Grants:PEG/WM CZ/Czech Outreach/Report/Interim

Interim report accepted

This interim report for a Project and Event Grant has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/WM CZ/Czech Outreach.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page.
Please visit Grants:PEG/WM CZ/Czech Outreach/Report to comment on or read the final report.
You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Project status

Are you complying with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?: YES

Do you expect this project to be completed by the date specified in the approved grant submission?: YES

Did you use any of the grant funds?: YES

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

A wide range of Outreach-related activities is incorporated into the Czech Outreach grant:

Wikipedia tent at the United Islands of Prague (UIOP) music festival in Prague. After we purchased a 3.6m x 3.6m tent and some additional equipment including two chromebooks (cheap laptops), we immediately used it for our first public appearance on 19th and 20th June. The festival is an annual mix of concerts and other activities installed inside the city space. Thanks to a partnership deal with organizers, we were provided with a great space just next to the main stage (but far enough to be able to hear our own word). The space was completely free of charge and we were also provided with free mobile Internet. The plan was to invite visitors to each contribute a sentence to an article on their favourite artist. However, the Internet we were provided with was inadequate (too slow) and we were only online for 10% of the time. Instead, we concentrated on offline discussions with visitors (we had discussions with about 50 visitors). The great thing was that we were able to exercise the use of the new tent, the drawback was the inadequate Internet connection.

Wikipedia at Prague Museum Night 2015 in the National Technical Library. Thanks to our GLAM team, we have renewed our contacts with the National Technical Library and organized a Wikipedia workshop during the Prague Museum Night on June 13th. The museum night is a well-known traditional event during which all museums and related cultural institutions remain open very late into the night and attract many visitors. We were provided with a free lecturing room with laptops and Internet connection and wrote articles, talked to about 100 visitors and instructed on the editing of Wikipedia. According to our estimates, 60% of visitors were senior citizens and the rest usually students - both are very good target groups for our outreach. Thanks go to 8 volunteers from within the chapter and 2 non-chapter Wikipedians who helped to organize this event and assisted on the spot.

Silesian Museum Night in Opava. This event was also organized thanks to outstanding contacts with the local museum - the Museum of Silesia in Opava, Silesia region. Wikipedia has been represented at this event for the 4rd time in row. We talked to about 200 visitors, explained the editing of Wikipedia and answered questions. The museum director has also stopped by, expressing interest in mutual collaboration (eg. by organizing workshops for the museum employees). The whole event was organized by two volunteers from the chapter, but they expressed wishes to increase the number to 3 in future years to better accommodate the popular interest during the event.

NGO Market in Prague. We did not originally anticipate the participation at NGO Market but as our volunteer expressed interest in opening a Wikimedia stand there, we supported it. 1-2 people from the chapter were present at our stand, informing other NGOs about our activities and ways we could cooperate. Presence on NGO Market is important to establish Wikimedia Czech Republic as a well-known organization in the Czech NGO community ("who is not there does not exist"). It helped us to spread information about us to potential employees of Wikimedia Czech Republic, as we are preparing for a professionalization process. We also had time to visit other organizations and talk to them (such as the Elpida, a senior centre that provides us with lecture rooms for the senior citizen program, as well as various organizations providing organizational support and software for NGOs).

Wikipedians in Kadaň (more in a blog post written by the vice mayor here [Czech]). Three to four Wikimedians visited the town of Kadaň for two days and instructed a small group of selected local secondary school students on the editing of Wikipedia. Kadaň is a very Wikipedia-friendly and progressive town which has decided to employ two secondary school students (later as many as four) as "Wikipedians in residence" who would write several Wikipedia articles on the history and geography of Kadaň region. The two students were selected from the group of students who took part in the above-mentioned workshop. In the first round, each is supposed to write one high-quality entry on Kadaň. Czech TV, the major broadcasting service in the country, informed about the workshop and plans of Kadaň's council. This was a cost-free event organized jointly by Wikimedia Czech Republic and the city of Kadaň - originally financially backed up by WMCZ but eventually not requiring any funds as these were covered by the town council. The result also is that the city of Kadaň becomes our supporting member.

WikiTown in Hustopeče (more in a blog post here [Czech]). This is a major annual event organized by Wikimedia Czech Republic for the second time in a row, this year in 8th-10th May in southern Moravia region. The event enables us to export Wikipedia from large cities (Prague, Brno) into small regional cities and towns. These suffer from a small number of contributors and the corresponding encyclopedic content related to the region usually lacks detailed description as well as pictures. The city of Hustopeče (population 6,000) was selected as a WikiTown this year. A group of 7 Czech Wikimedians and 3 Austrian Wikimedians together improved dozens of articles (221 edits on Czech Wikipedia) on Hustopeče, added 168,697 Bytes to Wikipedia (an equivalent of 85 pages) and uploaded 1079 pictures of Hustopeče. 11.21% of the pictures are used in a Wikimedia projects (121 unique images used, total image usage: 187). Most image usages come from the Czech Wikipedia (108) where we actively added these pictures to corresponding articles. Additionally, 5,603 Bytes of encyclopedic content were added to German Wikipedia by the Austrian Wikimedians. Invitation of Austrian colleagues not only enabled creation of foreign-language content but also improved the mutual exchange of know-how. Several dozens of books, some of them borrowed from the local touristic library, were used to write the Wikipedia articles. External funding: accomodation and travel expenses of the Austrian Wikimedia team were kindly funded by Wikimedia Osterreich. Note: After initial hesitations (reflected in the grant proposal discussion page), we decided to concentrate on creating content rather than local community and public outreach. There are several reasons to this, the main being: 1) outreach is difficult in small cities with a small number of potential contributors, 2) journalists are unlikely to report on these events as they take place in small cities to which journalists rarely pay a visit. In future (with more experience and with additional workforce after professionalization), we might change the focus to do some outreach to local intellectuals, senior citizens, hobby organizations etc.

Signing a memorandum with the National Heritage Institute

Our GLAM initiative is a platform that concentrates on establishing partnerships with cultural institutions in the Czech Republic. Establishing and maintaining relations is time-consuming but fruitful because it enables us to widen our audience and find new target audiences and provides us with additional advantages for our events such as free rent of rooms, consulting or better visibility of our work in media. GLAM relationships also make Wikipedia more prestigious. Our GLAM efforts usually precede specific events organized in collaboration with our partners. This was the case of Prague Museum Night (National Technical Library) as well as the Silesian Museum Night (Museum of Silesia). Outstanding contact was formally acknowledged with the National Heritage Institute - we signed a memorandum of mutual collaboration (more info about this memorandum in this report [English]. Moreover, the GLAM team also prepared a Wiki Loves Monuments 2012-2014 retrospective photo exhibition. The 30 pictures hang on the walls of the modern National Technical Library building in Prague but are expected to travel to other places in autumn 2015.

Students Write Wikipedia. Red: Bytes Added (left axis), Blue: Pages Created from scratch (right axis); data from Wikimetrics

Students Write Wikipedia education program is another traditional and successful platform of Wikimedia Czech Republic, running since 2011 with ever-improving program metrics. Any university teacher (in some cases, also secondary school teacher) can participate on this program, and we provide logistical and technical support to teachers, give lectures and answer questions of students, with the hopes of improving content of Czech Wikipedia and familiarizing the new generation of Czech intellectuals with Wikipedia. In total, 18 courses incorporating Wikipedia into their curriculum were started in different university in the Czech Republic. In the winter term 2014/2015, 985,345 Bytes were added to Czech Wikipedia by students, in the summer term, a record amount of 1,112,715 Bytes was added. This equals to 2,098,060 Bytes in total. Courses can be browsed in the Wikipedia Education extension on Czech Wikipedia.
Our senior citizen education program (see blog post here [English]) started as an IEG-funded initiative in 2014. After the end of the grant term (final report is being finalized here), the program has been scheduled to become on of the outreach initiatives funded from the Czech Outreach grant and is also actively fundraising. The program not only attracts media attention (with several reports on nationwide TV), it also has tangible results on the Wikipedia community. From about 100 participants, 20 have become regular Wikipedians who continue to edit; further 15 people have shown will to edit although currently (during the summer holiday) do not edit. 111 new articles were written and 368 pictures were uploaded. The Czech Outreach grant has funded a series of four seminars (blog post here [Czech]) for regional librarians, needed to expand the program out of Prague. These seminars (taking place in the historical building of the National Library of Prague) were attended by 45 librarians, 4 of which also attended an advanced course. All 45 mastered basics of Wikipedia and also learned about its community, rules and means of collaboration between libraries and Wikipedia.

Gallery

United Islands of Prague
United Islands of Prague
Prague Museum Night 2015
Prague Museum Night 2015
Prague Museum Night 2015
Prague Museum Night 2015
Prague Museum Night 2015
Silesian Museum Night in Opava
Silesian Museum Night in Opava
Silesian Museum Night in Opava
NGO Market in Prague
WikiTown Hustopeče
WikiTown Hustopeče
WikiTown Hustopeče
WikiTown Hustopeče
Senior citizen program - workshop for librarians
Senior citizen program - workshop for librarians

Lessons learned

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects, or that may change the way you are doing this project?

What went well, or is going well?

We purchased our outdoor tent, a table and chairs for a half of its market price, thanks to a partnership deal with Coleman, the manufacturer of camping equipment. This enabled us to buy high-quality and light (easy to carry) equipment for long-term use.

Several indoor events have been organized and improved the public knowledge of Wikipedia. Additionally, WikiTown has been established as an annual Czech "editathon" that improves content on regional topics.

A developing community in Kadaň is fostered by the city council itself.

We signed a memorandum of collaboration with the National Heritage Institute.

Each school term, students add more bytes to Wikipedia than ever before. Additionally, the senior citizen education program has received a lot of attention in media and tutored >100 senior citizens, some of which become regular and independent Wikipedians.

What did not go well, or is not going well?

As the grant was approved later than expected, we did not manage to prepare the tent and corresponding equipment for the spring season. The one occasion where tent was used was not a complete success because we had connectivity issues. We hope to solve these over the summer and continue with our outdoor outreach plans in September.

From your answers above, do you plan to change anything you are doing as your project continues?

The problems stated above are rather temporary and will be solved as explained above.

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

Provide the original project goal here.: This grant request covers all presentation initiatives that are planned by Wikimedia Czech Republic for 2015. Besides already established activities with a high outcome (Wikiconference, WikiTown, Students Write Wikipedia), this grant also covers a novel, somewhat experimental approach called "Wikimedia in the public space". As public space initiatives blossom in Prague, we want to be a part of it and get Wikimedia/Wikipedia closer to people.

Do you expect to reach your project's goal? Why or why not?: Yes. Most activities defined in the grant proposal have already started and some even exceed our expectations as formulated in the measures of success.

Progress towards targets and goals

Measures of success

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
750 visitors of outdoor events coming to our booth	50 visitors	The tent was just purchased and only one preparatory event was organized.
200 visitors to indoor events	300 visitors.	The two events already organized attracted more participants than expected. The Book Fair in Havlíčkův Brod will attract some more and the number will still grow.
120 participants of the Czech WikiConference	0	Czech Wikiconference will take place in November.
150 participants, registering to Wikipedia and editing articles during our events	10	Only small number of participants edited Wikipedia during the Prague Museum Night. The number is expected to grow during outdoor events planned for September.
500 pictures uploaded during WikiTown, 100 picture usages on all wikis	1079 uploaded, 187 picture usages	The photographing team was larger than last year and thus overcame the expectations.
250 kilobytes of text in Wikipedia added by WikiTown participants	175 kilobytes	The encyclopedic team was smaller than last year and thus did not completely meet the expectations.
2,000,000 bytes to be added during the course of the 2014/2015 school year by students	2,098,060 bytes.	The Students Write Wikipedia program is slowly growing as more teachers participate. The number of bytes added was therefore correctly estimated.
6-8 courses organized each school term as a part of the Students Write Wikipedia program	18 courses organized during the two school terms	The Students Write Wikipedia program is slowly growing as more teachers participate. The number of organized courses was therefore correctly estimated (and even overcome).
Senior citizen education program: 3 courses in Prague, 2 new courses outside Prague	9 courses in Prague, 0 in other cities	The number of courses in Prague grew more rapidly than expected due to the public interest in our program. The expansion to other cities is planned for the autumn season.
10 new Wikipedians (long-term community members) from the senior citizen education program	20 new Wikipedians	20 participants are considered to be regular Wikipedians as of May/June 2015. 18 made more than 100 contributions to Wikipedia. This does not include participants who joined after January 2015 (40% of all participants) who are not on Wikipedia for long enough to be considered regular Wikipedians - the final numbers will be part of the final report of this grant.

Provide an overall assessment of how your project is going according to these measures.: We are making progress with most of the parameters, some have already exceeded expectations while only bytes added to articles during WikiTown failed to reach the desired amount.

While doing this project, have you decided to track any other measures of success not listed in your grant submission? If so, please list them here.: Interestingly, the number of new editors is a complicated measure with variable definition. Who is a Wikipedian, what is the time needed to call someone a Wikipedian, or is it defined by their number of contributions? We wonder whether there is a quideline for this. The senior citizen education program has produced a lot of new Wikipedians, but their exact number is sometimes difficult to determine, for the reasons stated above.

Impact

Remember that you will need to report on your project's impact on WMF's mission and strategic goals in your final report.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Remember that you will need to send receipts or documentation of all project expenses to WMF at the time your final report is submitted.

Expenses

1 EUR = 27.3 CZK (according to the exchange rate in the moment of fund transfer)
All receipts are accessible at our tracker system (WMF has an access account to their disposal)

Number	Category	Item description	Actual total cost	Budgeted total cost	Currency	Notes
1.1	Wikimedia in the public space	Tent	91.6	100	EUR	-
1.2	Wikimedia in the public space	2 laptops	662	670	EUR	-
1.3	Wikimedia in the public space	Accessories and equipment of the tent	242	340	EUR	Incl. table and chair, Kensington locks, accessory walls for the tent
1.4	Wikimedia in the public space	Internet fees, Fees for usage of public space	0	250	EUR	-
1.5	Wikimedia in the public space	Consumables	71.5	350	EUR	-

2.1	Participation in indoor events	Participation costs, travel costs	188.6	850	EUR	Includes Prague Museum Night, Silesian Museum Night, NGO Market
2.2	Participation in indoor events	Technical equipment for our indoor efforts	477.3	520	EUR	This includes a video projector mount, a reflector and a tablet to improve our presentation opportunities.

3.1	Principal annual events	Czech Wikiconference	0	2500	EUR
3.2	Principal annual events	WikiTown 2015	810.2	1000	EUR

4.1	Outreach programs	Outreach to students and senior citizens	265.5	750	EUR	Four seminars for librarians (see text)
4.2	Outreach programs	Outreach to cultural institutions: GLAM	265.2	350	EUR

5.1	Additional requisites	Promotional items out of scope of programs above	161.1	500	EUR	Print of the annual report, stationery needed for our events, keys
5.2	Additional requisites	Grant administration	0	450	EUR	Administration has been paid for through our other grants up until now. We may ask for a change of budget here to relocate the money to items where they are more needed.
5.3	Additional requisites	Phone receipts for project managers	0	100	EUR	-

Total amount spent on this project so far (with currency): 3,235 EUR

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project so far (with currency): 3,235 EUR

Based on your spending, will you need to request any changes to your budget? If you do, please see the guidelines for requesting changes to your budget.: YES, we will request a part of the funds to be used for the senior citizen education program instead of administrative expenses.