Grants talk:Project/Rapid/UNLOCK 2022

Overall Positive Feedback

‘’The current Wikimedia technologies, platforms, projects, policies, knowledge formats, editing rules, social structures and governance systems have somewhat organically and unsystematically grown.'' While this is not a bad thing in itself, many communities and opportunities have been lost to the movement because of the expectations of an organic growth. It is commendable that what this proposal aims to do is to build a structural and systematic way of ensuring that our Movement does not lose the opportunities both on the tech horizon and social developments.

Wikimedia projects and communities have been working with technologies that are evolving, but the communities themselves have been slow to evolve. There are multiple reasons for this slow evolution, contribution came before the organization, content came before updating policies. If the proposal fulfills its objectives then we will be able to support and cultivate the non glamorous bits of community engagement and outreach activities. YPam (WMF) (talk) 21:55, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Feedback For Improvement

Clarity on project

• The project team should provide specific details regarding how project will enable the diversification of the movement, and knowledge ecosystem that the movement supports.
• Please provide more details on how the project team intends to ensure retention and impact. Technological communities have a reduced half life in comparison to social and knowledge based communities. There are many new technological changes that can sway and shape the nature of communities. The next big engagement from big tech has the potential to wean people away from our communities. While this proposal is focused on innovation, it is important for the project team to think/outline some thinking around stability.
• What contingencies has the the project team put in place to guarantee impact. That is, Impact at the level of a community advancing together and ensuring that the new initiatives do not create unnecessary tensions amongst community members.
• The project team should consider providing information on mitigation strategies for the various possible issues/concerns. Among others these should include how WMDE will ensure not to work in a top down manner with their Serbian partners. Additionally, how does the team intent to mitigate any possible cultural or language conflicts.
• Provide more clarity on how WMDE intends to include other Balkan communities. They are mentioned but not much detail is provided.

YPam (WMF) (talk) 22:00, 21 April 2022 (UTC)

Response to the feedback

Dear Yop and MSIG Team,

Thank you very much for your feedback to our application. Ivana and I would like to provide the following response to your feedback (from April 21, 2022). We look forward to your feedback. Kannika and Ivana 2024-05-01 00:08:25

Feedback (F1): The project team should provide specific details regarding how project will enable the diversification of the movement, and knowledge ecosystem that the movement supports.

Our project UNLOCK 2022 seeks to enable diversification on various layers. The first layer focuses on the collaboration between the involved parties Impact Hub Belgrade, WMDE and WMRS. This will provide learning opportunities for us as a movement on how to collaborate across affiliates and communities as well as with organizations that are not from the immediate open knowledge movement (see for more details in the proposal: Project goals).

The second layer relates to our efforts to reach out to and attract participants in this UNLOCK 2022 project / program. The program is open to volunteers of current Wikimedia projects as well as to people who have not yet been part of our movement. There is an open call for applications and we are disseminating it to a diverse range of communities – ranging from those within the Wikimedia projects, the broader free knowledge ecosystem (FOSS, open hardware, open science, OER, etc.) to social innovation ecosystem (including social entrepreneurs and startups, tech4good, etc.). Besides the community aspect, we also defined a set of “program fit” criteria that guide us through figuring out whether UNLOCK is the right program for the participants in question, considering the status of their project idea and the fulfillment of our basic requirements for participation. These include the “hard facts” such as legal age, minimum team size, and residence. Besides, we also look for lesser hard requirements including mission-alignment, entrepreneurial mindset as well as diversity in setup, skillset and pool of perspectives among the team members. For more details, check out our program fit criteria.

The third layer is related to the scope of the program that forms the basis of our decision on the (type of) innovations we are looking for to support. Do the submitted ideas have the potential to realize knowledge equity? The focus on knowledge equity is designed to promote innovations that increase diversity in the movement through technical and social innovations that allow for new knowledge content and formats into the Wikimedia projects, thus opening doors to new and marginalized communities and people. For this scope, we jointly defined a challenge and program call around knowledge equity that is building on the movement's strategic direction and contextualized through our exchange within Impact Hub, WMDE and WMRS respective communities and network, including people within our movement as well as people and organizations beyond it – in a broader open knowledge as well as social innovation context.

F2: Please provide more details on how the project team intends to ensure retention and impact. Technological communities have a reduced half life in comparison to social and knowledge based communities. There are many new technological changes that can sway and shape the nature of communities. The next big engagement from big tech has the potential to wean people away from our communities. While this proposal is focused on innovation, it is important for the project team to think/outline some thinking around stability.

Retention and impact of innovations highly depends on the culture and capacity of an organization or ecosystem. The challenge that our movement is currently facing is that the evolution of our existing technologies, tools and platform is slow and incremental – some of the technologies, tools and platform are simply outdated and unequitable. Stability is currently marked by the limited innovative capacity and an underdeveloped culture towards change and innovation in order to incubate and accelerate the next “big engagement”.

There is a need to build and develop an innovative culture and capacity to counter this stagnation. Innovations and innovators pass through various stages that need to be set up (for more details about the innovation stages, please head over to this analysis). Through connecting with and opening up to other communities and social innovation networks, we seek revitalize the movement and make it more interesting, socially and technically relevant for new audiences and contributors. Stability then becomes resiliency. With UNLOCK 2022 and the collaboration setup among Impact Hub, WMDE and WMRS, we will pilot a first version of a “free knowledge innovation ecosystem” within our movement in which the supported innovations and innovators could grow and sustain e.g. through the integration to Wikimedia Serbia or other Western Balkans communities as well as to the Impact Hub or broader social innovation and knowledge ecosystem.

F3: What contingencies has the project team put in place to guarantee impact. That is, Impact at the level of a community advancing together and ensuring that the new initiatives do not create unnecessary tensions amongst community members.

UNLOCK as a program is not about producing “ready-made” innovations and then providing them to the communities. Building our innovative capacity and culture involves iterative ways to work and the readiness to take risks, and the willingness to accept that some ideas may become successful, while others will break due to various reasons (e.g. no proof of concept, no resources available etc.). There is no way to “guarantee impact” when trying out innovations.

The call is open to existing community members who want to drive change and innovation. It is also open to new communities and people who share our vision of free knowledge and who want to join and be part of this social movement to create impact and realize knowledge equity. With the (above mentioned) program scope and criteria we hope to counteract possible and “unnecessary” tensions. UNLOCK aims to bring the communities and people together. We will select the participating teams for their capacity to collaborate and co-create with communities, and manage the process in ways that involve the communities from the start, rather than coming with pre-fabricated solutions that trigger resistance. Core elements of our program include the involvement of Wikimedia community members, coaches and other experts from communities beyond the Wikimedia movement who could accompany and support the participants throughout the program. These people will bring in their perspectives, methods, skills as well as learnings and experiences. With this approach we hope to pave the way for fruitful and long-term ways of collaboration, for the creation of quality network and, thus for strengthening an innovation ecosystem for free knowledge.

We will seek to address potential tensions as a result of misunderstanding or lack of clarity with our communication about the program: how it is run, who is involved, what are our challenges and learnings. For this, WMRS and WMDE will use the common community communication channels including l-list, wmcee-l, and diff blog. We also plan to present and share our learnings at community-related events within the movement. In addition, there is a dedicated program website which is actively and regularly maintained – consisting of content related to the program and to supported initiatives e.g. former participants share their experiences during the program in blog entries.

F4: The project team should consider providing information on mitigation strategies for the various possible issues/concerns. Among others these should include how WMDE will ensure not to work in a top down manner with their Serbian partners. Additionally, how does the team intent to mitigate any possible cultural or language conflicts.

With regards to our collaboration: WMDE is aware of the power gap that exists between WMDE and the Serbian partners due to the different resources of each involved party. It is WMDE’s motivation and intention to narrow this power gap and value equally the resources each brings to the partnership. In concrete terms, we – Impact Hub, WMDE and WMRS – kicked off the collaboration by jointly defining our core values and purpose; by identifying ownership and responsibilities and sharing those among us – not in terms of equal workload because this would be unfair given the different capacities but rather ascribing equal value to the experiences, resources, roles and needs of each involved parties. The provision of the movement strategy implementation grant could further complement our approach so that we can equalize some of the differences and not assume that people will simply work more. We have also established a collaboration mode that includes weekly meet-ups and thematic meet-ups where each side is reflecting on what has been done in the previous week and discussing as well evaluating on our next steps and responsibilities. This mode helps us constantly and iteratively learn, develop and measure our partnership.

With respect to possible cultural and language conflicts: We are aware of these conflicts and can see them on two levels – one potentially among Impact Hub, WMDE and WMRS as well as among the participants. Among the involved parties and within our collaboration, we try to address this with our jointly defined value-driven approach as mentioned above. With regards to the program’s participants: we expect a diverse set up of participants and acknowledge that each of them brings in different cultural, language, and professional backgrounds. The program’s language is English in order to create a basic common ground of communication. One key program element includes a joint value creation session – a central outcome of this session will be the development of a set of guidelines which directs the behavior of project teams during their participation at UNLOCK. Regular retrospectives and cross-team exchanges should complement the value-driven approach. With this, we hope to create a safe space where conflicts and issues can be expressed, addressed and solved.

F5: Provide more clarity on how WMDE intends to include other Balkan communities. They are mentioned but not much detail is provided.

WMRS and Impact Hub Belgrade are the driving forces and experts in the Western Balkans communities – they have not only the expertise and knowledge but also the connection to the communities and people. This is why WMDE sought collaboration with them. By the time of the submission of the proposal (Mar 11, 2022) we intended to include other Western Balkans communities in the implementation. As of now, we – Impact Hub, WMDE and WMRS – have already completed the first key module “contextualization & design” and related activities. In this respect, WMDE and WMRS reached out to various communities in the Western Balkans region in order to learn and better understand the context, opportunities and challenges with regards to free knowledge, and in particular to knowledge equity. In this “learning journey”, WMDE and WMRS talked to representatives from Wikimedia Community User Group Albania, Wikimedians of Albanian Language User Group, Wikimedians of Republic of Srpska, Shared Knowledge Macedonia and GLAM Macedonia User Group. Besides, we also received input from organizations beyond the movement, including the Open Science Community Serbia as well as the Free Software and Open Hardware Community Serbia. Their perspectives have helped us define and contextualize the program scope and call for applications (call for applications runs from April 1 - May 29). For the actual program (scheduled for end of June - end of October – see module “running UNLOCK” in the proposal), we would also like to involve the representatives we talked to in the events and workshops – having them as experts or mentors who could support and advise the participating teams with their experiences and expertise. This involvement will depend on their capacity and availability.

In general, Western Balkans communities are the UNLOCK target group: Our main efforts right now is focussing on activating these communities to apply to the UNLOCK program. The call is addressed to volunteers of Wikimedia projects or people beyond our movement as we want to support them with the program to accelerate their innovative projects and ideas.