Grants:Regions/Northern and Western Europe/Committee Open Call 2022/Candidates

Instructions

To apply for the Northern and Western Europe (NWE) Regional Committee, please review the general information about the NWE Regional Committee and then submit your application by September 11, 2022 by providing a statement below with the following information:

• What country are you based in?
• Tell us about yourself and why you want to join a Regional Committee. Please consider responding to some of the questions below, but it is not necessary to respond to all of them in your application. Please keep your statement under 500 words.
  • What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem?
  • How do you think you could contribute towards the committees’ role and ways of working?
  • How do you think the committee could make decision making more participatory?
  • How do you think the committee could improve grantmaking so it has a greater impact?
  • What skills, background or experience could you bring to the committee? You might address grantmaking, knowledge equity, or other relevant areas.

Applications may alternatively be sent to nwe_fundwikimediaorg for review. You are not required to post your application on Meta-wiki. Please use the subject line NWE Regional Committee application and your name or username for clarity (for example: Subject: NWE Regional Committee Application – Jane Doe). Please note that after receiving your application over email, we will publish your username/full name on Meta. This is done to ensure a more transparent application process.

Names of candidates who applied by email

• Núria Ferran Ferrer

Candidates for the NWE Committee

User:fischerdata

• Country: Germany
• Summary about myself and why I want to join the Regional Committee:
  • My current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem: Mostly I am engaged in advocating Wikibase among GLAM institutions. Spreading knowledge about the benefits of free licenses is also something I do.
  • How I think I could contribute towards the committees’ role and ways of working: I think, my contribution to the committee’s role could be enforcing the WMF strategy by (1) embracing cooperation between volunteers and institutional staff aiming for the same goals (2) helping to develop guidelines on how to improve impact not solely based on quantity (3) raising awareness of social and environmental responsibility (4) through a simple questionnaire that would guide the applicants to focus and (5) at the same time the committee should bear in mind the applicants are often volunteers. Hence, it is crucial to empower them and make them happy too, not to discourage their engagement. While I was working as GLAM curator for 6 years at WMDE I could collect a lot of experience in this field.
  • How I think the committee could make decision-making more participatory: Apart from publishing all the applications and making them accessible to the Wikimedia movement and beyond, a standardized tagging to make it easier to get a first overview would help a lot.
  • How I think the committee could improve grantmaking so it has a greater impact: The idea of Free Knowledge needs to get linked to the 3 big questions of our time: climate change, knowledge equity and fighting fake news. This emphasis should be visible in both the criteria and the decisions taken.
  • The skills, background or experience I would bring to the committee (considering grantmaking, knowledge equity, or other relevant areas): I am a senior art and culture manager. I have served as a juror on various occasions for many years. I am a co-founder of the culture hackathon Coding da Vinci. I have been and still working in the field of community development in different fields. Enabling participation, encouraging distant target groups, building cooperation networks and working efficiently line out my way of operating. Today I work for the German National Library as Liaison manager to foster the semantic web through open authority files.

User:Nferranf

• Country: Catalonia, Spain
• Summary about myself and why I want to join the Regional Committee:
• My current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem: Mostly I am engaged in advocating Wikibase among GLAM institutions.

I am responsible of the project Women & Wikipedia (https://www.ub.edu/wikiwomen/) a research project funded by the Spanish government to analyse the gender gap in the co-production of knowledge in the Wikipedias of Spain (Spanish, Catalan, Basque and Galician). I have been the head of the Programme Committee of the first Wikipedia Library Convention (WikiLibCon22) that took place this July in Maynooth University. PhD supervisor of a dissertation on Open Educational Resources and another on Gender Gap in Wikipedia. I am a member of the Amical Wikimedia (Catalan Wikipedia), ViquiDones, WikiEsfera, and WomeninRed. I also volunteer in organizing the edithatons about gender in the Faculty of information and Audiovisual Communication at the Universitat de Barcelona. Experience in research projects in open science and citizen science.

• How I think I could contribute towards the committees’ role and ways of working:

In the evaluation task, we could create a rubric that makes more equitative and transparent the assessment. We could agree on the indicators, on quantitative and qualitative impact, and then buid this tool before the proposals are evaluated. I have previous experience of creating rubrics for education process evaluation, gender perspective evaluation and research projects.

• How I think the committee could make decision-making more participatory:

Try to make visible the proposals among the different communities and networks. I am involved in gender communities, local Wikipedia, and social media reaching several different interests. Maybe the proposals could have a short audiovisual material that synthesizes the idea and could be spread and attract attention for deliberation. An open strategy in involving numerous people in generating, discussing, and evaluating strategic ideas. Encourage communication, and exchange of information, to generate ideas and effectively select the most promising ones. Online discussion spaces, video calls, and specialized group discussions.

• How I think the committee could improve grantmaking so it has a greater impact:

Addressing people’s and communities' needs. I am particularly concerned with gender and diversity but other issues should be the pillars of the grants: disinformation, climate crisis and knowledge equity (gender, minimized cultures, oral cultures, etc.).

• The skills, background or experience I would bring to the committee (considering grantmaking, knowledge equity, or other relevant areas):

I have collaborated in the Social Science and Humanities Evaluation Panel 2022 for funding research projects for the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, the Portuguese public agency that supports science, technology and innovation, in all scientific domains, under responsibility of the Ministry for Science, Technology and Higher Education of Portugal. I had been head of Innovation at the Open University of Catalonia where we had to select through grants, every year, innovative technological and pedagogical projects.

I am responsible for the Master Thesis of the Master of Digital Humanities at Universitat de Barcelona and therefore I support the embryonal design of these projects (methodology and objectives) and especially on the outputs of research and social impact that they should reach.

I am the president of the Equity Unit at the Faculty of Information and Communication at UB.

I teach Interaction Design at the Bachelors of Information Science and Communication. And I also teach User Experience at the Master of Digital Content Management and Master of Digital Humanities. The focus of these subjects is to learn how to identify user needs and satisfy them with digital projects

User:Yger (Anders Wennersten)

• Country: Sweden

I am currently still (starting in 2006) one of the most active on Sw:wp, and have still a minor role in the election committee for WM:SE. I have earlier been part of several committees, for this group most relevant that I was a member of the first FDC group and later in the corresponding group for small grants. I have also been on the board of WMSE (treasurer) and member of the Affcom, Audit committee, election committee and other movement groups, as well as member (and treasurer) of many NGO groups. I am now, since long, retired but was earlier senior manager in the telecom company Ericsson.

I believe I could contribute to the group with my experience from my insight knowledge of how the movement work, how the communities work and my profession skills as treasurer and senior manager (how to get consensus and results from a group of individuals with different viewpoints).

I am now 74 years of age and in general phasing out my participation in groups and am rather hesitant to put my name here. But I was encouraged to do so from a person missing members from Scandinavia. To accept a nomination, though, I need to know more of what is expected in for of time and travel

As now another applicant from Scandinavia has turned up, I am now open to withdraw my application, if you find him acceptable for the group.Yger (talk) 07:31, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

User:Camelia.boban

• Country: Italy
• Presentation: I'm born in Romania, but I live in Rome, Italy and I work as an enterprise developer. I was already part of this NWE committe, but I resigned when was clear as at that moment were not accepted members of the affiliates board. But I'm happy to be part of, so now I applied again.
  • What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem? Wikipedian since March 2007, Wikimedian from September of that year, I created the WikiDonne project in Italian Wikipedia, co-founded and lead the omonimous user group as Chair and lead organizer. AffCom member starting with January 2017, I server as its Chair in 2022 till August. Wikimedia diversity ambassador, I co-lead the Diversity Working Group and the Diversity Space at Wikimania 2019.
  • How do you think you could contribute towards the committees’ role and ways of working? The free knowledge principles in general and the Wikimedia movement philosophy in particular are my natural way of life. I have an extensive knowledge of the community (needs, capacity, dynamics) from different perspectives: as a volunteer editor, as coordinator and event organizer, as who needs to decide even in difficult circumstances as conflicts.
  • How do you think the committee could make decision making more participatory? Being transparent and making the right decisions attract people with good sense without making great efforts.
  • How do you think the committee could improve grantmaking so it has a greater impact? Supporting the diversity and the small communities. Then, looking beyond the numbers, as the impact is not made only by the content quantity added to the Wikimedia projects (how many new articles in Wikipedia were writte during an edit-a-thon, how much free file were uploaded in Commons during WIki LOves Monuments etc). Is made by the growth of the capacity of the group put into practice during the organization of an event, the connections that an individual or group are able to activate internally and externally, with partners, the visibility and advocacy work for the free knowledge it manages to put in movement.
  • What skills, background or experience could you bring to the committee? You might address grantmaking, knowledge equity, or other relevant areas. I have an academic background in economic sciences (as the first job I worked as economic director of a public agricultural cooperative). In any of my roles in these 15 years of Wikimedia, I always adressed the gaps of any kind (gender, abilities, race/etnicity, language etc) and worked for the knowledge equity.

User:Trondtr

• Country: Norway
• Presentation: Born in Oslo, I live in Tromsø in Northern Norway, working as a professor of Saami language technology. I live a substantial part of my life in Southern Finland.
• What is your current participation in the Wikimedia movement or the Free Knowledge Ecosystem? A wikipedian since May 2005 I am a board member of Wikipedia Norway. I have been active on Wikipedia (mainly nn.wp, partly on se.wp and lately also on smn.wp). I was part of the work moving smn.wp from incubatur to normal Wikipedia status, and I am an administrator on all these three wikis. I have participated with presentations in several Wikipedia Academies in Norway and also gave a presentation "The circumpolar Wikipedias" on the Arctic Knot 2021.
• How do you think you could contribute towards the committees’ role and ways of working? I have worked with strengthening the literacy of minority language communities all my life and thus have experiences with what works and what does not.
• How do you think the committee could make decision making more participatory? Being transparent and, if possibly, enter into dialogue with potential grant receivers.
• How do you think the committee could improve grantmaking so it has a greater impact? This is a hard question and it answer will vary from case to case. One challenge is to keep a healthy balance between paid and volunteer work, as Wikipedia is based upon the latter. On the other hand, for minority language communities exactly the people who are able to write coherent articles are the ones in high demand for all kind of work. What kind of work to support should thus be thought through in each individual case.
• What skills, background or experience could you bring to the committee? As a linguist I have a good grip of the situation for minority languages. Being a researcher I often write gramt proposals myself. In addition to that, I have also been used as a foreign expert for the national science foundations of Sweden and Finland, evaluating research applications.