Grants:Project/Rapid/BrillLyle/Her Girl Friday Women Journos Editathon/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2016-17 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/BrillLyle/Her Girl Friday Women Journos Editathon.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Goals

Recruit new editors
Increase skills for existing editors
Add or improve content
Engender discussion about fake news and its impact on politics, especially in light of the 2017 Inauguration
Improve coverage of women journalists and subjects that are gender gap and from diverse backgrounds

Analysis of goals

Overall, goals for this editathon, which the Rapid Grant provided funds for, were met successfully

1. New editor recruitment

From experience, the editathon model is not typically the best method to recruit and more specifically retain new editors, but this editathon seemed to have strong engagement and a lot of enthusiasm
The majority of attendees were new editors
Almost all attendees registered for a Wikipedia account within the first hour of the editathon portion of the event, which is not always easy to do

2. Existing editor skillsharing

Because of the high number of new editors, existing editor skillsharing was low; however, a meeting was set up with Heather Hart from Black Lunch Table after the event to go over skillsharing for questions that came up during event
A one-to-one meeting with Heather Hart from Black Lunch Table was held and significant amounts of skillsharing took place on 4 Feb 2017 for about 5 hours
- Categories vs. lists
- Outreach Dashboard demo
- Wikidata mini-workshop
- Automating Black Lunch Table task list using Wikidata
- Notability of mid-career artists

3. Content improvement / adding to encyclopedia

Focus on adding Infoboxes was successful strategy to provide low-barrier, high-impact editing
14 infoboxes were added
New editors were encouraged to improve articles vs. add new articles, which is reflected in the metrics
Lenny Letter task list content was added to at least 3 subjects of Lenny articles, denoted by new Lenny icons on article links, bringing content links to 6 (from 0)

4. Discussion about fake news, politics and how it relates to Wikipedia

Unconference topics and Wikipedia editing training discussed these topics extensively, with presentation on Haiti Hackathon, women missing from Wikipedia, and approaches to onboarding content produced by journalists with regards to Conflict of Interest editing were covered extensively

5. Women journalist, gender gap content, diversity on Wikipedia

Soledad O'Brien entry discussed – biracial broadcast journalist
Heather Hart's Black Lunch Table presentation focused on gender gap content and diversity re: visual artists
After a general summary of how to edit, group editing occurred, with focus on discussing gender gap initiatives on Wikipedia (i.e., Women in Red)

The new Outreach Dashboard was used and provided the following metrics:

Articles Created: 1
Articles Edited: 40
Total Edits: 194
Editors: 25
- are up-to-date with training: 25
Words Added: 3.69K
Article Views: 156K
Commons Uploads: 8

Additional metrics:

Attendees

WikiFacilitators from WM NYC: 4
Her Girl Friday: 3
Attendees: 20
- New editors: 19, with 1 making more edits

Content

Pages improved: 27
- Infoboxes added: 14
Pages created: 2
Wikidata items improved: 2
Wikidata items created: 1
Wikimedia Commons images added to pages: 4, of which 1 deleted
Wikimedia Commons: 20 images

General thoughts on project

Generally, the Her Girl Friday Lenny Women Journos editathon was a modest but good editathon.

I think that timing and potential for outreach was muted for many reasons, as there was a lot of focus on political action which the editathon was responding to, but I think that people were more focused on attending the Washington DC Women's March the weekend prior and weren't as interested in making plans and/or coming to an editathon. Twitter and social media was very focused on the first week(s) of 45 being elected, so editathon outreach was not probably as visible or highlighted as it might have been.

Engagement for those who attended seemed to be enthusiastic -- and the goal of having every person make one edit I believe was met. I know that almost all attendees made edits to their user page and a large number of Infoboxes were added to pages. The Lenny content was also definitely impacted in a positive way. I think that concepts of fake news and an active discussion of conflict of interest were very successfully addressed.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Events: 1 unconference/editathon	1 unconference/editathon	Outcome met original target. See Learning for analysis
Participants: 60 participants	29 participants / 25 participants (Outreach Dashboard)	Outcome was short of original target. See Learning for analysis
New editors: 60 new editors	19 new editors	Outcome was short of original target. See Learning for analysis
Articles created or improved: 60 articles improved	27 articles improved 2 articles created / 40 articles improved 1 article created (Outreach Dashboard)	Outcome was short of original target. See Learning for analysis
Repeat participants: 5%-10%?	N/A	N/A Event was one-off event, so no repeat participation possible

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?
- I think attendees were very happy with the event space (which was gorgeous and wonderful beyond the construction in the lobby) and the food, and the presentations seemed to be well received. I am not sure if my first time teaching Wikipedia was fully embraced, but it was a huge learning experience for me, where I approached the WikiFacilitation from the perspective of treating folks as adults capable of using resources available on their own time -- while doing a live demo and having the group walk through edits. I think there was a value in the hands-on approach to the event which was unique and fresh. The idea to do Infoboxes -- which was new -- seemed to be well-received and made sense to people -- especially in how the Wikipedia infobox is translatable to the Google search's Google "infobox."
What did not work so well?
- The partnership with Her Girl Friday and Lenny was good, but it was difficult to order a correct amount of food as Lenny was super busy due to the Inauguration and didn't do a heavy social media push (that they had promised) until much later than anticipated. And even then it wasn't the social media push that I guess I expected -- very much of a learning experience for me. I had to order the food 48 hours in advance and had a bit of a panic, as much of the social media that was expected prior to that -- and after that -- did not happen at the volume that I expected. So I over-ordered food because I had no idea if the large number of followers Lenny has would turn out for the event, and then we would've not had enough food. So I over-ordered food also without being able to adjust after 48 hours before the event. Really, the grant may not have been necessary at the end of the day beyond a deli platter or two and coffee if Lenny hadn't been involved -- and hadn't somewhat raised expectations of attendance. If I could do it over again, I would do something more modest, maybe US$250-US$300 food, coffee, and water, and be done with it if we ran out. This is something we've done at WikiWednesdays regularly at WM NYC -- and probably could've been budgeted and paid for by the local chapter as well. So yeah, non-ideal but I felt like I was in a very tight spot, planning-wise.

HGF Editing Brunch 2017 - flyer

What would you do differently next time?
- Flyer
  - I wish I had had more input on the flyer, which Her Girl Friday made. There was no hashtag listed and Lenny, because we were unsure, were not listed on the flyer. Also, the event went from being an editathon to being a Brunch, which I found confusing -- and also added more pressure on me to make sure there was food seeing as it was denoted a brunch event....
- Hashtag
  - A Twitter and social media hashtag was never established -- or used consistently. I am sort of horrified at myself that I didn't do a better job of this. It was an oversight, a mistake on my part, and it hurt us during the event and leading up to the event, as there was confusion as to what the hashtag actually was. I was using #WomenJournosUnite, which is long and sort of non-ideal.
- Social Media schedule
  - Next time I would set up a very clearly established social media schedule for all partners. If sponsors have a schedule I think it would be more effective. And it would establish expectations from the get go. I was afraid to push this, and had kept asking Lenny about their social media push, but felt very awkward about doing so....
- WM NYC Meetup.com was used, as typical for WM NYC events. Profuse thanks to Richard for doing this. He sets these up for WM NYC events and I really appreciated him adding this Meetup event.
Project goals
- The event did not hit the project goals on many levels. While it was disappointing that there wasn't more engagement -- and the expected goals weren't entirely met -- I think due to the issues with the high profile partner, Lenny, it was somewhat out of my control. I think the Rapid Grant was requested because of the potential response from having this high profile partner who have a significant social media and outreach presence -- and if in fact there had been more promotion the grant would've been exactly what was needed. And engagement would've met and/or exceeded goals.
- From my prior experience with the UN Women editathon -- where the organizers told us there might be 600 attendees at the UN Headquarters, but we ended up having 50+ attendees because the larger group never made it to the event space due to over-scheduling, I think -- the fact is that we had to prepare for the worst case scenario of high numbers of attendees, and were as prepared and as deployed as possible for the large number of attendees. So this was in a way similar, where I tried to plan for a large number of people and didn't have any idea until a day or so before the event how many people would come. The catering had to be ordered 48 hours in advance and we worried the RSVPs would be much higher, etc.

Social media - promotion

As of 12 Feb 2017 around 1:00 pm

Platform	Date	Link	Interested	Going	Invited	Likes	Retweets	Person	Entity	Followers
Facebook	12 Jan 2017	Event	136	64	530				HGF	1,645
Facebook	12 Jan 2017	Event – shared							Lenny	85,409
Facebook	26 Jan 2017	Event – shared							Lenny	85,409
Instagram	26 Jan 2017	Post				499			Lenny	283,333
Twitter	26 Jan 2017	Tweet				11	10		Lenny	43,717
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				12	2		Lenny	43,717
Twitter	17 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	4		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	23 Jan 2017	Tweet				6	7		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	24 Jan 2017	Tweet				1	4		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	26 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	2		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	2		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	1		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				6	4		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	1		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	29 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	3		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	29 Jan 2017	Tweet				7	4		WM NYC	1,642
Twitter	23 Jan 2017	Tweet				3	4	Erika Herzog	WM NYC	1,108
Twitter	25 Jan 2017	Tweet				1	1	Erika Herzog	WM NYC	1,108
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	2	Erika Herzog	WM NYC	1,108
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				3	3	Erika Herzog	WM NYC	1,108
Twitter	18 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	5		HGF	1,438
Twitter	18 Jan 2017	Tweet				3	1		HGF	1,438
Twitter	23 Jan 2017	Tweet				3	1		HGF	1,438
Twitter	27 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	1		HGF	1,438
Twitter	30 Jan 2017	Tweet				6	4		HGF	1,438
Twitter	14 Jan 2017	Tweet				5	3	Talisa Chang	HGF	984
Twitter	23 Jan 2017	Tweet				7	5	Talisa Chang	HGF	984
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				7	3	Talisa Chang	HGF	984
Twitter	13 Jan 2017	Tweet				3	5	Jackie Snow	HGF	1,628
Twitter	13 Jan 2017	Tweet				1	1	Karen Zraick	HGF	4,488
Twitter	24 Jan 2017	Tweet				1	1	Karen Zraick	HGF	4,488
Twitter	21 Jan 2017	Tweet				1	5		IWMF	14,267
Twitter	16 Jan 2017	Tweet				7	4	Jared Hatch	ThoughtWorks	3,458
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				2	2	Jared Hatch	ThoughtWorks	3,458
Twitter	19 Jan 2017	Tweet				4	2		ThoughtWorks	3,458
Twitter	29 Jan 2017	Tweet				6	3	Lana Shea	LaLanaShea	993
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				3	2		WomenFix	971
Twitter	28 Jan 2017	Tweet				3	2		WomenFix	971

Note:

HGF: Her Girl Friday
Lenny: Lenny Letter
WM NYC: Wikimedia New York City
IWMF: International Women's Media Foundation

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

Whole Foods Catering: US$715.38 + 14% delivery tip $US100 = $US815.38
Starbucks Coffee: US$63.80
- Total: US$879.18
- I have put the receipts in the mail to Pete

Additionally, not in budget, so not included but wanted to mention

Her Girl Friday paid for Promoted event on Facebook
- Cost was US$10

Remaining funds

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of $120.82.

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Yes. US$120.82

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

We were able to donate the extra food to protestors at JFK responding to the Muslim Ban, so the over-ordering of food worked out but I still felt bad about how much food was ordered.