WikiIndaba conference 2017/Questions & Needs

Overview

Program

Future of Indaba

Participants

Questions & Needs

Feedback

Outreach

L2K

Team

This is meant for listing inputs, ideas, questions and recommendations in order to understand needs and expectations participants of WikiIndaba 2017 in January 2017 in Accra, Ghana. This will help us to shape the meeting's agenda and (or) talks to ensure each participant fully contributes to the planning process and maximizes the opportunity of the Training at the Conference. Each Community is required to state

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.
• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.
• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?
• 'Interested in attending?
• Questions if you have any?

As a way of collaborating after Indaba each scholarship seeking participant will be required to host an event to share their experience and new things they learnt at the Conference upon their return

Ghana

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.
• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.

We have highly motivated and active community of volunteers

• • Kiwix project
  • Wiki Needs Girls
  • Edit Ghana
• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?
  • Logistical and connectivity challenges
  • Undue bureaucracy and red tapering.
  • Retaining editors after training
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  • Tools for project evaluation, GLAM Wikimetrics Baglama etc.
  • How to contribute to other projects e.g. Wiki Source, Wiki News.
  • Surveys.
  • Copyright issues on Wikimedia Commons.What are the best practices.
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
• Interested in attending?Yes and many local Wikipedians

1. Raphael Berchie 07:22, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
2. Flixtey (talk) 09:57, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
3. Bayelharriet (talk) 10:44, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
4. Celestinesucess (talk) 10:53, 4 October 2016 (UTC)
5. SAgbleySAgbley (talk) 16:03, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?
  • When you write How do we strengthen and promote our local languages on Wikipedia.... is that a question you ask ? Or do you propose to hold a session about how to do it generally ? Or do you propose to hold a session to share your experience about how your user group does it ? Anthere (talk)
  • Also, could you clarify what you mean by copyright issues. More specifically ? Anthere (talk)

Anthere, I think what they meant by copyright issues on Wikimedia Commons is that they are interested in learning about image licensing and how to deal with them. I think it should be reworded to "Understanding licensing policy on Wikimedia Commons" or something like that. All the best. Wikicology (talk) 06:57, 7 October 2016 (UTC)

South Africa

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings:

We have learned over the years and through trial and error, how to structure the administration for a successful and professional volunteer association. We have also grasped a useful non-central system of running community projects, with the chapter as an enabling agent for the volunteers.

• Strengths:
  • Largest African language Wikipedia.
  • Growing Small Language Wikipedias.
  • Successful GLAM projects with strong emphasis on collaboration with local partners
    • Joburgpedia
    • Wiki Loves Monuments
    • Wiki from Above
  • Administration of chapter & lessons learned in turning it around
  • Experience with offline wikipedia (Kiwix and others)

• Weaknesses:
  • Getting more participation from Community volunteers.
  • Building and maintaining partnerships with GLAM Institutions.
  • Conflict resolution & Management - more training required

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  • How to recruit and attract volunteers for local languages wikis?
  • What barriers to entry do other Wikimedia chapters/groups face or deal with?
  • What can be done to foster more collaboration in the continent?
  • Success stories with offline wikipedia setups

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
  • Create alliances with other communities, share knowledge and ideas and on how to grow our communities and create networks.
  • Collaborate to get other local sister projects like wiktionary going.
  • Quarterly strategy / brainstorming sessions for various groups.
  • Continental collaboration

• Interested in attending?

1. Mohau ^Talk 05:52, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
2. Coenraad ^Talk 11:19, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
3. Thuvack (talk) 11:41, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
4. Bobbyshabangu (talk) 12:24, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
5. Wizzy (Talk) 16 November 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Egypt

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

1. Wikiepdia Education Program in a number of universities.
2. Planning Wiki editing and photography events.
3. Contacts with Egyptian universities and NGOs.
4. Contacts with active Egyptian editors and administrators.

• Strengths:

We are now an established, active usergroup organizing many local wiki competitions and events:

1. A 4-year old Wikipedia Education Program in some Egyptian universities.
2. A series of Wikipedia workshops.
3. Wiki loves monuments and Africa competitions.

• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?

1. Keeping track of our activities.
2. Putting together a doable yearly activity plan.
3. Lack of effective communication.

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?

1. Have more coordination with African Wikimedia communities.
2. Learn about the Wiki activties in Sub-Saharan Africa and how they are organized.
3. Get an idea about how funds are obtained and used.

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?

1. We will create new projects to have a better representation of the African Culture on the Arabic Wikipedia.

• Interested in attending?

--Mohamed Ouda (talk) 20:47, 1 November 2016 (UTC)
--Ahmed Mohi El din (talk) 13:13, 19 November 2016 (UTC)
--لا روسا (talk) 20:27, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Morocco

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: Share our first year of experience as a user group, achievements and challenges.
• Strengths:
  • Relatively large and enthusiastic Wikimedia community.
  • A newly founded user group, which allows Wikimedians in the country to focus their efforts together. The community is also highly motivated for their new group.
  • Plenty of societies and NGOs to cooperate with.
  • Strong public relations with the media sector, as well as some technology supervisors.
  • Strong bonds with other Wikimedian communities in North Africa.
• Weaknesses:
  • High number of Moroccan contributors living in diaspora, or cities located afar from each other.
  • Multilingual community, making it harder to focus on a particular Wikipedia version, as contributors may either speak Arabic, French, English, Berber or Darijah.
  • Lack of financial resources, which makes it hard to organize meetings and activities.
  • Limited involvement in the international Wikimedia movement, since the group is only newly founded.
  • Lack of periodical meetings.
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  • Learning from the experiences of other Wikimedia groups, especially about things like organizing outdoor activities and dealing with routine issues.
  • How to attract new and more active members to participate in the meetings and events.
  • Learning to organize regional events such as conferences or conventions through the previous experiences of certain African countries (Tunisia, South Africa, Egypt, Ghana ...)
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
  • Staying in touch through the common points that bring us together, such as collaboration with the WikiAfrica program or the Wiki Loves Africa contest, but also through thematic and regional conferences (French-speaking or Arabic conferences).
  • Learn more from all the participants and listen to their new ideas and concepts that we can transmit later to the Moroccan wikipedians on a local level.
• Interested in attending:

1. Reda benkhadra (talk) 23:02, 20 November 2016 (UTC)
2. Anass Sedrati (talk) 11:09, 21 November 2016 (UTC)
3. Ismael Zniber --Ismael zniber (talk) 03:14, 24 November 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Algeria

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learningspresent an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

 we can share our experience with other users in Africa

• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.

Presently, our team is involved with the following projects:
- Contests (Wikiloves Monuments, Earth and Africa)
- Wikipedia Education Program in his thrird Year in the University 
- many presentaions and Workshop to presenting Wikipedia an his brothers projects.
- Wikinic
we planned to do 
- create a GLAM projecty in Algeria with a bibliotheque
- organise a great event around opend knowledge 

• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?

- We need more active users based in a same place.
- Our members are dispersed throughout Algeria and outside.
- because the policies of our countries our group can not raise funds from the foundation easily in effect all the projects launched by WikiDZ (our UG) are not efficasse and does not affect a large population
  we use therefore our own financial resources (for good cause); Unfortunately this is not enough, good intentions for the dissemination of free knowledge

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?

- 1- What is the Best projects of each UG in Africa 
- 2- How we can progress and  eliminate the weakness of the group 
- 3- Collecting the most quantity of ideas for the future 2017 plan of WikiDz

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?

  we hope to create a relationships, a network of the african affiliate group    

• Interested in attending?

1. --Mohammed Bachounda (talk) 14:52, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
2. Gêt Fenyan (talk) 20:12, 3 November 2016 (UTC)
3. user:Oldstoneage --Oldstoneage (talk) 17:50, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Ivory Coast

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

• Our experience in creating partnerships with Culture and Technology entities.
• The history of our User Group.
• Our know-how in terms of event organization.
• Wiki Loves Women
• Our experience in contributing in multiple languages.
• Experience as Jury of Wiki Loves Africa
• The Wiki Class Project

• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.

• Our activities are made possible thanks to the wide spectrum of Culture and IT actors we work with. For instance, the Headquarter of the User Group is hosted by E-voir, a digital marketing company. Most of our large-scale activities take place at Goethe-Institut.
• The members of the User Group are more or less tech-savvy. Their aptitude to use a computer with ease makes the training sessions less difficult.
• Some members have been contributing to the WMF platforms for more than 6 years. Being aware of the editing mechanisms, they give crucial advice during editathons and training sessions.

The regular frequency of our activities

The complementary diversity of our members skills

We are involved in several WMF projects among which:

• Wiki Loves Africa
• Wiki Loves Women
• Glam Wiki
• The Africa Destubathon

• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?

• The lack of equipment stands out as a terrific disadvantage. During contributing sessions, some members cannot participate effectively due to the few number of laptops available.
• The funding mechanism is an issue to tackle. We do not yet fully master the WMF Grant process.
• Few advanced contributors. For now, only few participants during the edit'athons have +100 edits.

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?

• How is the funding issue addressed?
• What actions are carried out for increasing the number of regular contributors?
• What can be done to erase the language barrier restraining Francophones from participating actively in African projects on wiki?
• Creative commons licence
• WikiData
• Using the translation tool to its full potential
• Taking high quality pictures
• Wiki tools training
• Knowing more about referencing and sources in general.

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?

• Collaborate on regional projects.
• Keep in touch with the others wikimedians
• Support other User Groups projects, during endorsements for instance.
• Join the African-wikimedia newsletter
• Follow Wiki Indaba on social networks

• Interested in attending?

• African Hope (talk) 12:31, 2 November 2016 (UTC)
• Papischou (talk) 13:53, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
• Yasield (talk) 13:53, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
• Manouka (talk) 17:03, 15 November 2016 (UTC)
• Kctzch (talk) 17:16, 16 November 2016 (UTC)
• Mouahé (talk) 14:45, 17 November 2016 (UTC)
• Mr2KM (talk) 19:32, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
• Jacquitoz (talk) 19:37, 18 November 2016 (UTC)
• Bendekam (talk) 21:20, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Nigeria

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

  WUGN will be glad to share Case study of our successes and challenges from our current community engagement (Wiki Loves Women) as a way of planning successful event in Africa.

• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.

  WUGN recently is involve in Wiki Loves Women, the project has consistently introduced within six months many Nigerian women to Wikipedia and Wiki Commons through edit-a-thorn and also increase their visibility on the same platform .

See links for further explainations:

• The Girl Child, Women in Politics and Entertainment
• Women in Civic Society and Humanity
• Women Inspired: Health and Community
• Women in Social Services Promoting SDG in Nigeria
• Women Using ICT for Work Life Integration in Nigeria

• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?

  Funding: Since all of us are volunteers in the group, we do face challenges of organizing local event especially where we cant secure funding.Or where funding is available but delay in processing of such fund by the foundation.

  Tools: lack of required tools by the user group such as Camera, Laptops e.t.c

  African mentality about volunteering activities; difficulties in securing people to contribute their valuable time without being pay for it in Nigeria.

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?

  Application of various Creative Common Licenses in Wiki Commons

  The act or ways of planning an hitch free edit-a-thorn

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?

  We will organise events that will assist in transferring knowledge acquired during this event to our community members.

• Interested in attending?

1. Wikicology (talk) 05:39, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
2. Jamie Tubers (talk) 13:59, 7 October 2016 (UTC)
3. Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 18:15, 9 October 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Cameroon

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

During the conference we will be sharing with other participants the following:

• How far we have gone in spreading the ideas of Wikimedia Movement and introducing Wikipedia to more Cameroonian people.

• The strategies we have adopted to encouraging people to become contributors, maintaining the community and obtaining more community members.

• How far we have gone in helping on cooperation with other communities or institutions.

• How we plan to develop Cameroon-based Wikimedia projects.

• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.

Training Wikimedians across the country is one of our strengths given the consistency of such events. We are also gathering of users and editors in one cohesive and constructive group. This is with the aim of forming a community in the future.

Presently, our team is involved with the following projects:

• Wiki Loves Women

• Wiki Loves Africa

• Wikithon

What we planned to do:

• Setting up a Wikimedia User Group before the first part of 2017.
• Education program: outreach in college, online course.
• Cooperation with other institution or community.
• GLAM.
• Online Social Media Outreach.
• Organising workshops in different towns on how to use wikipedia.
• Magazine/Newsletters.

• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?

The chanllenges we face include but not limited to the following:

• Inadequate Skills for the Project – A project sometimes requires skills that we do not possess. In order to effectively train others on Wiki Project you need to be have adequate experience in the wiki related projects. This at times is missing and we are not sure if what we deliver is the best.

• Support from intermediary organizations is completely absent

• Grantmakers and Private foundations do not contribute to the growth of the initiative locally.

• Our concerntration is mostly focus in the two major cities of the country. There is no funding to spread the initiative to other regions of the country.

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?

Our participation at the conferrence will focus on the following:

• How to manage a Wikimedia User Group.

• Understanding licensing policy on Wikimedia Commons.

• How to contribute to other projects such as wikidata, wikisource, wikinews etc

• Get more training on how to edit and create articles.

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?

There is an age old adage that says “two heads are better than one”. We intend to established ongoing partnerships with the WIKIINDABA organizing teams and relevant institutions, that share the group's mission of fostering the Wikimedia community and contributing to opening knowledge and culture. We plan to invite experience wikipedian from the community to take part in local events in Cameroon.

• Interested in attending?

1. AminouT (talk) 15:33, 4 October 2016 (UTC))
2. Artista Poetica (talk) 17:33, 4 October 2016 (UTC))
3. Geugeor (talk) 22:53, 4 October 2016 (UTC))
4. Alangi derick (talk) 21:55, 15 November 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Ethiopia

Input for the conference programme:

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

*my perspective on the realities of Wikipedia in Ethiopia

*how we established some of our partnerships

• • 3 Valuable things you want to learn from this conference:

1. Innovative solutions being applied in Wikipedia throughout Africa, that we may be able to carry to carry to our country

2. What the future of Wikipedia could be in the near future, and what role African Communities play in this future.

3. WikiData GLAM and WikiSources

• Strengths (or what you are doing well):

• Partnerships with different organizations that are willing to support our activities
• high number of individuals interested in the the workshops that we organize.

• Weaknesses (or what you could use help with):

• One of our major weakness is the retention of new members. There are usually very active participants in our workshops, but their activity seizes after the workshop is over. Even if it continues after the workshop, it only lasts a few days.
• Another major problem is the almost non-existent culture of digitization and online documentation. This makes it quite difficult to find good and relevant references for articles. It would be very helpful to know the experiences from other users that have faced similar challenges.

• Needs:

• Questions:

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference

we wold like to build a network of communities that will help the Ethiopian community to grow. There are few active Wikipedians in Ethiopia, and by building this network we hope new Wikipedians will be able to get assistance and learn from Wikipedians around the region.

• Interested in attending:

1. Nebiyu Sultan Nebiyu.s (talk) 13:54, 18 November 2016 (UTC)

Uganda

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learning.

s: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

1. We would like to share an experience about the wiki projects like Wiki loves Africa.

2. We want to know how projects like Wiki loves Education can be initiated in our country.

3. And generally how we can utilize wiki media and get the best out of it as well as contributing to other projects like Wiki books.

• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.

- Currently we are participating in the wiki loves Africa project and we are carrying out photo hunts and we 'll uploading photos to wiki and we also took part in the Kumusha takes wiki project.

- We were successful in the last year's wiki loves Africa project where we managed to upload more than 700 quality photos and we also had a Ugandan on the Jury panel.

- We are planning to extend wiki media projects to higher institutions of learning in uganda through Wiki Loves education that we have seen being done in Ghana (Ashesi university).

- We also are looking forward to participating in wiki loves women project.

• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?

1. Our user group is still small and we would like to have a wide network of users in our country.

2. We lack support in carrying out projects like lack of equipments like cameras for taking high quality photos.

3. Our user group is mainly concentrated in one city and this means that the other towns across the country are left out.

4. Most of the people are not aware of the wiki media projects and therefore there is a need to extend awareness to the common people.

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?

1. How to attract new members and maintain them.

2. How and where do other tools of wiki media do apply and how best can we utilize them.

3. How to get involved in other wiki media projects and contribute to them and share the general knowledge about wiki media as well as meeting new people with new ideas.

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?

We hope after the conference will be able to keep in touch and the conference will act as a binder a of all the wiki media user groups from different regions.

• Interested in attending?
• Erina Mukuta
• Mulumba Ivan Matthias
• Ssebaggala Douglas
• Maureen Nakiyimba
• Samson Ngumenawe
• Kalungi Nathan
• Questions if you have any?

Malawi

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

- Some of the progress we have made in Malawi in implementing programmes like Wiki Loves Africa and the Wikimedian-in-Residence programme.

- Highlight some of the struggles we are facing, especially in implementing a thriving Usergroup

• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.

-We have managed to successfully run several Wiki projects including Wiki Loves Africa and the Wikipedian-in-Residence project with National Archives of Malawi and the Society of Malawi, Historic and Scientific.

• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?

- Challenges in implementing a usergroup. Challenges around time management and fostering a culture of volunteer-ism.

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?

- Planning projects

- Implementing projects

- Initiating Wikipedia projects in local languages. Input from experienced users.

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?

- Continuing the dialogue via the African Wikipedia mailing list

- Strengthening of regional collaborations, especially with experienced chapters like Wikimedia ZA (proximity, common language (English))

• Interested in attending?

1. Michaelphoya (talk) 07:29, 5 October 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Somalia

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.
• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.
• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
• Interested in attending?
• Questions if you have any?

Tunisia

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.
• Strengths: We are now an established User Group with many events and ongoing projects. Our members showed commitment and are highly skilled to manage a range of activities. We showed a good example in working with local partners and promote the Wikimedia movement in Tunisia. Our ongoing activities are :

1. A series of Wikipedia workshops with other associations and universities
2. MedinaPedia workshops
3. GLAM project with the Diocesan Library of Tunis

• Weaknesses: Our major challenge is how to work properly and efficiently without a legal visa under the umbrella of other associations (i.e CLibre and Carthagina). This impacts our work on some contests and projects that aren't aligned with our partners' values or editorial line. Now, we came to a major point to scale up our work by founding our official association.
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  • After two years as a user group, we want to know how to be a chapter and how to manage this chapter, we want to learn a lot about GLAM projects to bring new ideas to Tunisia.
  • Also a training about bots and mediawiki will be so interesting for the community
  • How local wikis are managed and how they use wikidata ?
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
  • We will create a network between participants and we will create new projects in new country with participants in WikiIndaba this year
  • After WikiIndaba, Tunisia will organise GLAM North Africa Camp, WikiIndaba will be a great opportunity to learn more about GLAM projects in other countries and to talk about this upcoming event.
• Interested in attending?

1. Youssefbhy (talk)
2. Touzrimounir (talk) 08:56, 8 October 2016 (UTC)
3. --Helmoony (talk) 03:42, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
4. Afek91 (talk) 20:06, 9 October 2016 (UTC)
5. Emnamizouni (talk) 14:25, 31 October 2016 (UTC)
6. Zeinebtakouti (talk) 09:57, 4 November 2016 (UTC)
7. Yamen (talk) 19:06, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Tanzania

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

• Our plan of growing the Wikimedia/Wikipedia community in Tanzania
• Experiences learning from organizing past events

• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.

• Building partnerships with photographers to encourage them to contribute their works to Wikimedia
• Use of social media to build the community and create awareness of Wikimedia and Wikipedia in Tanzania

• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?

• How to go around conflict resolution when writing articles

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?

• How to source for funding to run wikipedia and wikimedia projects
• How we can build a community around Swahili the lingua franca of Southeast Africa

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?

• Build connections that will lead to future projects
• Interact more online and through social media

• Interested in attending?

• Geoffrey Kateregga
• Bukulu Steven
• Maryam Mgonja
• Iddy John

• Questions if you have any?

• What does it take to host WikiIndaba

Botswana

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.

1.The group would like to share an involvement about the Wikipedia and its sister projects. 2. The group will love to know how the programs like the Wikipedia Monument can be segmented in Botswana. 3. How we can generally engage more people into the Wikipedia and its sister projects.

• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.
• Wikipedia Wednesdays group with Botswana Penn and Orange Botswana
• Still growing with newbies being trained

• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?

Loss of volunteers,this can be improved through mentorship and creating great network with the other communities. 1.Lack of effective communication by members. 2.Trained editors tend to quit as there are problems faced like lack of money for snacks during workshops.

• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?

How to attract and recruit more volunteers. Strategies and developments in technology that Wikimedia is using as a source of outreach to communities. Mentorship strategies to Wikimedia community contributors.

• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
• Create an alliance with other communities, share knowledge and ideas and on how to grow our communities.
• we are optimistic with creating wiki-interactions, a system of the african link group.

• Interested in attending?

 Support Mompati Dikunwane (talk) 13:30, 16 November 2016 (UTC)

• Questions if you have any?

Namibia

• Valuable learnings: How to put up a really well-organised outreach activity in rural Africa, dos and don'ts.
• Strengths: Our community engagement is supported by a team of scientists from a wide range of disciplines, from anthropology all the way to Human-Computer interaction.
• Weaknesses: Our editor base is tiny and only grows at a very slow pace.
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference:
  1. Alternatives to workshops. The format has not worked in Namibia, and we need new ideas.
  2. Impact of activities that were devised or announced at WikiIndaba 2014. Which were the initiatives that worked, and could they be adapted for other African countries?
  3. How to set up an 'African response team' for typically African WikiProblems?
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference? We're already collaborating in various ways. Ping User:Pgallert if you need details.
• Interested in attending?
  • Pgallert (talk) 06:33, 28 October 2016 (UTC)
• Questions if you have any?
  • Ghana is surrounded by francophone countries, and the last WikiIndaba was mainly in English---Why can't we have a French track?

Zimbabwe

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.
• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.
• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
• Interested in attending?
• Questions if you have any?

Communities (not country based)

Swahili Community

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: present an overview of what you can do or you want to share with others.
  We can share our challenges and our perspective. We are very much interested in experiences of all school and college aimed activities.
• Strengths: Your program's (or user group’s) strengths or what you are doing well. You can list here current, ongoing, and planned projects, or areas where your group or project has been successful.
  Our strength is the longtime core editing team. Our first school outreach program in Tanzania went exceedingly well, followup is being prepared. It looks that our quality centered strategy starts carrying fruit, having surpassed 8% of all wikipedia pageviews from Tanzania (most wikipedia lookups are in English, but Kiswahili is up from a share of 4% in 2013).
• Weaknesses: Your program's (or user group’s) weaknesses or what you could use help with. List challenges you have faced on projects or as a user group. How would you like to improve in that area?
  We are a really small group of editors, only few native speakers or TZ nationals. Not all of us are resident in East Africa. Staying in touch and up to date, building networks into East Africa on the ground is a major challenge.
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  (see above) – looking into school programmes, looking into experieneces how to keep new users active, like to hear what the mid-term and long-term experience of the wiki-photo competitions is
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
  Is there an Indaba community? Ok, we keep reading the newsletter. And are very open to any kind of Indaba community growing!
• Interested in attending?
• Kipala (majadiliano)
• _MuddyB^Longa
• Questions if you have any?
  When will we know the exact date?

Non Africans

Iraq

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings:
  • WikiProject Medicine: Importance of translating medical articles in local languages, WikiProject Medicine in case of diseases' outbreaks... etc.
  • Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects in a country under crisis. (Iraq as an example)
• Strengths:
  • WikiProject Medicine introduced android apps. in different languages.
  • Expanding medical articles of endemic diseases will serve African people, and will help medical students as well as school students.
• Weaknesses:
  • low interest among specialists.
  • Some articles are expanded or written by non medical editors.
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  • Wikidata
  • How to use Bots
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
• Interested in attending?
  • Mahmood Al-Rawi
• Questions if you have any?

France

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings:
  • I believe that one of the challenges met by Africa (when it comes to Wikimedia activity) is the limited collaboration between the participants from one country to the next. Most participants stick to their user groups and cross overs stay limited. I propose to facilitate a SWOT session during which participants from all countries will have the opportunity to discuss, collaborate and get to know participants from other countries better. The scope of the SWOT will be Africa and Wikimedia projects, with the hope that this will give birth to new approaches and ideas of Africa-wide collaborations.
• Strengths:
  • Some of my current projects are Wiki Loves Africa or Wiki Loves Women. They are fairly successful I believe. My main strenghts are 1) a fairly good vision of what I want to achieve 2) ideas of how to get there 3) team members that complement my own skills and help get up in the morning 4) support from sponsors such as WMF, or Wikimedia FR or Wikimedia UK or Wikimedia CH or Fondation Orange or Goethe Institute etc.
• Weaknesses:
  • I need to know better the people I team or could team with. Things are easier after a good face to face chat. Not knowing the people and understanding well their skills and motivations is a weakness for me. This can be fixed :) Another weakness is that I am white and not african. But I can't fix that ;)
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  • 1) get to know people better
  • 2) get a better understanding of strengths and opportunities in Africa (tired of hearing about the weaknesses and threats)
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
  • Not sure what to answer here...
• Interested in attending?
  • Anthere (talk) 17:33, 26 October 2016 (UTC)
• Questions if you have any?

Germany

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings: I offer talks and presentations on:
  

• Writing Weeks
• How to talk to the press about Wikimedia projects (i.e. newspapers, radio and television stations), how to prepare for that, how to make press contacts, how testimonials can help in fundraising.
• An overview of all Wikimanias, how they developed, what was special about each one of them.
• What it means to be a Wikimedian in Residence. How to convince organizations that it is for their advantage to collaborate with the Wikimedia world. Duties. Compensation. Outreach. Impact and Influence. Reception.
• Weblinks, sources, citations. How to quote, how to format citations. Overview of citation tools.
• How to use tracking tools, how to track success, how to report findings.
• Showing the increasing importance of Wikidata. History of Wikidata. First steps. The example of the showcase item Douglas Adams (Q42). The Reasonator. Creating new items. Tools for data access and statistics. Interactive Wikidata Tour.

• Strengths: How a big chapter works. Overview of the activities and findings of Wikimedia Germany (I am not an employee of the chapter, merely a member, but will get support and preparation for all aspects regarding the chapter).
• Weaknesses: How to retain users in the Wikimedia community.
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference? 1. What are the main problems that editors face in their respective countries? 2. How to motivate edtiors in difficult financial situations. 3. How can big communities help small communities?
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference? I am an active Wikipedian for more than 9 years with more than 106,000 edits and am always available to help editors that are maybe less experienced. You can always reach me on-wiki, by e-mail, Skype, Facebook and so forth.
• Interested in attending? Gereon K.
• Questions if you have any? Please make sure that the Wi-Fi at the venue can cope with dozens of traffic heavy participants.

United States

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings:
  • It would be good to have a session dedicated to sharing the best practices from each country and the experiences of different projects.
• Strengths:
  • I am the project manager for the AfroCROWD project in the United States that is based out of the New York City area. We have spent almost two years specialising in outreach to communities in the African Diaspora and connecting to organizations we pursue as partners for our projects. I have worked on all areas of this, with an emphasis on building those partnerships, initiatives and coalitions, which has helped land us in the New York Times, and other publications, and grown our following online by the hundreds among those connected to AfroCROWD in some way. I would love to share what we are learning.
• Weaknesses:
  • While we have grown committed Wikipedia editors and encouraged those already active within the community, we would like to continue to increase the number of those who remain active.
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  • 1) Meet people in the African Wikimedia community and elsewhere.
  • 2) Learn more about the Wikimedia community on the continent and how we can be a part of it more and more.
  • 3) How to grow the smaller language Wikipedias.
  • 4) Build bridges across the African diaspora.
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
  • We would like to have virtual events with the Indaba community starting during the conference if possible.
  • AfroCROWD would also like to connect with Indaba through Twitter and other social media throughout the year whenever Wikipedia related events on the continent and in the African Diaspora take place.
• Interested in attending?

1. Yes! Shanluan
2. Aliceba (talk) 10:56, 30 November 2016 (UTC) (Afrocrowd founder)

• Questions if you have any?

Switzerland / Kiwix

Inputs for the conference

I'm putting the Kiwix marker in the title because, honestly, it's more about offline than Switzerland.

• Valuable learnings:
  • A session on how offline editing is coming to regions with poor or no internet connectivity - most notably through Wikifundi, the upcoming Kiwix extension for mediawiki offline editing.
• Strengths:
  • Kiwix is the standard offline solution for accessing Wikimedia content: not only Wikipedia, but also the Wiktionary, WikiVoyage or WikiSource and many others. Kiwix is already being used and distributed by several user groups and chapters in Africa. We've also started deploying stand alone apps like Wikimed (someone else is addressing the editing part, I'm just about usage), which focuses on medical content.
• Weaknesses:
  • Distribution is difficult, and since we're rolling out a brand new content it is largely untried. The more feedback during the conference, the better.
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  1. Meet new people in the African Wikimedia community who are interested in acting as ambassadors and/or provide feedback from the ground.
  2. Share experiences with existing ambassadors.
  3. Broaden awareness - directly present Kiwix' new content and possibilities, incl. android apps and WikiFundi
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
  • Once contacts are established, it is muuuuch easier to get the ball rolling on any given project. People interested in rolling a Kiwix program should know who to contact and what to expect.
• Interested in attending?
  • Yes, provided there's funding for the plane! Stephane
• Questions if you have any?

India

Inputs for the conference

• Valuable learnings:
  • Community building: Punjabi Wikimedians User Group
  • Beginning Photography
  • Cross-wiki exchange
• Strengths:
  • Punjabi Wikimedians organized recently WikiConference India 2016.
  • Working together as a team and helping other language communities as well.

Weaknesses:

• • We want to build a working registered non-profit organization.
  • Our community is still less in number despite the total number of speakers
• What are the 3 most important things you want to learn at this conference?
  • Problems and Best practices of African Wikimedia communities.
  • Wikidata and Wikipedia intergration
  • Advanced Photography
• How do you want to collaborate with the Indaba community after the conference?
  • I would like to collaborate with the Indaba community to the empowerment of new language communities and sharing our experiences to work efficiently.
• Interested in attending?
  • Satdeep Gill
• Questions if you have any?

References