Annual plan (2013–2014)

Our programs

Starting with fiscal year 2014, Wikimedia DC is simplifying its program structure to reflect the three interconnected factors that make the Wikimedia movement a success: content, technology, and community. The aim of Wikimedia DC is to make free content available for the world. The development and promotion of technology gives us the tools needed to distribute free content. Most importantly, building a community makes all of this possible.

CONTENT

Historical records at National Archives in College Park, MD

Washington, DC, is home to many institutions of knowledge and knowledgeable people. For the past three years, locally based institutions, including the Smithsonian Institution, have expressed an interest in improving Wikipedia's content. To this end, we have had several successful collaborations with institutions of knowledge:

• This past fiscal year, we held five editing workshops with the Smithsonian Institution, resulting in 47 new articles, 105 existing articles improved, and 8 images uploaded. All of the images contributed have been from the Smithsonian's collections, and the articles have been on subject matters of interest to the Smithsonian.
• George Washington University worked with Wikimedia DC to hold three edit-a-thons at their libraries and archives, covering such subjects as global affairs, labor history, and the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. As a result, 31 articles were created or improved, including one article in German! Access to university resources were instrumental in the improvement of these articles.
• Wikimedia DC volunteers have aided the Cato Institute in its efforts to document bills introduced in Congress on Wikipedia. According to Jim Harper, the Director of Information Policy Studies, articles written through this effort have gotten 70,000 hits, promoting knowledge of the legislative process.

Events planned with these organizations, as well as with the National Archives and Records Administration in fiscal year 2011–2012, have been fruitful in developing relationships with these organizations. Yet there is still more work to be done. Wikimedia DC will look to build on these existing relationships by devising longer-term program plans, including a schedule of planned events and metrics for content contributions and volunteer outreach. More effort will also be made in hosting non-editing events such as scan-a-thons, which allow institutions to share their collections with a broader, global audience.

We also look forward to expanding our work to include additional cultural institutions and universities. For example, we look forward to holding additional events with the National Archives, with the help of Dominic McDevitt-Parks as their new full-time Wikipedia specialist. Additionally, we are interested in supporting Andrew Lih in his efforts to integrate Wikipedia into his curriculum at American University. These provide excellent opportunities to share the content of Washington, DC, with the rest of the world.

TECHNOLOGY

Open Data Hackathon, Dec. 2011

As we have made progress with using the resources of DC to improve Wikimedia's content, further efforts needs to be made to enhance the technology that underpins the Wikimedia movement. As the Wikimedia Foundation makes substantial investments in improving its MediaWiki software, we have opportunities to use technology to enhance our outreach efforts.

We will be holding hackathons to improve MediaWiki's functionality and to develop tools that make Wikipedia easier to use. This includes tools that allow cultural institutions to easily upload their collections to Wikimedia Commons en masse. We are also interested in creating tools and apps that allow people to engage with Wikimedia content in new ways, including apps based on Wikidata and image discovery tools that make use of Wikimedia Commons' extensive collection of free media. We anticipate that these tech-centric events will raise awareness of the underlying technology that empowers the Wikimedia projects, and will improve engagement in DC's technology sector.

Technology is also useful to measure the success of our outreach activities. We will make extensive use of analytics, including the new Wiki Metrics tool, to measure the outcomes of our events, including the number of bytes added to Wikipedia and the number of articles contributed. Wiki Metrics will also allow us to measure editor retention rates for workshop participants. We will also work with our institutional partners to develop analytics tools that demonstrate the concrete ways that Wikimedia allows institutions to share their knowledge with the rest of the world.

COMMUNITY

Women in the Arts edit-a-thon at Archives of American Art, Mar 2013

Wikimedia is fundamentally a volunteer movement, and success in promoting free access to the world's knowledge and the technology that makes this possible will depend on a strong community of volunteers and enthusiasts. Last year we started holding regular WikiSalons, informal events where people gather to discuss Wikipedia and work on improving articles. These WikiSalons have been successful in recruiting new participants in our movement and giving them access to resources to help them succeed at contributing to Wikipedia. We look forward to holding additional WikiSalons in the coming year, as well as regular dinner meetups.

Starting this year, we will have new opportunities to host social events at two collaborative spaces starting up in DC, including the Digital Commons at the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, and a planned space at the downtown National Archives. These technologically equipped spaces will give us more opportunities to train volunteers in contributing to the Wikimedia projects, including through ancillary tasks such as digitizing documents.

As we have succeeded with offline outreach, we are interested in enhancing our online outreach. This outreach includes the use of our website as a resource to teach prospective volunteers the ins and outs of contributing to Wikipedia, as well as building our community through social media. Online outreach will build a broader audience, including remote volunteers who cannot attend in-person events. Unlike current community-building efforts that focus exclusively on virtual organizing, volunteers recruited through our online efforts will have access to our in-person events as a resource to meet fellow Wikipedians. As an example of an opportunity for online outreach, there is currently no coherent introductory guide for editing Wikipedia that we can point interested people to. Further, we have no reason to believe that Wikipedia's community will independently build one in the next year. Developing such a tool would be useful at our events, as well as for remote volunteers.

Planned projects and events

Wikimedia DC will be planning the following projects and events in Fiscal Year 2013–14. These plans are contingent on having adequate financial and human resources.

Edit-a-thons	Edit-a-thons have been our most visible and successful means of reaching out to new Wikipedia editors while working with partnering institutions to fulfill their Wikipedia outreach goals. To this end, most of the edit-a-thons held to date have been hosted by professionals within cultural institutions, with Wikimedia DC providing expertise, funding, and a promotional platform. As we have seen successes with our edit-a-thons, including over 150 articles created or improved and over 200,000 bytes of text added to Wikipedia, we are interested in expanding the scope of this program to include additional subject areas and institutions. Building and Developing Partnerships—Wikimedia DC organized edit-a-thons with six partnering institutions in the past fiscal year. Our goal this year is to hold events with at least eight institutions this year, including at least two new institutions. These institutions ideally are centers of specialized knowledge, with access to academic resources that can be used to improve Wikipedia articles on subjects that are under-covered, including women's history. Within the Smithsonian Institution, we are dedicated to building on the efforts of their Wikipedian in Residence this past summer to expand Wikipedian outreach within the Smithsonian. Having successfully run outreach events with two divisions within the Smithsonian Institution, our goal this year is to hold events with four Smithsonian divisions. A broader base of partnerships allows for more opportunities to improve the Wikimedia projects through outreach events. Recruiting Volunteers—With the assistance of new tools from the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikimedia DC is making a stronger effort to reach out to individual attendees. By collecting usernames at events, we can use Wiki Metrics to determine the precise outcomes of editing events, including number of bytes contributed to articles, as well as long-term editor retention. Basic voluntary data collection also presents opportunities to reach out to Wikipedians through the Wikipedia interface and provide assistance where needed. Our goal for this fiscal year is to develop a record of at least 50 volunteers, logging a total of at least 700 volunteer hours and creating or improving at least 175 articles. (The number for volunteer hours is calculated based on the average number of edit-a-thon attendees, multiplied by the number of edit-a-thons held in the year and the length of each edit-a-thon.)
Scan-a-thons	We are pleased by the National Archives and Records Administration's decision to hire a full-time Wikipedia specialist. This development will allow us to further our work with the National Archives to place their historical resources in front of millions of online viewers. Additionally, given the needs of other organizations to digitize their content, a pilot program with the National Archives could be essential in developing a streamlined process to digitize and disseminate free media. Wikimedia DC's goal for this year is to hold two scan-a-thons with the National Archives, yielding at least 200 digitized documents. We will also work with the National Archives to develop a volunteer scanning program where volunteers can scan documents in their own free time; we are particularly interested in seeing digitized documents being used to improve Wikimedia projects.
Hackathons	The survival of the Wikimedia projects depends on keeping the software infrastructure up-to-date, allowing Wikimedia content to be viewed and changed on different platforms. The work done by the Wikimedia Foundation to support MediaWiki must be supplemented by further initiatives that help make sense of big data, present Wikimedia content in new and compelling ways, and help make it easier for individuals and organizations to contribute their content and expertise to the Wikimedia projects. We are fortunate in Washington, D.C. to have a sizable community of hackers, using technology to improve the world around them. Both Wikimedia DC and the DC Tech communities value free access to knowledge, including structured data made available by state and federal agencies. Outreach to this sector presents many opportunities for the improvement of Wikimedia projects. Starting with the second quarter, Wikimedia DC will begin holding a series of quarterly hackathons, holding a total of three hackathons in Fiscal Year 2013–14. These hackathons will be our means to develop a volunteer community dedicated to the technical infrastructure, with each event building off of the results of the last one. This will include at least one hackathon planned with the guidance of the Wikimedia Foundation, as well as others intended to develop auxiliary tools or presentations of structured data that can serve as sources for Wikipedia articles. The specific deliverables of these hackathons will depend on the initiative of attendees, but we anticipate the completion of at least two projects.
Analytics Development	Data helps us determine how successful our projects are, and Wikimedia organizations worldwide are beginning to make use of data to inform its decision-making processes. Wikimedia DC seeks to support this move through the development and continued support of a stable set of online tools that can be used by partnering organizations to measure the impact of their investment in the improvement of Wikimedia projects. Currently, there are many analytics tools that can be found on Wikimedia projects themselves, on Wikimedia tool repositories such as Wikimedia Labs, as well as several external websites. Some of these are poorly maintained or lack highly requested features. Rather than creating yet another disconnected tool, our goal is to create a single analytics report which will aggregate statistics from various existing tools, possibly with new features as needed. Ideally, a user should be able to select from a menu of options for statistics to include in the report and subscribe to periodical updates by email. Such a tool should be of use to partner institutions as well as curious individuals.
NARA Innovation Lab	In the coming year, the National Archives is designating a space at their facility as an Innovation Lab, a room with tables and equipment where members of the public can collaborate on projects. Wikimedia DC will be supporting the National Archives in their effort by lending equipment for the room's use and by pioneering events and volunteer opportunities. Though shared with the National Archives, this space will be the first Wikimedia DC-branded workspace since the Library Lab was shut down in 2012. Not all the details are finalized, but Wikimedia DC anticipates that the space will be used to host National Archives-related edit-a-thons, as well as WikiSalons and other social events. We expect to hold at least one edit-a-thon in this space, making use of the resources of the National Archives. In the long term, we would like to see the Innovation Lab become a source of everyday access to the Wikimedia community.
Social Events	Informal social events are the backbone of Wikimedia DC, and we look forward to hosting future meetups. Social events will be structured around weekday evenings as well as weekend afternoons to allow for widest possible participation. We plan on holding two social events per month, including evening WikiSalons as well as afternoon WikiSalons on the weekends followed by a dinner meetup. These events give members of the public access to the local Wikimedia community and give us the opportunity to promote our other events. Throughout the year, Wikimedia DC will plan at least four flagship events, designed to be of broadest appeal and accessibility to the DC community. These events include our Annual Meeting, photography exhibitions, the annual Wiknic, and a fourth event planned with a partnering organization. Rather than strictly promoting editing Wikipedia or anything of a technical nature, flagship events will boost our presence in the DC area and give an opportunity for us to reach out to an audience that would otherwise not be interested in participating in a Wikipedia-related event.

Fundraising

• Outreach 2013 grant covers Q1; Engagement 2014 covers following four quarters
• In-kind contributions of venues &c. as means of indirect fundraising

Personnel

Logistics and infrastructure

• Changes to website to reflect program structure and to more actively recruit participants
• Event logistics
• Data collection and storage
• Contact management
• Mailing lists
• Research into virtual presence technology

Fit to strategy

On September 7, 2013, the Board of Directors of Wikimedia DC approved the following strategic priorities:

1. Foster a welcoming and supportive social environment for local and remote Wikimedia volunteers.
2. Empower academic, cultural, and government institutions to contribute content and expertise to Wikimedia projects.
3. Promote women's participation in all aspects of the Wikimedia movement.
4. Cultivate diversity of participation and content on Wikimedia projects.