2019:Partnerships/From Pilot to Scale: Sharing & Learning for GLOW Success

Partnerships/From Pilot to Scale: Sharing & Learning for GLOW Success

Description

In 2017, Google and the Wikimedia Foundation in partnership with the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), Wikimedia India chapter (WMIN), user groups and external partners launched a pilot project in India to encourage local Wikipedia communities to create locally relevant articles in Indian languages. The project, (codename: Project Tiger) (a) supported active and experienced Wikipedia editors through the donation of laptops and stipends for internet access and (b) organized a language-based article writing contest to address existing Wikipedia content gaps. Through this pilot project, over 4,000 articles were created in over 10 Indic languages. The results of the pilot informed our efforts to refine and scale this strategy for engaging existing contributors to create locally relevant content in their languages, into a program - Growing Local Language Content on Wiki pedia (GLOW).

The GLOW Program prioritizes collaborating with Wikipedia communities from languages and countries in emerging regions that are underrepresented on Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects to address content gaps.  Through this program and with support from Google, we will be able to empower local language communities to overcome barriers to participation, facilitating them to grow in a way that attracts more readers. Additionally, the communities will be engaged in a program that is also responsive to their needs and encourages their long-term participation.

The GLOW roundtable will be a platform for current GLOW communities (Arabic MENA, Argentina, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria) to meet and greet each other and Google representatives; share with each other the approaches they are adopting for GLOW in their communities, including timelines, current project status, and expected outcomes or impact; share any observations and learnings they have gathered to-date, including any challenges they are facing as relevant. This sharing and learning discussion will be of particular importance to the communities that are part of the scale to hear and learn from the experiences of the Project Tiger (pilot project) community - the Indic communities - and consider these experiences as they launch and implement GLOW with their local language communities.

The GLOW roundtable will offer an opportunity for GLOW communities to interact with Google representatives, articulate any project or collaboration ideas they have that Google could support, and share with Google details on matters such as (1) their motivations to contribute to Wikipedia/Wikimedia, (2) how they go about deciding what articles to write, and (3) whether information about what readers are searching for/demanding to consume is useful to editors when they are considering topics to write about. At the roundtable, Google will also share their perspectives on why they value partnering with the Wikimedia Movement.

Relationship to the theme

This session will address the conference theme — Wikimedia, Free Knowledge and the Sustainable Development Goals — in the following manner:

Google and the Wikimedia Movement are committed to supporting access to free knowledge for people in their own languages, thereby creating platforms and promoting opportunities for lifelong learning through the availability of knowledge and information. This session will highlight experiences and lessons learned from existing partnerships in the movement with proponents of making knowledge universally accessible and useful.

By focusing on lessons learned, experiences, and opportunities for further collaboration, this session will establish a space to discuss partnerships for the SDG goals - partnerships that enable sharing knowledge, expertise, technology, and financial support that is critical to overall success of the SDGs. The session will help address target 17.17 (Encourage and promote effective public, public-private and civil society partnerships, building on the experience and resourcing strategies of partnerships)

Session outcomes

At the end of the session, the following will have been achieved:

Participants will learn about the approaches and strategies other communities are adopting to implement GLOW; and create a community/cohort of practice, that will act as a space for sharing and learning for project planning, implementation, and tactics for addressing content gaps.

Participants will also have the opportunity to share their thoughts, ideas, and interests in collaboration opportunities directly with Google, thereby empowering contributors through partnerships.

Session leader(s)

Georgina Fields/WMF Strategic Partnerships Team

Rebecca Weissburg/ WMF Strategic Partnerships Team

Session type

Each Space at Wikimania 2019 will have specific format requests. The program design prioritises submissions which are future-oriented and directly engage the audience. The format of this submission is a:

• Roundtable discussion forum

Requirements

The session will work best with these conditions:

• Room:

Round-table seating with writing materials, flip charts, and markers.

• Audience:
• Number of people: up to 30
• Audience type
  • GLOW Community Representatives (Argentina, India, Indonesia, MENA, Mexico, Nigeria),
  • Google Representatives,
  • WMF Representatives,
  • Community members interested in learning about the GLOW program

• Recording:

Yes content and format is appropriate for filming.