Wikimedistas de Uruguay/Reports/Report of activities 2023
Introduction
During 2023, Wikimedistas de Uruguay continued its process of experimentation of initiatives and community consolidation. Our Plan 2023 was both a roadmap and a living document to guide us during the year.
In the process of executing the 2023 Plan, however, we encountered points that forced us to reflect and which were reflected in our new funding request for the 2024-2025 Strategic Plan.
During 2023, we experienced "growing pains". The team grew from two people with occasional consultancies to a team of five people, plus an event manager for the GLAM Wiki Conference and two large consultancies (one on hubs and one on Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation). On the one hand, having a larger team allowed us to address more challenges and take advantage of new opportunities. But it also implied changes and learning in the different ways of leading, relating and communicating within a team and with external consultants.
The redesign of our website forced us to review what had been elaborated in the 2023 Plan, to clarify some objectives and to further simplify the names of the programs we had proposed. Finally, the programs were as follows:
- Heritage and education
- Community engagement
- Knowledge equity
In Plan 2023, we had identified as a need to incorporate a person who could collaborate in the development of a strategic communication plan. One of the first actions that the person in charge of this role executed was to "put faces" to the Wikimedia movement, both making people visible in our social networks, as well as generating a series of interviews on the website.
In terms of consulting, during 2022 we identified the issue of metrics and learning as a huge challenge. We believe that between our 2022 Plan and the 2023 Plan there was an appreciable jump in the learning questions, but it is an area where we still don't have the fluency to adequately measure long-term impact. So we commissioned a consultancy on Monitoring, Learning and Evaluation, to better understand our starting points and how to work on indicators. From there, we worked on metrics for the 2024-2025 Strategic Plan and user development through empathy maps. We believe that this consultancy dialogues and reinforces what is expressed in the "Analysis of Latin American and Caribbean partner reports", elaborated by the Wikimedia Foundation.
Another key aspect of our work is regional cooperation, through coordinating activities with different Latin American affiliates in the region. Our approach to this cooperation has always been to coordinate efforts to jointly promote and achieve ambitious objectives. Thus, we have taken the lead in some of the coordination activities of the Wiki for Human Rights campaign, but the campaign would be impossible without the degree of responsibility and commitment assumed by all affiliates. We have also opened the space for collaborative work through the organization of the GLAM Wiki Conference, which has been developed as a collaborative effort with the Southern Cone region of Latin America (Chile, Brazil and Argentina) through the establishment of an Executive Committee (which also has representatives from the Wikimedia Foundation). These are models of regional collaboration that we believe work and that we need to continue to explore.
Thanks to funding from the Green Screen Coalition, we were able to bring together the organizing institutions of the Wiki for Human Rights campaign in a pre-meeting prior to the GLAM Wiki Conference. One of the results of this meeting was the creation of the Working Group Climate Justice and Wikimedia Projects, focused on leading initiatives on environment and climate change in the Latin American region.
We understand that the 2030 Strategy developed by the Wikimedia movement also posed a challenge in terms of organizing affiliates through "hubs". This has been a discussion that we have followed closely and promoted according to the circumstances. However, we believe that to move in this direction it is critical to strip this conversation of the emotional charge it represents for a variety of actors (including ourselves). It is key to frame it in a professional conversation about the needs and challenges in the region, identifying the potential solutions that a hub could offer. To this end, we commissioned a qualitative hub research, where interviews were conducted with 18 members of 13 affiliates (chapters or user groups) in the region. During 2024, the next module of the research will be developed, consisting of a quantitative survey with members of the community.
Finally, we highlight during 2023 the realization of the Glam Wiki Conference, which took place on November 16-18 at the Faculty of Information and Communication of the University of the Republic (UdelaR). We generated a series of pre-Conference meetings that served to generate expectation and align interests, and during 2024 we will continue working on the results of the Conference.
Overall results
Overall results
During 2023, we achieved the following results:
- Contacts:' ≈1500 contacts in any Wikimedistas de Uruguay activity.
- 'Activities: we conducted more than 100 activities, including the GLAM Wiki Conference
- Social networks:.
- We received ≈7,000 views of our YouTube videos (including the WikiTools and GLAM Wiki Conference videos).
- Social network statistics
- Contributions to Wikimedia projects: through campaigns, mass uploads and other activities, we achieved the following results:
- +2000 items added to Wikidata
- +1500 photos uploaded to Commons
- +2000 contributions to Wikipedia projects
Program: Heritage and education
The objective of the Heritage and Education Program is to Promote and generate training opportunities and support for the digital transformation of knowledge institutions through the tools offered by Wikimedia projects. In this context we developed the Fellowship in Wikimedia and heritage institutions, editathons with heritage institutions, training for the heritage and education sector, among other activities.
'Wikicurrícula: Identified as adaptation of the Italian Wikiscuola in the 2023 plan, Wikicurrícula is a visualization tool that allows to analyze different metrics of Wikipedia articles related to the educational curriculum. This project seeks to generate a better articulation between the community of Wikipedia editors and the educational community. We highlight having been included in the Wikidata for Education pilot program after working on the development of this tool.
Fellowship in Wikimedia and heritage institutions: Thanks to the Fellowship in Wikimedia and heritage institutions, we have been able to identify new value propositions for heritage institutions beyond the mere donation of multimedia content. Our evaluation indicates that there are still very important challenges in the relationship with the online community of Wikipedia in Spanish, which are particularly detrimental to the knowledge coming from the Global South.
Training: During 2023, we continued our partnership with Ceibal, providing workshops to teachers. We carry out this activity as suppliers of Ceibal and receive additional funding for these activities. We also conducted several trainings for heritage institutions, such as Wikimuseos.
GLAM Wiki Conference: Within this axis we also highlight the organization of the GLAM Wiki Conference. The organization of this conference has brought us several benefits, including new partnerships, new ways to coordinate at the regional level, and the opportunity to contribute to shaping an international discussion that broadens perspectives on heritage and allows us to prioritize the agendas of the Global South and smaller and underrepresented communities.
Program: Community engagement
The goal of the Community Engagement Program is to Generate strategies for communities of volunteers to feel empowered, enabled and supported to actively participate in the Wikimedia movement.
Editing challenges: This year we started a series of monthly editing challenges around different areas of knowledge underrepresented in Wikimedia projects, from Uruguay's culinary traditions to the social movement for gender diversity, including historical memory and local geography. These challenges allowed us to test some hypotheses about the participation of volunteers in the edition and in the call for activities.
Technical community: In 2022-2023 we did a couple of actions around the technical community, including some talks, the co-organization of the Developer Track at Wikiworkshop and a survey to the technical community. At the end of 2023, we decided to hire Nat Hernandez Clavijo as Open Data and Technology Analyst, to collaborate on deepening and improving our technical capabilities.
WikiTools: During 2023 we continue with the WikiTools cycle. This is one of the most successful activities for the community, as it has allowed us to exchange knowledge, give space for volunteers and affiliates to show their skills, and has given us recognition within the community.
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New leaderships and community participation: From the opening of more international activities, this year we have new people participating in international and regional instances of the Wikimedia community: Judith Varela participated in Iberoconf 2023; José Furtado from Wikimanía Singapore; we gave scholarships to three high school and higher education teachers (one of them Wikipedia editor) to participate in WECUDI (organized by Wikimedia Argentina and the National University of La Plata).
Program: Knowledge equity
The objective of the Knowledge Equity Program is To implement initiatives that generate content with subaltern and Global South perspectives, which respond to the knowledge needs of the communities of Uruguay and Latin America. This program develops activities related to climate change and sustainability; gender and feminism; underrepresented identities; memory and human rights; among other emerging topics. The main actions developed in 2023 are detailed below.
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Climate change and sustainability: This is one of the main topics of our work agenda. In addition to the unprecedented crises of 2023 (global heat waves, water crisis in Uruguay), it is added to the verification that the issue is a global concern. The Wikimedia Foundation's Brand Health Tracker research found that across 12 countries the top two social concerns of people surveyed were war and violence, and climate change. In addition, it is one of the main sources of funding for programs during 2023 (support represented 35% of our 2023 budget granted by the Foundation to carry out two major projects, a face-to-face meeting and a course with an internship program, with the support of the Wikimedia Foundation and the Inter-American Development Bank).
Campaigns: We participated in the campaigns "Stop! Women Working 2023", "Wiki for Human Rights 2023", "#1bib1ref". We noticed some prominent challenges in the campaigns, such as attrition in affiliates, the need to renew messages, approach and activities, and rethinking what are the audiences for the campaigns. There have also been successes (such as coming up with a visual identity line for the campaign) and innovations (e.g., awarding prizes that recognize the quality of contributions rather than the quantity of bytes edited).
Underrepresented issues: This axis dialogues particularly with the Community Engagement axis. Based on activities carried out in this program, we generated activities to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the coup d'état in Uruguay, food sovereignty and the rights of gender diversity, among other topics.
Learning
- Definition of processes. The last two years of work have allowed us to consolidate work processes, which generates greater efficiency and effectiveness in management. This allows us to re-evaluate and improve them, while identifying new needs. The team is able to rely on the definition of processes in the initial stages of the projects, when there is little clarity about tasks and responsibilities. At the same time, these processes must be flexible enough to adapt to new contexts and the demands of our users.
- Induction process. This year we incorporated several people to the work team. The induction process was a bit challenging at first, and we believe it is an area where there is room for improvement. While the goal for 2024-2025 is to have two fellows at Wikimedia and heritage (one person by 2024 and a different person by 2025), the fellowship process needs improvements in design and implementation to ensure that the expected results are achieved.
- Consistency is crucial to achieving results. Many of our activities in 2023 arose from contacts and relationships established during 2022. In the same way, the permanent invitation to activities of different nature allowed us to consolidate our links with the editors, who found the proposals interesting and joined us in participating.
- Monitoring, learning and evaluation. One of the concerns with which we started 2023 had to do with the absence of clear ways to measure our work and, above all, our impact. Activity evaluation bodies have been key mechanisms for improving and correcting the course of our actions as they unfold. We worked during 22023 to develop a matrix of metrics, which we will continue to work on in 2024-2025.
- Technically innovative proposals. The incorporation of Nat Hernández Clavijo allowed us to make a qualitative leap in the ability to make technically interesting proposals. As an example, we highlight proposals such as Click a la escuela, a novel contest to photograph schools in Uruguay, generated from a series of data available in the open data catalog of the Uruguayan government, combined with WikiShootMe.
Financial Report
During 2023, Wikimedistas de Uruguay received and executed the following funds:
- $146.361 USD from the Wikimedia Foundation for the 2023 Annual Activities Plan, of which approximately the following amounts were executed by line item:
- ≈USD 93,000 in staff and consultants
- ≈USD 14,000 in administrative costs
- ≈USD 7,400 in operating costs
- ≈USD 31,500 in programs
- $8,000 USD from the Green Screen Coalition for the Human Rights Wiki Gathering held prior to the GLAM Wiki Conference on November 13-14, 2023.
- ≈$1,500 USD for training workshops on Digital Citizenship for Ceibal.
- ≈$3,000 USD support for the GLAM Wiki Conference (sponsorship by L'Oréal).
- $158,539 from the Wikimedia Foundation for the GLAM Wiki Conference.
- 39,295 USD from the Wikimedia Foundation (received in 2023) and $10,000 USD from the Inter-American Development Bank (received in 2024) for the implementation of the Green Digital Skills Course and Internship Program at Wikimedia (still in progress).
Total funding received during 2023: ≈$356,695 USD.
List of activities
Listed below are all the activities carried out by Wikimedistas de Uruguay during 2023.
This list is generated from data in Wikidata and is periodically updated by a bot.
Edits made within the list area will be removed on the next update!
∑ 104 items.