Wikimedia UK: communicating the value of Wikidata

[jwsl85]

Project Lead: jwsl85 - John Lubbock
Mentor: Harry Smith

Welcome to OL6, Cohort A! This issue will be used to track your project and progress during the program. Please use this checklist over the next few weeks as you start Open Leadership Training 🎉.

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Before Week 1 (Sept 11): Your first mentorship call

• Complete the OLF self-assessment (online, printable). If you're a group, each teammate should complete this assessment individually. This is here to help you set your own personal goals during the program. No need to share your results, but be ready to share your thoughts with your mentor.
• Make sure you know when and how you'll be meeting with your mentor.

Before Week 2 (Sept 18): First Cohort Call (Open by Design)

• Complete Assignment 'Write Your Vision or Mission Statement'. Leave a comment on this issue with your draft vision statement & be ready to share this on the call.
• Watch 'Mozilla & Working Open'.
• Check the Syllabus for notes and connection info for all the cohort calls.

Before Week 3 (Sept 25): Mentorship call

• Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their vision statement.
• Complete your Open Canvas (instructions, canvas). Comment on this issue with a link to your canvas.
• Start your Roadmap. Comment on this issue with your draft Roadmap.

Before Week 4 (Oct 2): Cohort Call (Build for Understanding)

• Look up two other projects and comment on their issues with feedback on their open canvas.
• Pick an open license for the work you're doing during the program.
• Use your canvas to start writing a README, or landing page, for your project. Link to your README in a comment on this issue.

This issue is here to help you keep track of work during the first month of the program. Please refer to the OL6 Syllabus for more detailed weekly notes and assignments past week 4.

[jwsl85]

My draft vision statement:

I do the communications for the charity that promotes Wikipedia in the UK. We have to promote a big website with the money of a small charity, and added to this, we promote a concept, 'open knowledge', that few people really understand.

There is an emerging understanding in government, cultural and educational institutions that data is important, valuable, and should be harnessed in order to improve society. But how can we teach people what data is?

One of Wikipedia's sister projects, Wikidata is an Open data repository of almost 50 million data items that are machine readable and can be queried. It's a perfect tool to teach people how to work with data, and can be used to link existing data sets that are unconnected. Wikidata is, for example, the most complete data set of sites of cultural heritage across the world.

So the question is: how can I build a communications strategy that informs people about the value of Wikidata, and how do we convince institutions to work with us to train students, researchers and other information professionals to use Wikidata, and partner with Wikimedia UK in doing so?

[little-wow]

Hi John! This is super interesting – what kinds of contributions are you accepting to this project?

[jwsl85]

Open Canvas
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1qotlOYstg-4Zr3jNHznw5XyTq51ZdxS4c1ce2TFT_0A/edit#slide=id.p

[aubriejohnson]

Love this idea and plan, John. Do you have a shortlist of universities to pitch, or are you still working on that?

[jwsl85]

Hi John! This is super interesting – what kinds of contributions are you accepting to this project?

Hi, well, I'm not really sure... Sorry that sounds so vague and unprepared. I've never worked with Github before, and the project idea has changed around a lot to make it something manageable that can be achieved and doesn't invade the project management space that my colleagues work on.

We can't promote open knowledge generally without the support of the Wikimedia community, as well as by working with other open knowledge organisations like Mozilla, OKI and Creative Commons. Part of the reason I'm here is to make connections with people at those organisations and figure out how we can jointly work together to inform the public about the importance of the Digital Commons and the idea of open knowledge. I'd love to see joint advocacy programmes between all our organisations, and pooling resources to create media, do outreach, and work with educational institutions to mainstream these ideas within the next generation of students.

I suppose what I'd like to hear is ideas from other people about working across organisations to achieve the joint goal of promoting open knowledge, as well as from people who have used Wikidata who may have ideas about what works in convincing others of its importance.

[jwsl85]

Love this idea and plan, John. Do you have a shortlist of universities to pitch, or are you still working on that?

Hi Aubrie, I have changed the project idea around so much that I'm somewhat behind and really don't have much of anything. I still don't quite know whether this project is really amenable to what the Open Leaders course expects - it feels like this is made for much more technical projects than mine, so I really welcome any help and advice anybody has.

[Zebetus]

So John is working on his own repository with this stuff in so feel free to head over to there (https://github.com/jwsl85/Working-with-Wikidata) to keep up with what he is doing