Grants talk:TPS/Zabien/EMWCon Spring 2018

Questions about your proposal

Dear Zabien,

Thank you for submitting this interesting proposal. I would like to ask you a few more questions before we complete our review:

• Can you describe in more detail what you expect the outcomes to be of your participation in this event? Specifically, what will participants in your training be able to do after taking your training?
• Few people continue to use the skills they learn in a one-time training at a conference. Most people require further support in the wake of the training. Do you have any ideas about ways you might be able to continue to provide support to trainees in the wake of the conference?
• We have very specific requirements about what you must submit with your report when you receive funding through TPS. You must provide links to an outcome, which is one of three things, generally:
  • something that was created as a result of your presentation (for example, something useful the trainees make using their new skills)
  • a blog post you write after the event to extend the learning you take from the event to others
  • a learning pattern in which you teach a skill to other Wikimedians
• Do you have any ideas about what you would submit with your report to meet this requirement?

Thank you for your interest in supporting Wikimedia!

Warm regards,

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 00:16, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello Marti, thank you for your questions! I am working on the answers! --Zabien (talk) 21:07, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello Marti, I have now included my answers below! Thank you! --Zabien (talk) 15:01, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Details about the proposal

Here are some more details hopefully answering the above questions:

Can you describe in more detail what you expect the outcomes to be of your participation in this event? Specifically, what will participants in your training be able to do after taking your training?

The overall goal is to help newbies onboard, turn them into fans and help them become knowledgable wiki users and generators of good content and structure for the web in the sense of inclusive open knowledge.

I am planning to help newbies from a broad overview to practical details:

1. Participants shall understand the general advantages of working with a wiki: It can combine structured and unstructured data, is a very agile way of working with information and knowledge. Not least is it very flexible, scalable and with Wikipedia as its mother, has a big future ahead.
2. Form follows function, so participants shall reflect on the idea of information architecture following content. I will work with the idea of EPPO (every page is page one), which, to me, is a modern approach to look at content creation for the web. In case you are not yet familiar with the concept, in short, the idea is to treat every single page of one's website as the reader's page one, since the reader today will reach the website via Google and other search engines and not through browsing from the start page/home page of the website. This has high impact on the way a page needs to be structured, written and what information needs to be given alongside the main content. Of course, Wikipedia (and it's sister projects) is a very good living example for this approach, since it already makes use of self-contained topics, shows content types via infoboxes and categories, addresses the knowing and the novice user alike and similar. The EPPO approach is not only a way to write content, it is also something that future wiki administrators, designers and gardeners should keep in mind. It is the general idea of creating better content on the web, make it easy for the user/reader, to include as many readers as possible and make knowledge accessible to all, whether in a closed company environment or on a public website or wiki. I truly believe that continually educating ourselves towards user-oriented webdesign (including wikis) and content creation is universally important.
3. Participants shall become familiar with the idea of working with an ontology to pre-structure the wiki for their writers, to avoid the “blank page” problem. The wiki administrators can give the wiki a jump start by including critical mass of content already in the wiki before bringing other people on board and help lower the bar for participation. Participants will be introduced working models and methods of starting the ontology in the wiki, step by step.
4. Since I started working with wikis, I edited Wikipedia pages here and there, helped with improvement. I got more interested in the story behind the WMF. I do see the same development in new wiki users. Wikis in the enterprise environment and Wikimedia projects are closely connected and we should strengthen each other's back. We all profit from Wikipedia, and I am sure, Wikipedia will profit from new wiki users of any context.

Few people continue to use the skills they learn in a one-time training at a conference. Most people require further support in the wake of the training. Do you have any ideas about ways you might be able to continue to provide support to trainees in the wake of the conference?

• Besides encouraging participants to regularly attend conferences and online meetings (like the MediaWiki Stakeholders’ Group monthly meeting, the Slack channels), there are a few more ways of staying in contact after the conference: In the business context, my partner Lex Sulzer’s idea of establishing a so-called “Trusted Web of Colleagues” mirrors the need for cooperation and connection among wiki workers. The community is still relatively small – this can be an advantage in the sense that members tend to help each other gladly and intensively. As I like to see it, there is no competition, it’s all cooperation.
• Also, I would like to forward the idea of "country ambassadors" as first points of contact. I do have a question about wikis or Wikipedia and don't know who to ask? A country ambassador could be my first point of contact, he/she will help me find the right partner.
• Maybe a "newbie" Slack channel could be established, the "most important basic question of the week" could be answered publicly, a monthly online meeting could happen for help, a blog about common questions by alternating writers, local peer group meetings – there are many ideas to help newbies. I endorse projects and ideas that enable users to help themselves, let them engage in the discussion and follow the view of "act local, think global".

We have very specific requirements about what you must submit with your report when you receive funding through TPS. You must provide links to an outcome, which is one of three things, generally

• something that was created as a result of your presentation (for example, something useful the trainees make using their new skills)
• a blog post you write after the event to extend the learning you take from the event to others
• a learning pattern in which you teach a skill to other Wikimedians

Do you have any ideas about what you would submit with your report to meet this requirement?

I will write a blog post with Best Practices and Learnings which I do regularly on sabinemelnicki.at. I would be happy to include the text in any other media (eg. Wikimedia blog). (I usually write in German and will seek some language guidance among my network of native speakers).

Request funded

Zabien,

Thank you for this response. In light of your clear plan for engagement during and after the conference, we are happy to fund your proposal.

Before you decide to accept funding support, please make sure to read all of the steps required of TPS participants and confirm that you are prepared to meet our requirements, as described in the "How the program works" page.

Note that you will need to submit a post-event report, due 14 days after the event. The report requires you to link to an outcome. An outcome must be something that is created during or after the event because of your participation. The purpose is to extend the value of your participation beyond the conference. Fulfilling the outcome requirement tends to be the most challenging task for TPS recipients, because some applicants mistakenly assume they can submit the materials they submit as part of the conference proceedings (such as a slide deck, a paper or a poster) to meet the outcome requirement. We do like you to link to such materials, but they do not meet the outcome requirement. Instead, your outcome should be one of the following (or something similar):

• something new that was co-created by you and your fellow participants at the event, like one or more articles on Wikipedia improving content about a topic that conference participants know about (this should be created by participants you instruct, rather than by yourself, and ideally, it should not be subject to deletion)
• a blog post you write after the event to share your conference learnings with others who did not attend the conference
• a learning pattern to teach others something you've learned at the event.

You already mentioned above that you plan to write a blog post, which is great!

Our Grants Administrator will be in touch with you about your grant. Thank you for work on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Warm regards, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 20:08, 21 February 2018 (UTC)