2020

Samsyn 2018 edit

What is the project: We work with six universities in a three year long externally funded project called Samsyn. The goal is to create a wiki with Swedish nomenclature for university outreach available to all universities in Sweden. We have set up the wiki, which is the central tool for the whole project, and we provide training for staff at the partnering universities on how a wiki works. At the end of the project suitable parts will be included on the Wikimedia platforms. In 2020 the project has moved into a phase of becoming more public and our role is to keep facilitating content creation and feedback from partners and to bring the material onto the Wikimedia platforms.

What’s been done: During 2020 the main page has gotten a new design reflecting the more open approach where users can create accounts and contribute to the wiki. As another step to follow the more open approach, some of the users have had training in administrative tasks and had administrator rights granted. Following that instructions on the Samsyn wiki on how to perform administrative tasks were created and improved. Some categories that were used while building the wiki have been phased out and replaced with categories showing the actual content.

What's next: The big thing of what’s left before the project ends at the end of the year is to make sure all relevant created content lives on. Either on the Samsyn wiki (remaining a wiki or converted to static form) or incorporated in the Wikimedia projects. A prototype project page has been created to initiate discussion with the Wikimedia community about what platforms might be useful to add content.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Importance: Experimental

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners:

Link to the project: Samsyn 2018

GLAM 2020 edit

What is the project: This project maintains continuous interaction with GLAM partners and seeks out new collaborations. It also serves as an umbrella project for smaller projects funded by individual GLAMs, where they want help with a certain task within a limited time period. These projects are usually aimed at making a particular collection of images or data available through the Wikimedia projects, at increasing the Wikimedia competency of an institution by having a staff member embedded at the institution over some timespan or by building bespoke tools to facilitate the interaction, or the analysis thereof, between the GLAM and Wikimedia.

What’s been done: The focus has been on acting as a meta level project providing training for partners where we want to deepen our cooperation in the future, making more GLAM institutions aware of our work, and on preparing for externally funded activities both with our long-term GLAM partners (where they pay us for the hours needed for a batch upload or training etc.) and with involvement in initial meetings for possible major projects in the future. At the end of 2019 we started supporting the Thiel gallery as they were digitizing images and planned for making them available on Wikimedia Commons during 2020.

What's next: We will work to re-energize our strategic partnerships with key actors and provide a series of training and educational activities for the GLAM staff across Sweden. Our partners will be invited to engage in our international work as experts and stakeholders. We will also start the work to create material that can be internationalized to spur GLAM activities abroad. We intend to further investigate how we can share good examples of how to work with free licenses and structured data to achieve the results the GLAM institutions desire.

We will also investigate how we can present solutions that combine databases and intermediation and whether there is interest in testing new tools and installations of MediaWiki and Wikibase. This area has significant potential where we see an opportunity to take a leading role. We can be the node that connects different stakeholders in common goals around open linked data.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata

Importance: Core

Partners: Nordic Museum, Swedish National Heritage Board, Swedish Performing Arts Agency

Link to the project: GLAM 2020

Free music on Wikipedia 2019 edit

What is the project: This project aims to make more music available on the Wikimedia platforms by uploading files and structured data. This includes making collections available that contain digitized material with extinct copyright, or high-quality new recordings performed by professional musicians who released the material.

By working with structured data on musical works, musicians and musical manuscripts on Wikidata and with Structured Data on Commons, we can improve the searchability and usability of the material. The project enables us to delve into audio files on Wikimedia Commons and Wikidata. The project is also a basis for a case study within the FindingGLAMs 2018 project.

What’s been done: We have started a collaboration with the Swedish Performing Arts Agency and are working on metadata and uploads of Swedish folk music. We have developed a project plan for activities during 2020, and are working on an inventory of music collections that may be relevant to our work. We have had initial contacts with smaller stakeholders for collaborations and in support of this we are working on a landing page on our wiki, Contribute 2020, with information on how people can get involved.

What's next: We will continue with uploads of older material with expired copyright, but also new recordings of music provided by involved musicians. We will engage both the Swedish community and institutions through edit-a-thons and workshops.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Large

Importance: Experimental

Project impact: Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia

Partners: Swedish Performing Arts Agency

Link to the project: Fri musik på Wikipedia 2019

Presentations 2020 edit

What is the project: This project includes different presentations by WMSE staff that are paid for by an external organization. The project exists to simplify taxation of our work.

What’s been done: No work has been done in the project in the first half of the year.

What's next: With everything closed down due to the COVID-19 pandemic the number of opportunities to present continues to be limited. We have one opportunity identified for a paid online presentation for a partner organization.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Importance: Essential

Project impact: -

Partners: -

Link to the project: Föreläsningar 2020

Strategic inclusion of library data on Wikidata 2019 edit

What is the project: A continuation of the 2018 project aiming to further improve the interconnectedness between open library data and Wikimedia data. In 2020, in addition to further developing ideas and tools that were prototyped in the previous project – such as uploading more open library data to Wikidata and investigating how it can be automatically updated and maintained – we will strive to increase the usage of the data on Wikipedia. This will be achieved by engaging with the community and developing tools and solutions that best fit their workflow. We will also engage with the National Library staff by providing support around the Wikimedia platforms and creating opportunities to improve their internal tools by taking advantage of the increased interconnection with Wikidata. At least one hackathon will be organized to create an arena for development in this area.

What’s been done: Due to Covid-19 and other commitments at the National Library the project was largely on hold during the first half of 2020. The focus has mainly been on communicating the results of the project. The abstract describing our work was awarded the LIBER Award for Library Innovation at the LIBER 2020 Annual Conference.

What's next: A hackathon with the library staff at the National Library will be organised towards the autumn. We have suggested that it be expanded to also cover a general introduction to Wikidata in the library space, open to anyone in the subject area, as this is something for which we have heard interest expressed in the past. The event will take place online.

The import of bibliographic data to Wikidata will be expanded to cover all works used as references on Swedish language Wikipedia. We will also create a gadget to make it easy to create a Wikidata item from a National Library catalog entry and investigate a Wikidata-based citation template for Swedish language Wikipedia.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Large

Importance: Experimental

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: National Library of Sweden

Link to the project: Strategisk inkludering av biblioteksdata på Wikidata 2019

Strategic inclusion of library data on Wikidata 2020 edit

This project has been postponed to 2021. This is due to the delays Covid-19 has had on the adoption of a new long-term budget for the National Library.

Wikipedia in Libraries 2019 edit

What is the project: This project will prepare digital training material for Sweden’s public librarians as part of a larger national initiative to improve their digital skills. The training material will be included in a learning platform created by the National Library. Furthermore, continuous training, different events and training at libraries across Sweden will be organized, as well as two campaigns targeted towards engaging library staff to contribute to the Wikimedia platforms. After the launch of the educational platform in late 2019 and initial training of a large number of librarians, a number of training events in person will be organized where the librarians will be empowered to organize local activities at their libraries across the country.

What’s been done: The digital learning material has been created and published on Digiteket. We also planned the tour for the beginning of the year and invited librarians to participate. In January and February 2020 we visited five regions to conduct training for librarians so that they will be able to run events at their own libraries later on.

What's next: We are preparing for a second round of Wikipedia in Libraries and this time we run the events online. We bring with us the experiences from our online edit-a-thons and the online Citation hunt event from the spring. The second round starts in the autumn and we will continue working on the Wikimedia platforms and projects as we did in the first course. Our focus on supporting local events at the libraries will continue if they open up for activities this year.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Large

Importance: Experimental

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: National Library of Sweden

Link to the project: Wikipedia i biblioteken 2019

Advocacy 2020 edit

What is the project: Through the project, we are working to ensure that the free knowledge and user perspectives are heard and accounted for in the legislative process and amongst politicians. The project is only funded with donations and membership fees to keep them separate from FDC funded projects. We will focus on improving knowledge amongst decision makers about FoP and how the Copyright Directive might influence Wikipedia. Furthermore, we will support the work done by staff in Brussels, financially but also by providing insights into the Swedish implementation and sharing the material we create (as Sweden has gotten further in the implementation process than most countries in the EU). We will aim to support the coordination of policy work with the cultural heritage sector amongst issues relevant for both parties.

What’s been done: The largest part of this project in 2020 will deal with the implementation of the Copyright in the Digital Single Market directive of the European Union in Swedish law. Several of the articles in the directive might have negative consequences for users if implemented in a bad way, and we are working hard to safeguard the rights of the users in the implementation. At the same time, there are articles of the directive that can have very positive consequences on digitization and sharing of information on digital platforms, and in those cases, we are working hard to make sure that the legislator implements the articles in the way intended, as the copyright lobby has an interest in watering down these provisions. So far, a number of consultation meetings have been held, and we have provided thorough input and responses to the questions asked by the Ministry of Legal Affairs.

Furthermore, we submitted responses to public consultation from (1) the Agency for Digital Government regarding Principles for making information available and reusable, (2) EUIPO regarding the creation of a new web portal covering works and other creations that are not traded, and (3) the DCHE on their Working Draft on basic principles for 3D digitisation of tangible cultural heritage.

What’s next: The Ministry of Legal Affairs estimates that the department promemoria will be finalized towards the end of summer. We will work together with allies to provide as thorough and useful input in the consultation process on the promemoria as possible, and plan to dedicate a number of workshops, meetings and hours of writing to this end. We also hope to be able to bring up the question of the need for a modernization of the freedom of panorama provision in Swedish law on the table.

Size of project: Small

Project impact: All Wikimedia projects

Importance: Essential

Partners: National Library of Sweden, Swedish Library Association, Swedish Consumers

Link to the project: Påverkansarbete 2020

Use edit

  Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Use U.1.1 To inform the public about Wikimedia projects and free knowledge, good media relations are central. This is achieved through active work with press releases, op-eds, commentaries, newsletter and presence on social media. Based on the key figures identified as metrics by the office the measured media activities for November 2020 will increase by 10 % compared to November 2019. 0 out of 1

Only parts of the metrics for 2019 have been compiled and can be compared with this year’s numbers. What we can see is a significant increase in social media followers as an effect of our campaigns. The newsletter is expected to increase significantly in the later part of the year. The media visibility is however expected to significantly drop this year as we hosted Wikimania in 2019 and have very few events planned and no dedicated communication staff currently hired.

U.1.2 To increase awareness of the usage and trust, clearer measurement methods for how the Wikimedia projects are used, in general and by specific user groups, will be developed during the year. No work was done No work was done
Below target: 0 New staff members have been introduced to the project and will start work in the second half of the year. We expect to achieve the goal this year.
U.2.1 To decrease the number of bugs in the software and increase clarity all identified and verified bugs shall be reported on Phabricator within one week of being encountered and critical system messages will be translated.[7] The result is monitored annually. 100% (18 new bugs and 0 translation messages) 50% (5 new bugs and 0 translation messages)
On target: 100% We have reported all the bugs that we have encountered in the MediaWiki software. We have not included bugs that we have reported in external Wikimedia related tools. 50% indicates that we are halfway through the year.
U.2.2 In order to make content available for more people the Wikispeech extension shall be activated as a beta function on three language versions of Wikipedia</ref> before the end of the year, and supporting functionality/tools will be developed to add more languages. 0 of 3 languages activated 0 of 3 languages activated
On target: 3 languages We have gone through all the feedback from the initial code review and have received valuable guidance from WMDE and expect to shortly be able to activate the first 3 languages as a Beta feature.

The focus of the program is to make the platforms and activities known, appreciated and trusted. It also includes our work to make the platforms easy to use and both our platforms and activities accessible to everyone.

Making the platforms and activities known and appreciated edit

Previously, with more limited resources invested, we have targeted different expert groups etc. in our communication, e.g. Facebook groups for GLAM professionals. In 2020 we have invested resources to develop our presence on social media so that our activities and messaging will reach a significantly larger audience. This is part of our preparations for an increased focus on fundraising in the second half of the year.

We will broaden our focus to use the platforms simply to spread information about the value and importance of free knowledge and about the Wikimedia platforms as tools to achieve more free knowledge of better quality but to also engage our followers to do small tasks, with the idea that this will get them “hooked” and engage more over time.

We believe that more communication will, amongst other things, improve our possibilities for increasing participation at our events, help us to find more partners, increase funding opportunities and avoid misunderstandings about our work and the Wikimedia platforms.

Our goal of reaching 5,000 members in 3 years is dependent on developing clearer communication that highlights the value of the work we do. In September we hope to launch a fundraising campaign and are spending much time to prepare the messaging needed for it.

Story: Increasing awareness about our work edit

Free knowledge for a stronger democracy – one of the videos created for our communication project around Wikimedia and the Global Goals.

In this Story we are focusing on the significant efforts in 2020 to increase knowledge in Sweden about the association and the work we do and how it help to improve the world.

This spring, we have intensified visibility efforts. It has been a long-standing issue that while almost everyone knows Wikipedia, just a few know about the Wikimedia movement that stands behind it. Through strategic, methodic and intensified efforts, we aim to change that situation.

We started the year with a communication project around Wikimedia and the Global Goals, where we worked together with a communication agency to attract visibility. We created a landing page dedicated to the Global Goals on our website, and the communication efforts with the agency directed traffic there. The total reach of the posts was about 1,450,000, and unique reach 232,000. The videos produced by the agency, based on the Free Knowledge and the Global Goals Spotlight Session during Wikimania, had in total more than 400,000 views via Wikimedia Commons, and 20,000 views on Facebook. Videos from Wikimania were also aired on Swedish Public Service in the fall, where they had in total about 10,000 views.

We believe that these efforts increased the awareness of the brand and our work. We followed up the efforts with advertising campaigns on Facebook, which led to a rapid increase in the number of followers. We set up a number of ads with different images as well as messages, inviting anyone who liked the image to follow our page. The ambition was to gain more followers in order for our messages to reach a larger crowd in the future, hoping to spread the Wikimedia Message to a new audience. The ads were targeted at a very wide set of Facebook users.

To follow up on this, we have worked more with social media in general, and also when it comes to following up on statistics. Our ambition is to reach more people in total, and also gaining an audience large enough to be segmented into our different areas of work for a higher accuracy in our messages. We are also aware of the fact that some major funders are taking the reach of the organization into consideration when deciding what to fund. As such this effort might also have a very direct impact on our future financial sustainability.

Making usage easy and accessible to everyone edit

Through our efforts we hope to make the platforms easier to use for our readers. We focus both on our in-house development, mainly through the ambitious Wikispeech project, and on informing other developer teams about issues that we encounter during workshops and other events that we organize.

Story: Wikipedia as platform for vital information in times of crises edit

 
As a result of our partnership with UNFPA, participants in the Wikiproject COVID-19 could improve Wikipedia with up-to-date and trustworthy information.
 
An infographic on avoiding infection shared by the Swedish Public Agency under an open license. Northern Sami is one of Sweden’s official minority languages.

In this Story we are focusing on how we have tried to develop a method for major global content partners to share their expertise and content on Wikipedia about topics that are read during a crisis, such as the pandemic. During the year we have worked both with expert contributions and volunteer engagement and with uploads of key infographics.

For years, we have planned for and worked on how to use Wikipedia for dissemination of vital information in crises. We know that Wikipedia is used as the go-to place when events are unfolding, and have pondered what our responsibility is, acknowledging that.

The COVID-19 pandemic accentuated and accelerated this project, as well as the need. Through collaborations with two expert agencies, we identified innovative ways of spreading vital and correct information on Wikipedia during the pandemic.

The first collaboration was a result of an ongoing conversation around partnerships, with UNFPA (the UN Population Fund). We finalized a partnership around global campaigns and licensing of material, but both of us acknowledged the possibility and need of doing a short term effort during the pandemic. UNFPA’s technical experts collated references and key messages with the latest research around the effects of the pandemic on women, maternal health, youth, elderly and the other areas they are monitoring. We initiated an editathon and a campaign to make use of these messages, and from early to late June, the articles in which these messages were inserted had had more than 400,000 views. In tandem with this work, we also conceptualized the model through which we worked, meaning that the work can be repeated with other agencies and partners, in this or in other crises.

The other collaboration was based on mere chance. The Swedish Public Health Agency made PDFs and graphics with easily understood information around how to protect oneself and others from the pandemic; graphics that were translated into some 20 different languages. Knowing that many people turn to Wikipedia for information, we reached out to the PHA and asked whether the texts could be made available under a free license, so that we could spread them in the relevant Wikipedia articles. The agency accepted, licensed the material freely, and the community made use of them on Wikipedia. By July, the articles in which the graphics and rasters made from the PDFs had been inserted had had more than 25,000,000 views.

Through the first collaboration, we have started to develop and learn how to best work with expert agencies in order to make sure that the information on Wikipedia on essential topics in times of crises is up to date and correct. This is an area where we believe that there are much more to be done. We also learned how long-term partnerships can be used also in short term, when new events quickly unfolds and where accurate and up-to-date information is of utmost importance.

The second collaboration taught us the potentiality of initiating conversations around CC licenses with new partners at times when the benefit is very high both for the owner of the material, for our platforms, and for the users and readers in society.

Detailed project overview edit

Below all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories have been presented more in depth as case studies above.

For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).

We are also outlining where the project will have an impact in the Wikimedia universe and who we are partnering with to deliver the best possible result.

New for this year is that we also have information about the importance of each project., e.g. if the project is core, essential, one-off or experimental. In this context, a project is considered to be core if it is part of our identity as an organization. The project will be organized even if impact is less in the short term and will only be cancelled after a consensus has been reached amongst our community. A project is essential if it actively contributes to one or many of the goals that have been outlined for the year or the long term strategy. Most projects should belong here. A project that is considered a one-off is organized because it is delivering a specific benefit to the organization but it is unlikely that we will repeat it in its current form. The type of project might continue over the years, but the content will intentionally change significantly over time. The experimental projects are testing a new idea, method or technology and are often externally financed. They might be a one-off or if successful become an essential project.

Trust Making 2020 edit

What is the project: In the project we investigate the attitudes and trust for the Wikimedia projects amongst different groups in society (a specific focus will be on our own membership base). In 2020 we will establish a process on how to work with the university sector. Furthermore, we intend to coordinate with the team at the Swedish Internet Foundation who will write the next yearly report about “Svenskarna och Internet” (The Swedes and the Internet).

What’s been done: No work has been done in the project during the first half of the year.

What's next: We will present a few topics of research for students in the autumn to engage them to conduct new research in the area. We will also discuss with the producers of major reports of internet usage to include our projects in their research.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Importance: Experimental

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: Research institutions, the Swedish Internet Foundation

Link to the project: Förtroende 2020

Visibility Making 2020 edit

What is the project: This project aims to coordinate our communication work and build up the platforms that we use. Much of the actual communication efforts (social media posts, blog posts and press releases) are developed as part of the projects that they cover. This project coordinates the publication of the material and ensures that it is consistent in quality and design. In 2020 we will develop a reporting format for our communication work. We will keep our blog and social media accounts active with general communication to ensure awareness about our work. The website will be updated regularly through the work in this project.

What’s been done: Two social media campaigns have been organized which has had a massive effect on the number of followers we have on Facebook. The number increased from 2,200 followers in 2019 to around 6,400 followers in 2020 – an increase of 4,200 followers. We have collected data about followers and started to analyse the outcome of different posts.

What's next: We will continue to increase the amount of posts on social media, including a number of posts aimed to activate our followers. We intend to try to organize a fundraising campaign around Christmas to see how much funds we can gain.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Importance: Essential

Project impact: -

Partners: -

Link to the project: Synlighet 2020

Wikispeech – Speech Data Collector 2019 edit

What is the project: The main aim of Wikispeech – Speech Data Collector 2019 is to further develop the MediaWiki extension Wikispeech so that it is possible to collect speech data through crowdsourcing. This can be used in order to improve the quality of the text-to-speech software and to extend this to more languages in the future. In the longer term it might also be used to develop speech-to-text solutions. Furthermore, the application will be a resource and a service to the entire FOSS community. The project continues into 2021.

In 2020 we will continue developing the player with the aim to have a stable version ready for code and security review, for later release as Beta for Swedish, English and Arabic. Initial architecture of the tool will be done with the assistance of Wikimedia Deutschland who will also be involved with code review and technical feedback throughout the project. In 2020 we expect initial development of the Speech collector to start along with continuous improvements to the Text-to-Speech component developed in the original Wikispeech project so that it can be launched as a Beta feature in Swedish, English and Arabic. The learnings gained and processes developed to work together from developing this MediaWiki extension will be used to further other software development work within the organization.

What’s been done: During the first half of 2020 the main focus has been on the major re-architecture of the text-to-speech component, identified together with Wikimedia Deutschland, required for it to be released as Beta. While work on the Speech collector has largely taken a backseat to this work, high level architecture work and planning has also commenced on this component. Discussions with other similar projects such as LinguaLibre and Mozilla Common Voice have continued throughout the year to see how we can strengthen each other.

What's next: In the second half of 2020 we expect to release the text-to-speech component as Beta and to have a working prototype of the Speech collector. This prototype will then be used to develop the necessary training materials for later organization of speech collection events.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Large

Importance: Essential

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: Wikimedia Foundation, STTS, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Wikimedia Deutschland

Link to the project: Projekt:Wikispeech – Talresursinsamlaren 2019

Wikispeech for AI 2020 edit

What is the project: The aim of Wikispeech for AI 2020 is to act as a reference and tester for a larger project aiming to use AI to create a free text-to-speech voice suitable for reading longer texts. In 2020 we will investigate how speech data collected through the project Wikispeech – Speech Data Collector 2019 can be used to train AI to create a better voice and to test if such a voice improves the Wikispeech experience. During the year Wikimedia Sverige will support the project by sharing insights into the content created through the Speech Data Collector. Additionally we will support the project with expertise around how Wikipedia texts can be used as a test suite for such AI results.

What’s been done: Due to the still early state of the Speech Data Collector the main focus so far in 2019 has been on assisting the larger project with expertise on how to select for and access persistent versions of Wikipedia articles to create a corpus of longer non-fiction texts suitable for AI training or testing.

What's next: Continued support with Wikipedia expertise and connecting the project to the Speech Data Collector.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Importance: Experimental

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: STTS, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Swedish Agency for Accessible Media, Bonnierförlagen

Link to the project: Projekt:Wikispeech för AI 2020

Bug Reporting and Translation 2020 edit

What is the project: "The main purpose of this project is to decrease the number of errors in the software used on the Wikimedia projects by reporting bugs and correcting erroneous translations in the software. In 2020 the main focus remains on continuous bug reporting, ensuring all staff are comfortable in raising encountered bugs and assisting the community in bug reporting. We will also investigate how our technical team members can support the rest of the staff in bug reporting. We will develop a concept of translate-a-thons as part of events aimed at GLAMs or the open knowledge community, which will allow us to internationalize the software developed as part of the thematic hub.

What has been done: So far, a total of 5 bugs were reported by two staff members.

What's next: The reporting of bugs will continue and we will organize some type of activity to improve important technical messages (perhaps in the form of a translate-a-thon).

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Importance: Essential

Project impact: MediaWiki

Partners: Wikimedia community

Link to the project: Buggrapportering och översättning 2020

Knowledge in Crisis Situations 2020 edit

What is the project: In the long term, this project aims to find ways of working with international aid organizations on how to work with Wikipedia and free knowledge in crisis situations, as we know that Wikipedia is heavily used for information in those times. In this project the methods and material needed to achieve this are developed. The COVID-19 pandemic made this project very timely, and we initiated and advanced the partnership with UNFPA, the UN Population Fund, for working with them on how to use Wikipedia and the Wikimedia platforms to spread vital information in this crisis situation.

What’s been done: We finalized a formal partnership with UNFPA in late May. Experts at UNFPA provided key messages from the research they have compiled, material that was freely licensed and possible to include directly in Wikipedia. In early June, we held an edit-a-thon and started a campaign to encourage the community to work with the material. The material was included in about one hundred articles, which after almost 3 weeks had been viewed more than 400,000 times.

What’s next: We have delivered preliminary metrics from the first part of the collaboration to UNFPA, and are investigating potential ways forward, for example looking into joint funding for scaling up the project. We are also investigating broadening the scope in the long term, involving more potential partners in the work with spreading knowledge in crisis situations. As we have developed a model we believe to be repeatable, more partners could easily join in.

Size of project: Small

Project impact: Wikipedia

Importance: Experimental

Partners: UNFPA

Link to the project: Kunskap i krissituationer 2020

Community edit

  Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Community C.1.1 To make work easier, support will be given, by the office, 365 times to at least 100 Wikimedians (or others who advocate for free knowledge) through expertise, financing or other resources.[8] 158 occasions to 28 Wikimedians 93 out of 365 occasions

52 out of 100 Wikimedians

Below target: 185 occasions to 85 Wikimedians The COVID-19 situation has limited the type of support we can offer. 185 occasions is the expectation if society will open up to normal during at least 3 months in the autumn/winter.
C.1.2 To strengthen the community the chapter will support at least 75 recurring meet-ups[9] for Wikimedians 74 34 of 75
On target: 75 meetups In the first 3 months of the year a large number of meet-ups took place. They have also continued online, but the frequency has been slightly reduced. Especially the group in Gothenburg has been very active. We expect that some of them will continue to meet in the second half of the year.
C.1.3 To facilitate the use of new technical solutions on Wikipedia, a project shall be carried out around implementation, based on the Community's needs and desires. 0 0 technical wish implemented
On target: 1 technical solutions activated We expect that one technical, which we started working on in 2019, will be implemented during the year.
C.2 To increase participation from Wikimedia's underrepresented groups[10], targeted initiatives organized by the association shall result in one productive edit from 365 unique users belonging to one or more of those groups. 580 99 out of 365
Above target: 600 unique users The GLAM and educational activities are still an efficient way to engage people from underrepresented groups.

The international WikiGap events are however not included yet as we are still compiling the data. WikiGap is responsible for the majority of contributions from underrepresented users. (The numbers can be found on the Outreach and Events Dashboard). We estimate that 2/3 were women, but not all have been editing.

Supporting existing community edit

We work to support our wider community in a number of ways, which is possible thanks to staff members with a wide variety of skills and because of the infrastructure we have built up in the last few years.

We see the Wikimedia movement needing two different sets of volunteers, that to some degree overlap: 1. The online contributors that for example edits Wikipedia, that photograph for Wikimedia Commons or add data to Wikidata. 2. The volunteers that are interested in supporting free knowledge offline in different ways, such as organizing events, giving lectures, soliciting new members or forming new partnerships. We have historically focused on the first group but now we are aiming to create resources needed to grow the second group.

This year we have therefore focused on building a stronger foundation by developing communication tools, developing a strategy and by developing training material.

We still continue to create meeting spaces, cover associated costs with the volunteer work and we have provided technical support to create tools (requested solutions for long standing technical problems) for the most active volunteers.

The work to support the volunteer community with requested technical solutions have been slowed down by a number of hard deadlines from externally funded projects. We hope to deliver one of the requested solutions before the end of the year.

Due to COVID-19 these efforts have however been hampered as events have not been able to be organized by the volunteer community, e.g. the yearly Wikimedia camps we have organized had to be cancelled. Other parts have however been possible to move online, at least partly, e.g. the regular edit-a-thons hosted by some of the volunteers.

Story: Adjusting to a pandemic edit

 

In this Story we are focusing on the impact the pandemic has had on the organization and the changes we successfully implemented to handle it. These changes include teleworking, more digital activities and changes in our communication around certain activities.

With the COVID-19 pandemic changing 2020 for all of the world many plans had to be adjusted or scrapped. Wikimedia Sverige acted quickly to the problem and adjusted the work situation for the staff with mandatory work from home rather than at the office and dedicated, paid, staff time to increase their personal readiness level (e.g. with prepping). All staff could freely bring home any needed office equipment from March onwards. During the months we have moved some of the few remaining non-digital parts of our regular work online, e.g. signing of contracts. This will allow us to continue to keep all operations fully up and running if the pandemic continues for much longer, and also allow us to allow more of the staff to work outside of the office for longer periods of time.

Our adjustments were further amplified when WMF decided to prevent APG funding to be used for events. The guidance from the WMF was generic and not customised for different contexts, which had both good and bad effects. In the short term it ended unnecessary discussions about what to cancel and what to continue with, while in the mid- and long-term the one-size-fits-all approach across the world arguably has limited the work in an unnecessary way and created some confusion and frustration. This is an interesting approach to take in an international and diverse movement, known for its bottom-up approach. We note that none of our other funders or potential funders reacted in this way (for example the EU or local actors), but emphasized that they allowed organizations to take responsibility and act as they deemed fit – and rather reduced their control to allow for more diverse and localized adaptations.

Due to the pandemic, some of our initiatives had to be cancelled for parts of the year, such as community support in the form of media accreditation or support to organize physical events. As such we have underspent and underperformed in those areas.

Other areas we could adjust less dramatically. We adjusted our plans around editathons for librarians to be moved online which limited our abilities to plan physical events with the participants (a main goal of the project) but allowed us to still involve a large group of people. We readjusted our communication around Wiki Loves Earth to emphasise a local focus of taking photos of protected nature areas around you to avoid unnecessary travel. For that we also developed a prototype for a map tool to visualise it – which turned out to be popular. We also moved all our board meetings online with shorter meetings at a more frequent schedule and with more preparations and pre-readings in advance and less presentations during the meetings. This was a workable solution, but we aim to return to physical meetings in the future. However as we have now mastered these online meetings, we will likely include some of them in the scheduling also in the future.

The main adjustment for us was to move our Annual General Meeting (AGM) online for the first time. As this is the most important event during the year where major decisions are taken, the AGM had to work flawlessly and at all costs avoid a situation where a member was unable to participate. As such the office formed a team of four staff members who worked together during the month before the meeting with testing and planning different solutions. We also engaged an external facilitator who has, literally, written the book about digital AGMs. The AGM was very well attended and positively received by the participants based on the feedback gathered.

We shared our experience with the global Wikimedia community and with the Swedish civil society, as we expected that other organizations would struggle with the same issues we had. We hope that our documentation of the process could increase their success rate and save them some time and money.

Expanding the community edit

To grow the community on Wikimedia platforms we are organizing a number of activities aimed at creating interest amongst groups of people who have yet to engage on our platforms, or around free knowledge in general.

We work to raise awareness of Wikimedia projects in order for new participants to engage. When new participants start to contribute we make sure to lower barriers and create an inclusive environment and to provide direct support of different forms.

Our cooperation with different organizations has been a cornerstone in achieving success in community growth. By involving the communities of our partners in our projects, some of their community members have joined the Wikimedia community in some capacity.

Both the WikiGap initiative and the Wiki Loves Earth contests have continued to be strong vehicles for engagement from new volunteers and we will continue to develop these concepts further in the second half of the year and organize Wiki Loves Monuments again.

Story: Experimenting with global partnerships to combat gender imbalance edit

 
WikiGap participants in Yerevan, Armenia.

In this Story we are focusing on how we have used the massively succesful WikiGap campaign to engage with strong international actors, such as UN agencies and large civil society organizations. Wikigap is what opens the door, but we have intentionally worked to expand any new partnership to also include other aspects, such as them sharing content, supporting our communication efforts or work on join applications for project grants.

For three years in a row, we have been running the WikiGap Campaign together with the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So far, more than 35,000 articles about women have been created or edited as part of the campaign, combining the efforts of more than 3,000 editors in more than 35 different languages.

The core of the campaign are all the events organized across the world on or in connection to International Women’s Day in March; events co-organized by Swedish embassies together with local Wikimedia affiliates and civil society partnerships. So far, however, these partnerships have been dependent on local initiatives and connections. While this is of course positive, we are working this year to add a layer of global partnerships on top of that. We have finalized a partnership with UNFPA, the United Nations Population Fund; we involved UN Human Rights in the WikiGap Challenge, an online competition organized in conjunction with the campaign; and we have started the conversation with other UN Agencies, civil society with global reach and other organizations that want to join the campaign as well.

This has the potential of solving a problem which has been increasing in magnitude as the campaign has grown, namely the fact that Swedish embassies only exist in a limited number of countries. By involving other institutions, organizations and partners with global reach, we can both scale up the partnerships, and enable affiliates in more countries to join in on the campaign.

A further potential of this kind of partnerships is further variations in the theme. The WikiGap Challenge this year, due to the partnership with UN Human Rights, had a focus on women active in human rights; UN Human Rights 20 proposed women that there should be articles about, and after the Challenge, 338 articles were created about these women, in a total of 38 languages. This is a fairly straightforward way for new partners to engage in our work and, we hope, an entry point to a deeper understanding and involvement with the Wikimedia movement.

By adding other UN Agencies, civil society organizations and partners, we can work more strategically to fill the gaps we know exist, and at the same time enable the campaign to grow. We are using the large interest to join the campaign to also initiate work together in other areas. For example we got in contact with UNFPA because of WikiGap but ended up working with them around COVID-19 due to the major implications the pandemic has on the world.

We are now also discussing with a number of civil society organizations to join us in organizing the events and engage their members both online and offline. Examples include the Swedish Federation for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer and Intersex Rights (RFSL) and World Pulse, a women-led, global social network for social change.

Story: Exploring ways to activate people in a physical activity without meeting each other edit

 
To help Wiki Loves Earth contributors find protected natural areas around them, we build a map tool that displays data from the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency.

In this Story we are focusing on how we had to find ways to encourage people to participate in our activities during the pandemic and how we succeeded by changing how we communicated and by building tools that enhanced our messages.

The COVID-19 pandemic forced us to rethink many of our planned activities. One example of that was the Wiki Loves Earth campaign. While Sweden never enacted forced lockdown measures, long-distance movement was discouraged and larger gatherings and events forbidden. At the same time, it was our conviction that Wiki Loves Earth could provide meaning in a difficult time, a conviction that seemingly was shared by participants.

In order to make it possible for us to run the campaign, while adhering to recommendations and regulations, we chose to focus our communication on visiting local nature: exploring one’s vicinity through the Wiki Loves Earth campaign.

The main obstacle to this focus was the current difficulty of finding natural heritage sites in one’s vicinity with our existing tools, so we explored possibilities on how to make it easier.

We soon realized that the Swedish Environmental Protection Agency held data that we could upload on Wikidata, with the right license. We reached out to EPA, and they agreed to relicense several datasets. They also had sets with shapefiles, which we uploaded to Wikidata and Wikimedia Commons. The amount of shapefiles on Wikimedia Commons doubled through the upload, which seems to be the first mass upload of shapefiles to Wikimedia Commons. This is a continuation of the many experimental batch uploads of new types of files to Wikimedia Commons which we focused on during the FindingGLAMs project. We hope that this will prove valuable for other affiliates and that we will be able to support them if they aim to add shapefiles for their local contests.

With the data on Wikidata and the shapefiles on Wikimedia Commons, we could develop a map tool, that shows all natural sites in one’s vicinity, and whether they have already a photo on Wikidata (and thereby Wikipedia) or not. The tool had two benefits: it visualize the value of such a batch upload and it help newcomers see where they could contribute with new images.

The map tool, and the slightly changed focus of the campaign, seems to have been a success. The turnout this year was more than 1,000 photos higher than last year, and the number of participants – both experienced and newcomers – rose sharply as well. We managed to lower the barriers, which was one important aim, and at the same time, we managed to encourage people to explore the local vicinity.

For us, it was more important to implement the tool than to make it perfect. It seems like that sufficed, as the goal of lowering barriers was fulfilled. The coding behind it is all available on Github, and we would happily help answering questions from other chapters and affiliates, interested in doing something similar.

Fail fest: Keeping up the involvement: Wikimania experiences edit

 
Wikimania would not have been possible without its volunteers. Even though they enjoyed the experience, we did not succeed with keeping most of them involved after the conference.

In this Fail fest we are focusing on how we have struggled to find a way to effectively engage volunteers in our work at scale. This became obvious after Wikimania when we had a large number of interested and engaged volunteers with valuable skill sets, and still we lacked the strategies, tools and plans to keep them engage over time.

One important goal with organizing Wikimania was to attract, involve and keep a large pool of volunteers. While we succeeded with the first two parts – attracting and involving – keeping them has proven harder. The volunteers from Wikimania got an intensive crash course in the work of the Wikimedia movement; they were very content with volunteering for Wikimania in the evaluations afterwards; and we tried working hard to keep them in the movement. In spite of all this, it has proven hard, and there is no general increase in involvement, based on this pool of volunteers.

We have identified a few core reasons for why this is the case. The first reason is an unclarity in what it actually means to be a volunteer for Wikimedia Sverige. Throughout the years, the staff gained competence, efficiency and experience of working with free knowledge related projects, but one downside of this might be higher barriers for volunteers to engage. Other than engaging directly on the online projects, we have also failed to clarify what it means to be a Wikimedia Sverige volunteer, especially for volunteers who wish to engage on a deeper level. Wikimania was an exception, as it is a very concrete project with clear goals.

The second reason connects to this, as roles and responsibilities have been unclear. That means that it is hard to know what the responsibility is for a volunteer, and thus also how to deepen the involvement. We aim to clarify roles and responsibilities this fall, and visualize a roadmap describing clearly for volunteers that wish to involve more deeply how that can be achieved .

Finally, many of the volunteers from Wikimania were English-speaking international students, on exchange or studies abroad in Sweden. Wikimania was an essentially English-speaking environment, whereas Wikimedia Sverige’s members are generally Swedish speaking, and in some cases not confident in English. That meant that it was hard for many of the volunteers to engage in the chapter, and as a consequence, very few of them are still today active volunteers.

To improve the situation in the future we are actively working to develop a solid volunteer strategy coupled with a new educational strategy. The efforts will be increased to involve volunteers in e.g. our fundraising efforts, in our policy efforts, in and around our technical efforts and in different reference groups.

Detailed project overview edit

Below all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories have been presented more in depth as case studies above.

For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).

We are also outlining where the project will have an impact in the Wikimedia universe and who we are partnering with to deliver the best possible result.

New for this year is that we also have information about the importance of each project., e.g. if the project is core, essential, one-off or experimental. In this context, a project is considered to be core if it is part of our identity as an organization. The project will be organized even if impact is less in the short term and will only be cancelled after a consensus has been reached amongst our community. A project is essential if it actively contributes to one or many of the goals that have been outlined for the year or the long term strategy. Most projects should belong here. A project that is considered a one-off is organized because it is delivering a specific benefit to the organization but it is unlikely that we will repeat it in its current form. The type of project might continue over the years, but the content will intentionally change significantly over time. The experimental projects are testing a new idea, method or technology and are often externally financed. They might be a one-off or if successful become an essential project.

Community Support 2020 edit

What is the project: The project focuses on supporting the Wikimedia volunteer community in various ways. The chapter provides a technology pool, in which members and users on the platform can borrow cameras, scanners and other technical equipment; financial support is also provided to organize events (during the COVID-19 pandemic only virtually), acquire literature, obtain media accreditation to take photos, and so on.

What’s been done: Large parts of the project had to be reorganized due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Most events were cancelled, meaning that we could not support media accreditation. We could not fund any offline initiatives and instead we tried to focus on what could be done digitally, encouraging activities compatible with the COVID-19 recommendations and regulations. This was done through communication efforts on the Wikimedia projects and in social media and blog posts. Still, we will most likely be far away from fulfilling the goals of this project, due to the current limitations.

What’s next: This fall, we will make a more strategic overview over the project. We will look into how we can scale it up, how we can increase the usage of tools and support and what we can do to give support in situations such as the COVID-19 pandemic. The project has been highly practical in its nature, but we believe that there is potential for more strategic efforts as well.

Size of project: Medium

Project impact: Wikimedia Commons, Wikipedia, Wikisource

Importance: Core

Partners: -

Link to the project: Stöd till gemenskapen 2020

Development Support 2020 edit

What is the project: The project focuses on giving technical (development) support to the Swedish-speaking volunteer community by solving technical problems that they have asked us to work on. 2020 is the third year we are working on the community wishlist. This year we will focus on finalizing and expanding the development work we have initiated, developing a structure and routine for how we can ensure the maintenance of what is developed. The maintenance routine will also inform the development work in other parts of the organization. Towards the end of the year a new wishlist might be organized depending on the needs and resources.

What’s been done: Other than gathering bugs and feature requests no work has been done in this project during the first half of 2020.

What's next: The focus for the second half of 2020 is to complete the work on one of the requests from the 2019 wishlist: activating interactive maps in infoboxes. We are developing a set of guidelines for how and for how long we should maintain the tools and applications we have developed, which will apply to both the work we do as part of the community wishlist and other tools.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia, MediaWiki

Importance: Essential

Partners: Wikimedia community

Link to the project: Utvecklingsstöd 2020

Wiki Loves 2020 edit

What is the project: The Wiki Loves project consists of the different Wiki Loves-campaigns we are running. In 2020, we are participating in two Wiki Loves-campaigns: Wiki Loves Earth and Wiki Loves Monuments, the former focusing on documenting natural heritage, the latter on cultural heritage. The organization of the projects includes coordination, communication and responding to questions.

What’s been done: We ran the Wiki Loves Earth campaign in May. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to rethink our communication and several parts of the setup, in order to make it safe and compatible with recommendations and regulations. In our communication, we encouraged visits to the closest natural heritage sites, sites in one’s direct vicinity. In order to make it easier to identify the closest sites, we uploaded more data about protected natural sites in Sweden. We also developed a new map tool, showing all national parks, natural reserves, biosphere reserves and natural monuments; and whether these sites already had a photo, or not. The tool got used more than we expected, and contributed to the fact that we this year had three times as many photos than last year.

What’s next: In September, we will run Wiki Loves Monuments 2020. This is the second large Wiki Loves campaign we are running this year. For this year, we will mainly focus on finding ways of integrating and working with volunteers to a higher extent than before, as we believe that it is the kind of project suitable for volunteers to run. It will thus be well aligned with our focus this fall on volunteer management and developing a volunteer strategy, as described in the project Association Involvement 2020.

What’s next: In September, we will run Wiki Loves Monuments 2020. This is the second large Wiki Loves campaign we are running this year. For this year, we will mainly focus on finding ways of integrating and working with volunteers to a higher extent than before, as we believe that it is the kind of project suitable for volunteers to run. It will thus be well aligned with our focus this fall on volunteer management and developing a volunteer strategy, as described in the project Association Involvement 2020.

Size of project: Small

Project impact: Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata

Importance: Experimental

Partners: Unesco Sverige, ArbetSam

Link to the project: Wiki Loves 2020

A Community for Everybody 2020 edit

What is the project: The project aims to increase diversity within the community and on the Wikimedia platforms, in terms of both content and contributors. The main part of the project in 2020 is the annual WikiGap campaign, that we are running together with the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swedish embassies and Wikimedia affiliates across the world. This year we aim to engage more international partners in the coordination, e.g. aid organizations and UN agencies. We will support a number of local WikiGap events with partners at universities.

What’s been done: We initiated the WikiGap campaign in March, and held an event in Gothenburg together with the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We coordinated the global campaign, with events being planned in some 40–50 countries across the world, events that in many cases however were affected by the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

For the second time we organized the WikiGap Challenge, an online challenge with a global scope, aiming to increase the number of articles about women on Wikipedia. 72 competitors created or improved 3,224 articles, more than 2,500 Wikidata objects and made edits in 38 languages. This year, we gave bonus points for articles on women human rights activists from a list provided by UN Human Rights. 338 articles were created about the 20 women on the list, in 32 different languages.

What’s next: Together with the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we are compiling a set of case studies, with the aim of gathering best practices and developing material that can be used by embassies and affiliates for upcoming campaigns, to innovate and carry out even more efficient and successful campaigns.

We have also initiated discussions with UNFPA – with whom we finalized a partnership in late May – and several other organizations on future involvement in the WikiGap Campaign.

Size of project: Medium

Project impact: Wikipedia, Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons

Importance: Core

Partners: Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Swedish embassies, Wikimedia affiliates across the world, UN Human Rights, United Nations Population Fund, Gothenburg University

Link to the project: En gemenskap för alla 2020

Enabling edit

  Target Last year (if applicable) Progress (at end of Q2) Projected (end of year) Comments
Enabling E.1 For the association to work competently the office staff shall be given the opportunity to develop their skills in relevant fields and the members of the board shall strive to develop their competences. 1/9 board members and 5/9 staff members 0 out of 9 board members

1 out of 9 staff members

Below target: 3 board members

Below target: 6 staff members

A few staff members and board members are expected to take part in trainings. However, in the first half of the year this was postponed as the relevant trainings were cancelled.
E.2 To strengthen the transparency of the organisation and to offer insights to the international Wikimedia movement the members of the board or office staff shall participate in at least 5 international Wikimedia events and on a monthly basis update international newsletters[11] and key wikiportals etc. 5 int. events and 6 newsletters 1 int. events out of 5

6 newsletters out of 12

Above target: 2 int. events

On target: 12 newsletters

Nearly all Wikimedia events have been cancelled for the year. We do not expect to reach the goal. We have on a monthly basis published our GLAM reports in This Month in GLAM.
E.3.1 To ensure organizational stability the chapter shall work towards broad and sustainable funding where no donor exceeds 50 %, a 100 % increase in membership from the 31 December previous year, increase volunteer involvement by 30 % compared to the total amount for the previous calendar year. The Culture Foundation of the Swedish Postcode Lottery is the largest donor at 42% in Q1+Q2. WMF is the second largest donor at 30.8% in Q1+Q2. 428 out of 904 members. 26 out of 60 volunteers. WMF is the largest donor at 45% in Q1+Q2.

605 out of 1,008 members.

43 out of 125 volunteers

Below target: 60% of funding from largest donor

Above target: 1,200 members Below target: 75 volunteers

WMF is the largest donor at 45% in Q1+Q2. We do however expect that WMF’s part will increase due to a new grant starting in July 2020. The distribution of funding does not take in-kind donations into account.

Most of the volunteer involvement occurred through our WikiGap activities and with work around the Open Educational Resources network we have been working with. However, the international WikiGap events organized by volunteers are not included here as we are lacking data. We expect that we will have fewer volunteers this year than in 2019 when we had Wikimania and because of COVID-19 preventing us from engaging volunteers with organizing our events.

E.3.2 To ensure organizational stability the chapter shall actively work to increase the amount of overlapping competencies in business-critical areas. Fulfilled the goal. Fulfilled the goal.
Goal fulfilled. Efforts include improved documentation around finances, usage of our wiki and information about our new tools. We have continued our efforts to organize small working groups at the office instead of delegating the responsibilities to one person and on documenting the work on Phabricator.

The chapter aims to be a relevant actor for years to come and is actively working towards building the organizational capacity needed for long term activities and commitments. We need to be a good employer, a strong partner, and a well functioning democratic and transparent membership organization with a close cooperation with a strong volunteer community. The chapter is also intending to not be an isolated player but be actively involved in the international movement.

These intentions demand projects that are more long term oriented and strategic. The projects in this program therefore contribute only marginally to content production in a given year, but over time will ensure the success and sustainability of all our activities.

Increasing competence edit

To be able to develop skills in relevant fields board and staff members shall be given the opportunity to develop their skills. More than half of the staff members have participated in different types of trainings this year, a few at multiple ones. The work with developing educational material for new volunteers and members to easier use our tools and join our projects has continued.

As Wikimedia Sverige intends to grow in the coming years we see a great need to ensure that we ongoingly identify and take notice of suitable board members, potential new staff members, and volunteers who have capacity to take leadership roles in different initiatives. We are in the process of developing a more comprehensive set of training materials for both volunteers and staff. We are also planning for more internal capacity building with staff members sharing their expertise with their colleagues.

Being transparent edit

Ensuring that our work is transparent is core to how we plan our projects and day-to-day work. Transparency is inherently valuable as more people can give feedback, point out problems, suggest solutions and in other ways contribute.

However, working in such a transparent manner is something that takes a bit of getting used to for new team members, new volunteers, consultants and external partners. It also comes with an increased cost to ensure that all documentation is understandable, summarized and presented in the different places where our members might expect to find it. Simply making materials available without ensuring that it is understandable is arguably a false transparency.

While acknowledging the issues, our conclusion is that the value of transparency is much higher and we are working to increase our transparency even further. The aim for transparency affects many of the choices regarding what tools we use and it is also something that has to be done while respecting privacy.

To further improve our work in this area quarterly reviews by the ED and COO have been instigated in 2020. During these reviews we ensure that all content have been uploaded and shared as planed and that the financial information etc. is up to date.

Improve organizational quality edit

For the chapter to continue to improve its quality and efficiency we worked to keep our broad and sustainable funding, with the aim of no donor exceeding 50%, and to find new financial options, including a long term increase in paid memberships and donations. We also aim to increase volunteer involvement which can help ensure high quality projects for a limited cost.

Our work to secure funding from external grants have continued in 2020 and we have secured a large grant with multi-year funding from Wikimedia Foundation and are working on applications for several large grants. We currently have funding secured for our current size into the second half of 2021.

Significant investments will be made this year into establishing a donor based fundraising model through face2face campaigns. The first initial tests are expected to start in September 2020. If successful the efforts will scale significantly in 2021 with the hope that it will be providing a significant part of our yearly budget from then on.

Our volunteer community has been supportive and active in 2020. In addition to our volunteer run board of trustees we have had 43 volunteers helping us with our projects in different ways (not including the volunteers involved in the WikiGap events outside of Sweden). We do not, however, expect the number of volunteers to be as high as in 2019 as that number was inflated due to the Wikimania 2019 conference. Also, COVID-19 has limited the type of activities we could have organized this year.

Story: Passing the threshold edit

In this Story we are focusing on the expansion of our team while still keeping the quintessence of what we are and how we operate as a chapter and a team. We are developing our governance documents in a different way than most organizations, we have formed our teams differently, we have allowed a lot of independence for staff members, we have focused on finding the best possible staff regardless of where they live and we have started to engage external expertise when needed.

Previously Wikimedia Sverige’s team has been limited to a maximum of 9 staff members. The reason is that after 10 employees an organization in Sweden has to adhere to a number of harder rules as an employer, with more policies, rules and procedures that need to be formalized. Now, however, we have reached a level of maturity that has allowed us to grow beyond this previously set limit. Currently we are 12 staff members and plan to further increase in the near future.

To prepare and uphold this higher level of organizational maturity, while still staying nimble and innovative, is a challenge. A lot of thinking and planning has gone into preparing for this change. A few important choices were made to keep the core of the organizational culture through these changes:

  1. Whenever new policies are adopted the entire staff are invited for a 1-2 hour long session to scrutinize the near-ready text and crowdsource it to improve the policy. The thinking is that the entire staff is supposed to follow the policies and therefore must fully understand, support and be willing to defend the policies. This is crucial if the organization is to continue scaling further with new staff members joining and possibly criticising the often different and unique ways we do things. The policies are intentionally kept short and the non-core parts have been moved to supporting guidelines. This makes the organization less rigid and the policies easier to understand and remember. This insight is something that the board has repeatedly pushed for.
  2. Within the organization different teams have been formed around different activities. These teams have on purpose been broken up over time and re-formed in new constellations for other activities. This ensures that different team members contribute with their expertise in different activities, the team members continuously learn from each other, no ‘cliques’ form and experimentation is continuously maintained. When scaling further the intention is to form teams of triads, that will shift in composition over time.
  3. As soon as the main goals have been reached in an area, staff members are encouraged to form new partnerships, expand projects and look for external opportunities. This keeps the staff interested in their work as they can co-create and own an area. The work does not get repetitive if the staff member does not choose so (which is a possibility as a good project does not necessarily have to change massively every year). This creates a lot of extra work for management to change and adjust budgets and yearly plans but the benefits outweigh the costs.
  4. As an Internet-born organization we have worked to create opportunities for staff to work remotely for a few years. We have been very successful in this regard and many of our current staff and contractors are working from multiple different locations in Sweden and internationally. This was further accentuated this year due to both COVID-19 and our intention to support the wider movement around content partnerships and the growth in staff needed for it. Work has also been initiated to translate the material and policies needed for this to happen.
  5. We have initiated work to engage HR consultants to support the leadership with expertise if the increase in staff continues further and stricter regulations apply to our workplace.

Story: Experimenting with new ways to fundraise locally edit

 
Jenny Brandt

In this Story we are focusing on how we in 2020 have prepared and are about to initiate a local fundraising campaign. The funds gained would allow us to think more long-term about some of our initiatives and further support the international movement.

Sweden is a wealthy country and Wikimedia Sverige has worked for the last 10 years to self-fund a large part of our activities. Nearly all of the funds collected has been through project grants. This has been successful over the years and has allowed us to increase our staff size to 12 staff members of which around half are funded by local means. However, project grants are, by the very definition, limited in time and with a set focus. This means that to maintain tools or initiatives over time we have had to look into different alternatives for funding. We have tried to identify funders that would be willing to cover our general operating expenses but have so far fallen short. In 2019 we also received funding from WMF to prepare our organization for a larger global role around content partnerships. However, the implementation of the next steps in this role are postponed until 2021 due to COVID-19 and we have instead received support to, amongst other things, develop our local fundraising capacities.

Since May we have met and discussed with WMF’s advancement team about their experience with fundraising, who to target, what messaging to use as well as what tools and other resources are available and possible to use for us. This has been valuable for us to quickly move forward with our plans.

Earlier this year a new staff member, Jenny Brandt, was hired who has multi-year expertise in leading Face2Face (F2F) fundraising (also known as street fundraising) for a number of Swedish NGOs. A team of 4-5 part time employees will be hired to work with the F2F campaign in September-December 2020. During this time we will experiment with trying out different messages, work on different locations toward different target groups and so forth. The goal is to identify the most effective fundraising strategies in order to scale up the work in 2021.

As F2F campaigns have, to the best of our knowledge, not been used at scale by any Wikimedia affiliate to date we are curious if this approach can bring in much needed funds to the movement and allow affiliates across the world to be more bold and ambitious in their plans.

If successful we will share the material and methodologies with other affiliates. We will also develop a toolbox for volunteers, rather than paid staff, to organize their own F2F campaigns, perhaps at an exhibition hall, their workplaces or on the street.

We also hope to see how F2F can affect and be affected by WMF’s banner campaign, e.g. will more people be interested to give to WMF if they have talked with our staff before or will they donate more to us locally if they have seen the banners before meeting us.

Detailed project overview edit

Below all the projects belonging to the program will be briefly explained and the current status presented. Synergies between the projects will be described. A few selected stories have been presented more in depth as case studies above.

For all the projects, we will state whether they are small, medium or large. In this context, a small project is defined as one where the total budget is less than 100,000 SEK (about 12,500 USD); a medium sized project is defined as one where the total budget is between 100,000 SEK and 300,000 SEK (12,500 to about 37,500 USD); finally, a large project is defined as one where the total budget exceeds 300,000 SEK (about 37,500 USD).

We are also outlining where the project will have an impact in the Wikimedia universe and who we are partnering with to deliver the best possible result.

New for this year is that we also have information about the importance of each project., e.g. if the project is core, essential, one-off or experimental. In this context, a project is considered to be core if it is part of our identity as an organization. The project will be organized even if impact is less in the short term and will only be cancelled after a consensus has been reached amongst our community. A project is essential if it actively contributes to one or many of the goals that have been outlined for the year or the long term strategy. Most projects should belong here. A project that is considered a one-off is organized because it is delivering a specific benefit to the organization but it is unlikely that we will repeat it in its current form. The type of project might continue over the years, but the content will intentionally change significantly over time. The experimental projects are testing a new idea, method or technology and are often externally financed. They might be a one-off or if successful become an essential project.

Organizational Development 2020 edit

What is the project: This project aims to improve the functioning of the organization and the efficiency of its work through targeted activities against identified bottlenecks. Most of this work will in 2020 instead be done as part of the project Tools for partnerships 2019 – Blueprinting. In 2020 we will improve, clarify and update our documentation and policies and start preparations on a few new policies identified as currently missing. We will also continue to simplify our IT environment to make it more maintainable.

What’s been done: As planned most of the work to improve the organization’s operations has been done as part of the project Tools for Partnerships 2019 – Blueprinting. The main focus has been on ensuring that staff have the opportunity to continuously develop themselves at work, both with external training, but also in-house training about different aspects of our work.

What's next: The focus will be to improve our policies, and to develop a new strategy for the coming years. The work will also include continued planning for crises and the development of a crisis exercise.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Importance: Core

Project impact: Phabricator, Meta

Partners:

Link to the project: Organisationsutveckling 2020

Tools for Partnerships 2019 – Blueprinting edit

What is the project: This project is aimed at exploring how Wikimedia Sverige can become a Thematic hub and prepare the organization to scale accordingly. The expectation is that the project will continue with the project Thematic Hub 2020. In 2020 we will prepare for a quick increase of our staff and to participate in a number of events across the world to discuss what a hub is and what it could be. We will also develop a technical direction and a plan for how the organization will look like with a more international focus and with a larger team.

What’s been done: We developed supporting material for an expanded team with more well documented routines, a handbook, new policies for a larger team with more people working outside of the office etc. We also hired an organizational strategist, David Haskiya, to support this organizational change. We investigated how to structure the hiring process for developers to be able to improve the speed of new hires. We planned to engage an HR consultant to be able to scale the team in a good and timely way – but in the end we did not engage them as the timeline was delayed for a year due to COVID-19. We have provided inputs to the European Commission around different future calls for digitization projects and have continued the work with datasets of the world’s GLAM institutions (after the FindingGLAMs 2018 project officially ended).

Significant efforts went into developing a clear technical direction for the team, but when the second step of the project, which was expected to receive significantly more in funding, was delayed for a year due to COVID-19, we had to develop a number of different versions of an agreement with our partners at the Wikimedia Foundation. This agreement focuses on the period July 2020 to June 2021 and funds the new project Tools for Partnerships 2020.

What's next: We will produce a white paper outlining the next steps of the hub, covering sustainability, governance, engagement of stakeholders, research findings, the technical direction and more.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Large

Importance: Experimental

Project impact: Wikipedia

Partners: Wikimedia Foundation (planning), Wikimedia Deutschland (technology), Wikimedia affiliates (feedback and activities)

Link to the project: Verktyg_för_partnerskap_2019_–_Blueprinting

Exchange of Experiences 2020 edit

What is the project: This project focuses on ensuring that we share our experiences and learn from other affiliates through available events and platforms. To that end we will take part in international Wikimedia events to build capacity and stay committed to supporting the emerging Wikimedia Northern Europe collaboration. As part of this project we will also investigate what an exchange program between Wikimedia affiliates could look like. The work to improve documentation and supporting material for Wikimania will be done as part of this project.

What’s been done: We participated in workshop meetings around the strategic recommendations for the Wikimedia movement. We shared our experience with organizing Wikimania with the ESEAP team until it was decided that the conference would be postponed until 2021.

What's next: We will continue supporting the ESEAP team by sharing our experience from hosting Wikimania. The work to establish an exchange program between European affiliates will continue. The WikiNEM event will receive our support if WMNO decides to organize it in 2020 as previously planned.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Importance: Core

Project impact: Meta

Partners: Wikimedia affiliates

Link to the project: Erfarenhetsutbyte 2020

Association Involvement 2020 edit

What is the project: The project aims to increase the number of members and volunteers, and identify what support is needed from the association to make volunteer engagement sustainable. In 2020, the adoption of a new volunteer strategy for engagement is a large part of the project. The strategy will guide the work to significantly scale up engagement. Increased efforts around communications, such as our newsletter will take place. The project also includes the organization of the Wikipedia Day, the Annual General Meeting (AGM) and the Membership Meetings.

What’s been done: The AGM was carried through in April; due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it was held for the first time held digitally. To prepare both the association and the members for a digital annual meeting, we developed video instructions, written instructions, wrote procedural rules and other supporting material to make sure that the event went smoothly. Almost 40 people took part in the meeting, including quite a few who had never participated before, which was exciting. We carried out an ambitious evaluation of the AGM, as it was the first time it was held digitally, and identified what can be done better next time. We translated the supporting material into English to allow for easy reuse of our sister organizations and other NGOs across the world.

We have also held several workshops to prepare for a new strategy for engagement, including an educational strategy, as a way of strengthening the association and scaling up possibilities for engagement.

What’s next: We were able to successfully carry out the AGM, but we had to postpone the annual Wikipedia Day which we usually organize in connection to the AGM. The Wikipedia Day was to take place at the National Library, but we had to postpone it until a date that is yet to be decided, when the realities of the pandemic are better known. It is still in the pipeline, and we hope to be able to carry out a Wikipedia Day before the end of the year, as it is highly appreciated by our members.

We are also continuing the work with both a volunteer and an educational strategy. The two strategies are being developed in parallel so that they can support each other. We are initiating the work with the overall strategy for the association, which will be developed by four working groups in the fall.

Size of project: Medium

Project impact: -

Importance: Core

Partners: National Library of Sweden

Link to the project: Föreningsengagemang 2020

FOSS for the Association 2020 edit

What is the project: Here we investigate how we can support the development of the FOSS tools that we use as an organization. Through the project we will engage consultants to solve the specific issues so that we can improve the FOSS alternatives. In 2020, having launched our WordPress website, we will continue to support the development of the freely licensed theme and of missing plugins. In 2020 we are launching a platform for donations which might be a FOSS solution, in which case we will investigate how it can be improved.

What’s been done: A preliminary list of missing features and plugins has been identified for our website.

What's next: We will identify and reach out to developers with the aim of building the identified features in 2021.

Size of project (small/medium/large): Small

Importance: Experimental

Project impact: -

Partners: -

Link to the project: FOSS för föreningen 2020

Notes edit

  1. Definition: The number of participants and/or organizers of activities conducted or supported by Wikimedia Sverige who belong to underrepresented genders in the Wikimedia movement in Sweden (non-unique as we are not tracking them with names). These groups are defined as women and people identifying themselves as something other than male or female.
  2. Definition: The total number of people who have heard us talk about Wikimedia related topics through participation at events or activities, either in person or virtually (non-unique as we are not tracking them with names). Does not include reach through Social media.
  3. The Wikimedia projects mean those platforms within the Wikimedia Family that are usually called sister projects of Wikipedia:
    • Wikipedia The free encyclopedia
    • Wikimedia Commons The free media database
    • Wiktionary The free dictionary
    • Wikisource The free library
    • Wikibooks Free textbook collections
    • Wikiquote The free quote compendium
    • Wikivoyage The free travel guide
    • Wikispecies The free species directory
    • Wikiversity Free learning resources
    • Wikidata The free database
    • Meta-Wiki About the projects
    • We also include translatewiki.net.
  4. Identification can be via user names systematically connected with the institution, special user templates showing the connection to an institution, registration in a Wikiproject, or possibly through personal knowledge etc.
  5. This includes the Wikimedia projects, translatewiki.net and Wikimini, according to the principle that we train a pedagogue who uses the creation of content as a part of the pedagogical process.
  6. An organisational unit with self-governing power is included here; however, units that have been included in previous years are not.
  7. Software which is considered is MediaWiki extensions in use on the Wikimedia project or on translatewiki.net. This is in accordance with the priority order: bugs, erroneous translations, untranslated.
  8. We are counting occasions and Wikimedians as follows:
    • Only activities outside of other project related goals count. I.e. a Bot Academy focusing on cultural heritage and as part of Connected Open Heritage does not count, but an event focused on running bots but not related to a specific project count.
    • Wikimedians and advocates for free knowledge who got support count, regardless of if they used the information or not. The important part is that they asked for help/resources. I.e. people contributing to FOSS-projects count.
    • We count occasions as when someone got help from a WMSE staff member. I.e. if Volunteer 1 works for two weeks they have not gotten support, but if they send an email with some follow up questions after a week then that requires a contribution which corresponds to one occasion.
    Questions related to memberships, donations or administrative matters does not count towards the goals.
  9. With recurring meetups we are referring to some type of face-to-face meetings that are repeated over time.
  10. Underrepresented groups are here defined as:
    • women
    • contributors whose native language are different than the 10 largest Wikipedias (per 5+ editsp/month (3m avg) according to https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/Sitemap.htm) or Swedish
    • contributors 60 years or older
  11. GLAM Newsletter.

Revenues received during this six-month period edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 2 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

  • Please also include any in-kind contributions or resources that you have received in this revenues table. This might include donated office space, services, prizes, food, etc. If you are to provide a monetary equivalent (e.g. $500 for food from Organization X for service Y), please include it in this table. Otherwise, please highlight the contribution, as well as the name of the partner, in the notes section.
Revenue source Currency Anticipated Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Anticipated ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Explanation of variances from plan
Membership fees SEK 100,000 - 46,800 N/A N/A 46,800 11,700 5,476 We are planning for an expansion of our fundraising work at the end of the year, which we hope will increase the sum significantly from the previously anticipated.
Membership fees - organisations SEK 15,000 - 7,000 N/A N/A 7,000 1,755 819
Donations SEK 185,000 - 89,378 N/A N/A 89,378 21,645 10,457 We are planning for an expansion of our fundraising work at the end of the year, which we hope will increase the sum significantly from the previously anticipated.
Donations - organisations SEK 15,000 - 1,035 N/A N/A 1,035 1,755 121 We have not targeted organisations directly for donations, as a result we don't expect to reach the budgeted goal for the year.
FDC SEK 2,950,000 - 1,720,833 N/A N/A 1,720,833 345,150 201,337
Interest, misc SEK 15,000 - 256 N/A N/A 256 1,755 30
Other grants SEK 298,920 - 0 N/A N/A 0 34,974 0 This funding is normally made up by on-demand GLAM work which happens towards the end of the year. We are expecting the revenue from this source to decrease due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
National Library of Sweden SEK 931,000 - 794,859 N/A N/A 794,859 108,927 92,999 Having used less of this funding in 2019, more has been available for 2020. We however expect some of the originally expected funding for two new projects to no longer come through in 2020 due to delays on the funding body's side because of Covid-19.
Kulturbryggan SEK 200,000 - 500,000 N/A N/A 500,000 23,400 58,500 Having used less of this funding in 2019, more has been available for 2020.
Vinnova SEK 235,120 - 93,209 N/A N/A 93,209 27,509 10,905 We are working on a number of applications for Vinnova, which have had their deadlines extended due to Covid-19. We expect to know if funding will be awarded in late Q3.
Sida SEK 143,750 - 75,000 N/A N/A 75,000 16,819 8,775 More of the funding was used in 2019. There is no more funding expected for the year.
The Culture Foundation of the Swedish Postcode Lottery SEK 500,000 - 780,595 N/A N/A 780,595 58,500 91,330 Having used less of this funding in 2019, more has been available for 2020.
Wikimedia Foundation (special grant for Tooling for Partnerships 2019-2020) SEK 1,374,840 - 1,442,231 N/A N/A 1,442,231 160,856 168,741 Increased due to exchange rate fluctuations.
Wikimedia Foundation (special grant for Tooling for Partnerships 2020-2021) SEK 2,315,580 - 0 N/A N/A 0 270,923 0 This project starts in Q3, note that the amount has been revised down to 1,439,702 SEK due to the WMF budget freeze.
Wikimedia Foundation (special grant for UNESCO WiR 2019-2020) SEK 188,206 - 376,412 N/A N/A 376,412 22,020 44,040 The grant was not paid out in 2019 due to the grantee working on other projects and discussing changes in the project with the WMF, as a result the full amount is available for 2020.
Swedish Post and Telecom Authority SEK 1,622,624 - 1,054,282 N/A N/A 1,054,282 189,847 123,351 Having used less of this funding in 2019, more has been available for 2020.

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Notes:

  • Exchange rate: 1 SEK = 0.117 USD (per 1 USD = 9.82029 SEK in APG proposal).
  • All numbers rounded to whole SEK/USD.
  • We also received in-kind donation of about 1,044 SEK (122 USD) by FSData for server hosting, 81,513 SEK (9,537 USD) by The Internet Foundation In Sweden for office space, 13,572 SEK (1,588 USD) by Google for G Suite for Nonprofits and 450 SEK (53 USD) by "The Generation" for web hosting.
  • The original budget specifies a row for Stockholm University. Since the underlying funding comes from Vinnova it has been merged into that line.

Spending during this six-month period edit

Please use the exchange rate in your APG proposal.

Table 3 Please report all spending in the currency of your grant unless US$ is requested.

(The "budgeted" amount is the total planned for the year as submitted in your proposal form or your revised plan, and the "cumulative" column refers to the total spent to date this year. The "percentage spent to date" is the ratio of the cumulative amount spent over the budgeted amount.)
Expense Currency Budgeted Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Cumulative Budgeted ($US)* Cumulative ($US)* Percentage spent to date Explanation of variances from plan
Access SEK 4,448,326 - 1,300,310 N/A N/A 1,300,310 520,454 152,136 29.2% This spending is in line with expectation since the budget was dominated by the upcoming Tools for Partnerships 2020/2021 project. We expect the year total for this program to be significantly reduced. This is to the largest part due to the Tools for Partnerships 2020/2021 project not starting in 2020 (and the pilot project taking its place is under the Enabling program). But there are also a few other projects we, due to the Covid-19 situation, expect will either start later in the year or even in 2021 instead.
See the note below regarding payroll costs.
Use SEK 2,072,242 - 1,225,314 N/A N/A 1,225,314 242,452 143,362 59.1% See the note below regarding payroll costs.
Community SEK 395,885 - 158,106 N/A N/A 158,106 46,319 18,498 39.9% See the note below regarding payroll costs.
Enabling SEK 1,774,840 - 1,377,662 N/A N/A 1,377,662 207,656 161,186 77.6% This spending is in line with expectations since the budgeted costs were dominated by the Tools for Partnerships 2019 – Blueprinting project which was meant to come to an end in July (it has been extended to the end of September). For the full year we expect this program to become larger than budgeted, this is in part due to a larger part of the Tools for Partnerships 2019 – Blueprinting project happening in 2020 rather than 2019 then originally planned. The main reason for the increased spending is however due to the original Tools for Partnerships 2020/2021 project (under the Access program) not starting in 2020 and a smaller pilot project (under the Enabling project) instead taking its place.
See the note below regarding payroll costs.
Operational costs SEK 1,848,747 - -107,586 N/A N/A -107,586 216,303 -12,588 -5.8% This number is obviously incorrect. The right spending is around 200,000. See the note below for an explanation.
To reserves SEK 550,000 - 0 N/A N/A 0 64,350 0 .0% Reserves will be calculated towards the end of Q3 as per usual. Note that the amount is expected to increase as a result of WMF supplying additional funding earmarked for reserves.
TOTAL' SEK 11,090,040 - 3,953,806 N/A N/A 3,953,806 1,297,535 462,595 35.7% N/A

* Provide estimates in US Dollars


Notes:

  • The way payroll costs are calculated per project (and by extension per program) is that the raw costs are charged to the Administration projects which goes under Operational costs in the table above. This project then charges the other projects based on the actual hours registered to each project by the employees. The hourly cost used for this internal charging is an estimate based on the salary of each employee and the associated taxes and social security contributions. Earlier this quarter we discovered that this internally used estimate was suddenly off and as a result the Administration project was actually charging the other projects more than the actual payroll costs. This is the reason why Operational costs seem to have had negative costs, when they are in fact around 200 000 SEK. The difference is of course balanced by reduced payroll costs, and thus reduced expenses in the other programs. Note that this only affects the distribution of the payroll costs, the actual payroll costs are of course unaffected and the total expenditure in the table above is correct.
    Due to the summer vacations we were not able to discover the source of the error (it is however likely related to the Covid-19 related changes to the social security contributions and sick leaves) nor did we get a chance to recalculate the distribution of the payroll costs (although we have a good estimate for how much the other projects were overcharged).

Compliance edit

Is your organization compliant with the terms outlined in the grant agreement? edit

As required in the grant agreement, please report any deviations from your grant proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

  • Yes

Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes

Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Grant funds as outlined in the grant agreement? Please answer "Yes" or "No".

  • Yes

Signature edit

Once complete, please sign below with the usual four tildes.