Grants:Project/Rapid/The Newark Museum of Art Edit-a-thon/Report
Goals
editDid you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went? We were close to meeting the goals for our event. We had a great community response and interest, and we had dedicated participants who stayed for the entire event. We exceeded our initial goal for articles published or improved. However, our event also happened to be the day that the Governor of New York declared a state of emergency, and people in our region were starting to become hyper-aware of the novel coronavirus. This seems to have impacted our overall participant turnout. Despite this, the results of our event were gratifying.
Outcome
editPlease report on your original project targets.
| Target outcome | Achieved outcome | Explanation |
| 30 participants | 13 participants | We had 36 people RSVP to attend the event. However, Saturday March 7th was the same day that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo declared a state of emergency in New York due to the coronavirus. We do think this impacted our attendance, as the museum's overall attendance for that day was also lower than usual for a Saturday. |
| 20 new editors | 7 new editors | A few people did not have their own laptops or devices and chose to partner up with others who had brought their own. Other participants were not comfortable editing, but instead chose to do research using books and archival material from the museum's library. They then shared this research and information with people who did feel comfortable editing. |
| 10 articles created or improved | 15 articles created or improved | 1 article published, 2 articles pending review, and 12 articles improved, 32 references added, and 1.9k words added |
Learning
editProjects 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? The initial training session went very well, and people were very engaged. However, it was a bit more challenging as participants trickled in throughout the event.
- What did not work so well? As mentioned above, training new participants as they came in was a bit challenging, as sometimes participants' arrivals would overlap and more time was spent explaining or retraining people rather than researching and editing. I would also like try to have a clearer idea beforehand of who would be able to bring their own devices, or who is not comfortable editing.
- What would you do differently next time? For next year's event, I would build questions about people's comfort-level with editing, or whether they have a laptop or device to edit with, into our Eventbrite RSVP form. I also would either shorten the event, or I would schedule multiple trainings throughout the day, so that participants would have a clear schedule to plan around. For example, I might advertise one training at 10:30am, and one at 1:30 pm. This might help people have a clearer idea of when to try to arrive by, while also limiting the amount of repetition in training. Hopefully this would lead to people having more time to research and edit.
Finances
editGrant funds spent
editPlease describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.
1. Food and drink $700.00
● Box lunch for 30 participants
● Coffee and tea available throughout the event
● Cookies and snacks available throughout the event
● Water and soft drinks available throughout the event
2. Event signage $100
3. Social media marketing $250
Remaining funds
editDo you have any remaining grant funds? No
Anything else
editAnything else you want to share about your project?