Learning and Evaluation/Archive/Virtual Meet ups

In-person and Virtual Meetups

The Program Evaluation & Design team, along with other from the Grantmaking team, regularly hold Meetups! You can find all of the past meet ups below.

We are always looking for what the community needs and we are very open to new ideas. Please feel free to suggest a meetup!

Past Events edit

September 20 - October 16, 2016
Leadership Development Dialogue - Please share your input!
The Community Engagement department needs your ideas about (1) how we can design opportunities for leaders that are inclusive, to help leaders develop skills and mentor one another, and (2) how we can describe leaders in our movement. Your input will be included in upcoming trainings such as, and also may be be used to design or expand leadership development activities supported by the Wikimedia Foundation.


Sunday, October 9, 2016
New Learning Rotations & Sessions at WikiConference North America 2016!
Join us Sunday October 9 at WikiConference North America in San Diego. From 3:30 to 5 p.m. we will hold a 90 minute session of learning rotations that will feature two tables for small group overviews and demonstrations of 10 different tools and resources for program design, support, & evaluation. Tools and resources to be overviewed include two table tracks, one on program support, design, & evaluation resources (Program Evaluation, Logic Models, SMART Targets, Grants Programs, Outcome Mapping) and the other on online metrics & collaborative project management tools (Global Metrics Magic Button, Category Tools, Quarry, Education Toolkit, IdeaLab, Phabricator) For more information visit the event page


Monday, April 20-21
New in-person pre-conference for Wikimedia Conference 2016!
For the third year in a row, during the days before Wikimedia Conference, we will host pre-conference Learning Days, in partnerships with nearly 50 affiliates from all over the world. Workshop sessions will be scheduled on both Wednesday, April 20 and Thursday, April 21. Check out the updates on the event page. We have added the agenda for both days as well as sessions for; a) Engaging and Retaining Volunteer, b) Best Practice Exchanges with other Leaders, c) Designing Wikimedia Programs and Events, and d) Measuring and Evaluating Impact.


Saturday, October 10, 3:45 pm (GMT- 4)
Community Health Clinic: Researching prescription for healthy communities (WikiConference USA)
What are the characteristics of a healthy Wikimedia Community? What are communities doing to promote the welcoming and retention of new editors and contributors and support overall civility? In this session we will review what we have learned from recent and past Wikimedia research on community health as well as discover what other organizations are doing to support robust online communities. Sign up on the session page!


Sunday, October 11, 11:45 am (GMT- 4)
Creative Program Design Workshop (WikiConference USA)
In what ways might we create and improve Wikimedia outreach programs using creative problem solving techniques? In this 75 minutes workshop you will work with other program leaders to create and improve Wikimedia outreach programs using a creative problem solving process. Bring back to your community the best thinking of other program leaders for new and improved programs, as well as a process you can use to engage your community volunteers in creative program design. Sign up on the session page!


Tuesday Sept 29, 17:00 - 18:00 (UTC)
New Learning Circle: Editathons
What makes a great Editathon? What are editahtons really good at accomplishing? How can we share lessons across the Wikimedia community? We invite community members across the movement to join us in a panel and discuss the last Evaluation Report of this program!Program leaders from Bulgaria, Albania and México will share their experience running this Wikimedia program. Sign up via Google Hangouts. The panel will be recorded and available later on our Youtube channel.


Thursday Sept 17, 17:00 - 18:00 (UTC)
Wikimetrics Training - Special edition: Inspire grantees
In this training session, we will demonstrate how to collect Global Metrics using Wikimetrics. We will also go over a few cases that have arisen among grantees from Inspire Campaign. Join us and bring your questions and challenges with the tool! The training will be recorded and available later on our Youtube channel.

Friday Sept 11, 14:00 - 15:00 (GMT +3)
Wikimedia Program Toolkits - In-person workshop (Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015)
Overview workshop (and practical session) for using program toolkits for education, writing contests, and photo events and how to help them grow. Participants will learn about our new program toolkits to help connect community leaders to resources and best practices for planning, running, and evaluating programs as well as to each other as Wikimedia organizers. If scheduled for the full 60 minutes the session will also include a hands-on learning activity in which participants will, in addition to learning about the resources, gain practice in using and contributing to the toolkits.

Saturday Sept 12, 14:00 - 15:00 (GMT +3)
Tools to Measure & Track (Tools Rotations) - In-person workshop (Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015)
A roundtables session with three break-out group choices to learn about a handful of tools available for measuring work across the wikis. Participants who attend all three tables will learn the basics about five cool tools, how they work, and what they do. The tools which will be shared include:

  • Category Tools: GLAMorous and CatScan, two awesome tools from Magnus Manske helpful for monitoring categories of content, these tools are especially useful for monitoring image categories
  • Education Extension: A tool for connecting groups of users participating in a program or event together for easier coordination and impact tracking
  • User & Page Metric Tools: Wikimetrics and Quarry, two powerful tools for measuring the editing behavior across the wikis of groups of users

Saturday Sept 12, 20:00 - 21:00 (GMT +3)
Fail Fest – Learning Together - In-person workshop (Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015)
A very brief overview about learning from failure including a useful strategy for framing failure stories. The overview will be followed by a share from an actual project failure and then smaller break-out groups for participants to share their stories and practice framing them for shared learning.

Sunday Sept 13, 12:00 - 13:00 (GMT +3)
Storytelling to Advance the Wikimedia Movement - In-person workshop (Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015)
A workshop with brief presentation followed by applied group learning activity for telling a story. While storytelling is a skill that few people naturally possess, many can learn ways to better incorporate storytelling practices to better share learning across the movement. The workshop will focus on the key types and aspects of storytelling as well as provide a framework for developing stories so that we might learn together from participants experiences.

19 August 2015
Writing Contest Learning Circle 2015
We invite program leaders to take part in a panel where they can present their experience coordinating an editing contest on Wikipedia. This virtual event will be a chance to look together at the data published on the evaluation report after the last round of data collection. It will also be an opportunity to get acquainted with different case studies across the movement. Join us! Sign up on the Google Hangout event page. The meet-up will be recorded and availbale later on our Youtube channel.

15 July 2015 (9 am GMT-5)
New Learning Day
We will host a series of workshops, on Wednesday, July 15, on the days prior to Wikimania 2015, in Mexico City. Due to limited space, attendance to this Learning Day is by invitation only. Participants will have the opportunity to further engage in topics such as tracking and reporting, storytelling, organizational development, and other topics in evaluation. Learn more on the event page on the portal. See you in person!


May 2015
New in-person pre-conference workshop day for Wikimedia Conference!
If you plan to come to Wikimedia Conference 2015, and are interested in attending Learning & Evaluation training workshops, let us know! We are asking participants to fill out a survey by February 6 to tell us their topics of interest and availability. Find out more on the event page on Meta.


10 April 2015 - 14:00 to 14:50 (GMT +1)
Wikimetrics training (GLAM-Wiki Conference)
If you are coming to GLAM-Wiki Conference 2015 in Holland, learn more about Program Evaluation and Design workshops! If you are new to Wikimetrics, or are experimenting with the tool, come by this new workshop! We'll host a live demo where participants can see step by step how to operate the tool. If you have a list of users (called a cohort) that you would like to run through Wikimetrics, bring it with you and we can go through it together.


10 April 2015 - 15:30 to 16:30 (GMT +1)
Pitching GLAM-Wiki Partnerships (GLAM-Wiki Conference)
If you are coming to GLAM-Wiki Conference 2015 in Holland, learn more about Program Evaluation and Design workshops! «Pitching GLAM Wiki Partnerships» will include a panel of presenters who will: present their best practices for how to identify a good potential partnership, share the important steps and strategic points for planning and launching a successful pitch, and call out any mistakes to learn from. Follow the page of the event on the conference's wiki, and sign up to come on the event page on Facebook.


11 April 2015 - 15:30 to 16:30 hs. (GMT+1)
Tracking and Reporting for GLAM Partnerships (GLAM-Wiki Conference)
If you are coming to GLAM-Wiki Conference 2015 in Holland, learn more about Program Evaluation and Design workshops! «Tracking and Reporting for GLAM Partnerships» will include a panel of presenters who will: present their best practices for how to identify key tracking and reporting needs, share the important steps and strategic points for implementing successful tracking and reporting to your partnership collaborators, and call out any mistakes to learn from. Follow the page of the event on the conference's wiki, and sign up to come on the event page on Facebook.


14 February - 15 March 2015
Learning Pattern Campaign: Let's Talk Diversity!
If you worked to bring more diversity on Wikimedia projects, share what you know about Diversity in the Wikimedia movement. The aim of this campaign is to generate a pool of knowledge around different gaps spotted on Wikimedia projects, in a way to give support to the upcoming Inspire Grants Campaign. Share a problem, a solution, or write a Learning Pattern! You can win a Learning and Evaluation Barnstar!


26 February 2015
Virtual Event: Education Program Toolkit
Join us for the launch of the first Wikimedia Program Toolkit! The Learning and Evaluation team at Wikimedia Foundation, together with the Education Collaborative have created the first of a series of program toolkits: a guide to implement Wikimedia programs, that stems from the very experience of program leaders all over the world. The event will be streamed live via Hangouts and will be available later as a recording on our Youtube channel. Join the live conversation and discussion of this new resource!


17 December 2014, 1600 UTC
Virtual meet-up: Framing your measures to tell the story you want.
This is the third and final event of the learning series «Telling your program story». If you are a program or project leader, and struggle to get your story across in reporting, this is your chance to learn a few tricks and resources to tell a better story. In the third and last session we will discuss how to represent advocacy work better, how a report form could better reflect that and how to frame measures that matter on a local level. will go over the use of tools in reporting to visualize information. After the series has ended, we will enable a new written tool on the Evaluation portal. Read more here.


16 September to 17 November 2014
II Round of voluntary program reporting
As we did in the Fall of 2013, we launched our second round of voluntary reporting. We invite all program leaders and evaluators to participate in, the most epic data collection and analysis of Wikimedia programs we've done so far as a movement. Learn more of how you can submit the data you've been gathering about your programs since September 1, 2013. If you have any questions, reach out to the team!

12 November 2014
Virtual meet-up: Infographics and the visual display of information
This is the second event of a new learning series called «Telling your program story». If you are a program or project leader, and struggle to get your story across in reporting, this is your chance to learn a few tricks and resources to tell a better story. The second session will go over the use of tools in reporting to visualize information. After the series has ended, we will enable a new written tool on the Evaluation portal. Read more here.


15 October 2014
Virtual meet-up: Storytelling strategies for improved reporting
This is the first event of a new learning series called «Telling your program story». If you are a program or project leader, and struggle to get your story across in reporting, this is your chance to learn a few tricks and resources to tell a better story. Through some key strategies you can improve the way you share about your efforts, the impact of the work in advancing the movement, and how others might benefit from such efforts. After the series has ended, we will enable a new written tool on the Evaluation portal. Read more here.


13 to 16 October 2014
Office Hours for voluntary program reporting
The team will host office hours with program leaders to give support on reporting and Wikimetrics. If you are struggling to get at the data you need for reporting, join us on Monday and we’ll help you out via IRC chat #wikimedia-ped.

  • Monday, Oct 13, from 1500 - 1700 UTC (8 to 10 am PDT)
  • Thursday, Oct 16, from 00 - 0200 UTC (Wednesday, October 15, 5 to 7pm PDT)
  • Tursday, Oct 16, from 1400 - 1600 UTC (7 to 9am PDT)

More Office Hours to come during this month. Stay tuned!


6 October 2014
Office Hours for voluntary program reporting
The team will host office hours with program leaders to give support on reporting and Wikimetrics. If you are struggling to get at the data you need for reporting, join us on Monday and we’ll help you out via IRC chat #wikimedia-ped.

  • Monday, October 6 from 15:00 -17:00 UTC (8 - 9 am PDT)
  • Tuesday October 7 from 0:00-2:00 UTC (Monday October 6, 5 - 7 pm PDT)

More Office Hours to come during this month. Stay tuned!

September 17, 15:00 UTC
Wikimetrics Overview
We will go over Wikimetrics to review the new variables to measure editors activity online, as well as overview the tool to its full capacity. If you recently ran an activity, bring your cohorts online and practice using your own set of usernames!

September 4, 15:00 UTC
Setting goals and targets in your FDC proposal: A SMART annual plan approach
In this virtual meet-up, Grantmaking's Learning and Evaluation team will review how Wikimedia organizations can set up goals and targets using a SMART criteria. If you are planning to apply for an Annual Plan Grant, please join us! Bring along all the questions you might have. Visit the guide to SMART planning on the Plan section of the portal to learn more about this evaluation tool.

September 4, 17:00 UTC
Global Metrics discussion
In this day, Learning and Evaluation team will be available on IRC channel to discuss Global Metrics, their origin, meaning and implementation in Wikimedia program's reports. Join the conversation #wikimedia-ped !

September 11, 15:00 UTC
Global Metrics discussion
In this day, Learning and Evaluation team will be available on IRC channel to discuss Global Metrics, their origin, meaning and implementation in Wikimedia program's reports. Join the conversation #wikimedia-ped !

August 20, 15:00 UTC
Beyond Wikimetrics II
The second event of the 'Beyond Wikimetrics' series is here! Sign up to continue learning how to use databases and APIs for research. Hosted by Jonathan Morgan, wiki research specialist. Bring your own research practice and post questions. Re visit the presentation from the first meet-up by clicking here.

August 27, 15:00 UTC
Beyond Wikimetrics III (final)
The third and last webinar of the 'Beyond Wikimetrics' series is at the end of August. Don't miss it! Sign up to continue learning how to use databases and APIs for research. Hosted by Jonathan Morgan, wiki research specialist. Bring your own research practice and post questions. Re visit the presentation from the first meet-up by clicking here.

August 6, 1700-1900 UTC
Learning and Evaluation Poster Session and IdeaLab Mixer (Wikimania pre-conference)
A poster session with program leader and grantee poster presentations spotlighting program learning and evaluation will be combined with an IdeaLab mixer to help potential program and project collaborators meet to develop ideas for projects to improve Wikimedia projects, websites, and communities. This session will include light appetizers and refreshments.

August 8, 11:30-13:00 UTC
Growing the Awesome in your programs (Wikimania Workshop)
Jaime Anstee and Edward Galvez from the Program Evaluation and Design team will overview tracking and reporting guidance and tools including tracking templates and Wikimetrics.

August 8, 16:30-18:00 UTC
Best practices for the evaluation of GLAM-Wiki cooperations (Wikimania Workshop)
Jaime Anstee from the Program Evaluation and Design team will join Beat Estermann and Martin Brinkerink for a GLAM strategy workshop to engage community members in further development of evaluation strategies and systematic measures for community members engaged in GLAM outreach activities.

August 8 - 10, TBD
Demonstration and discussion booth offerings (Wikimania Community Village - Grantmaking Booth)
The Program Evaluation and Design team will offer a variety of demonstration and discussion sessions at different times during the conference on topics that range from setting goals and targets to tracking, reporting, and wikimetrics. Watch for details coming soon

Saturday, August 9th 13:15 to 14:15
Program Evaluation and Design Meet-up (Wikimania)
The Program Evaluation and Design team will hold a meet-up for program leaders and evaluators - Grab your lunch and meet us at the Grantmaking booth!

  Past events

Projects, events, and online impact. In the last year, we have seen over 30 project & event grants come to completion spending about $350,000. The discussion went around the combined outcomes of these initiatives, as well as some recommendations around program planning and funding decisions for this next fiscal year. Watch the video online. Revisit the presentation.

  • 2014-05-31 Program Evaluation and Design workshop. We looked into the core points for program tracking and reporting and explored related resources, as well as overview the functionality of, and explore using, Wikimetrics.
  • 2014-06-1 IdeaLab workshop. Grantmaking team members facilitated an interactive session working together to learn how to use the IdeaLab to write-up new ideas for projects and turn them into project plans or grant proposals.