Wikipedia:Meetup/ArtAndFeminism/Planning/AnnualPlan2016-2017

Overview

Over the last three years, over 4600 participants at more than 280 events around the world participated in Art+Feminism’s Edit-a-thons, resulting in the creation and improvement of more than 4600 articles on Wikipedia. These events are primarily held in the month of March, though groups hold events throughout the year under our banner. Over the past three years our events have experienced exponential growth, from 31 to 75 to 179 events each year. Each year we double, thus our growth models forecast 325 Events, 3500 participants, and between 5500-8000 pages created/improved next year.

As you can see from our IEG Final Report, we have done important work to build a community of organizers around the world, create learning resources for use by the greater Wikimedia community, assess and improve inclusivity, negotiate the challenges of organizing on and off wiki, and implement new tools to enable this work. We have shared our information widely, inspiring others to create their own events. Our Diversity Review and UX/UI Review are significant resources for the movement as a whole. We have provided a model for organizing that brings in new editors, in part by organizing off-wiki. We recognize our responsibility as movement leaders to be role models in our approach to bringing new editors in the Wikipedia community, who will continue to enrich it with their specific knowledges and skill sets.

As we grow, we recognize the need to hire a project manager (please see our Staffing Plan for more details). While we have made leaps and bounds in terms of expanding our community and implementing technical solutions to make our organizers more self-sufficient, we continued to experience difficulties implementing the nuts and bolts outreach, and inclusivity work without a project manager. Having a project manager to handle the day to day email communications would will enable the lead co-organizers to not get "caught in the weeds", and do the strategic planning to make the project even more inclusive, more rhizomatic and more global.

Art+Feminism International Editathons Goals

Continue to organize the international Art+Feminism Editathons
Continue to build community as we train new editors, facilitators and event organizers
Continue to improve organizational capacity
Increase participant diversity

Activities

Our main activity is our annual edit-a-thon, which takes place around the world. In conjunction with and support of this event, we organize other events, including: public programming around the gender gap, being a woman online, online harassment, and women in the arts; and Train the Trainer events for volunteers and organizers, both online and in New York City (for example, see a Meet-Up page from a Train the Trainer). See below for a more detailed run-through of our metrics goals and our planned schedule for outreach, planning, and implementation.

Metrics

Our metrics goals for 2017 are as follows. These predictions are based off of our growth models.

Global Metrics

800 Active Editors
1200 New Editors
3500 Total # Individuals Involved
6000 Wikimedia articles added or improved

Project Metrics

325 Events
100 past-participant organizers (people who go onto organize Art+Feminism events after participating in an event; this includes repeat organizers)

Metrics will be tracked in the shared google doc.

Calendar

October - November

Outreach to previous node event organizers confirming the March 2017 editathon dates.
Completion of Art+Feminism IEG Final Report for 2015-2016 activities.
Advertise, interview and select Project Manager position.
Begin planning with MoMA regarding public programming for 2017 (based on the success of our 2016 programming) & encourage our node events to similarly "think big."
Build out organizational structure to support committees working on specific issues that have come up in previous edit-a-thons, e.g. childcare, curriculum integration and selection of topics, and online and offline harassment.

December-January

Outreach to build interest for new events in 2017.
- We will utilize the project management structure, CRM organization, project management and market research we completed last December and build upon it to grow our community.
January is our biggest outreach and engagement month. This year, we will learn from last year's efforts and, with the help of a Project Manager, will be able to generate more personal outreach.
Plan and hold Train-the-Trainer events, both online and in person for:
- MoMA volunteers
- Other organizers
Review and update training materials as necessary.
Confirm details for public programs, technology, and break out sessions at MoMA.
Plan survey

February

As you can see from our IEG grant reporting, February is a very busy month where we pull a lot of things together
- Finalize planning with MoMA for public programming, use of space, break-out sessions, pedagogical strategies
- Finalize details for all node events: confirm location, Wikipedian, training, reporting strategies, funding requests, etc.
- Finalize online training sessions for new organizers

March

The edit-a-thon! March is the month where we hold our edit-a-thon and get to see all the edit-a-thons come together around the world. For more details, see our IEG grant reporting, as well as our Outcomes page.
Metrics: post-edit-a-thon, we spend most of March compiling the outcomes from our various events in order to report on the number of attendees, as well as articles created and updated.

April

Review successes and failures of the event.
Update website to reflect outcomes, press coverage, etc.

May-June

Begin planning 2018 event:
- Settle date with MoMA
- Confirm ambassador participation

July-September

Begin preparing outreach for 2018 event.

Target readership

Last year we held events in 30 countries, on all 6 inhabited continents. These events have created or improved articles on a number of different language Wikipedias: Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Spanish, Nepalese, Esperanto, Italian, Chinese, Japanese, Turkish, Swedish, Catalan, Welsh, Dutch and more. The Art+Feminism community includes artists, art workers, activists, librarians, scholars, students, and Wikipedians. As our event archive shows, we have gained support from diverse communities, from activist spaces like Interference Archive, to major universities like University of Pittsburgh and MIT, to public libraries like Darien Public Library and National Library of Wales, as well as cultural institutions like Tate, London, and more. We've also seen support from within the Wikimedia community, from organizations like Wikimedia NYC and Women in Red, for example.

Fit with strategy

Increasing Participation

consistently run the largest Wikipedia edit-a-thon, which grows every year:

Year	Locations	Participants	Articles
2014	31	600	200
2015	75	1500	900
2016	175	2500	3500
2017 (projected)	325	3500	6000

Ambassador program that has brought new editors and organizers into the Wikipedia community and empowered them to work with others.
Inspired other projects, like AfroCROWD.
In 2017, with the help of new metrics tools, we will be able to more consistently track and report the numbers of new editors.
UX/UI Review can serve as a model for related projects that want to learn how to better engage with and support new editors.

Improving quality

Participants at our events have created or improved nearly 5000 articles over the past three years, in key areas of the gender gap.
Diversity Review can serve as a model for all Wikipedia initiatives that aim to be more inclusive, thus improving the scope and reach of Wikipedia.
partnerships with Wikimedia NYC and Women in Red, and AfroCROWD.

Resources

Human Resources: the hundreds of individuals who have planned and executed Art+Feminism events nationally and internationally; these include seasoned wikipedians, librarians, professors, artists, organizers, and others.
Technology & Workflow: we have a proven workflow with a CRM and other project management tools to handle our expected growth.
Institutional Relationships: We have strong relationships with important cultural organizations and post-secondary institutions across the globe, such as The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Los Angeles Country Museum of Art; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Fondation Galeries Lafayette, Paris; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Concordia University, Montreal; University of British Columbia, Vancouver; and many more.
Name Recognition: The project has excellent credibility and name recognition due in part to the a significant amount of press it has received nationally and internationally.
Material Resources: We have created a number of valueable resources, including:

Risks

Burnout

The phenomenal success of Art+Feminism has been wonderful. However, it has created an incredible amount of work for the lead co-organizers to juggle with their already busy professional schedules. Concern has been expressed at the degree of exhaustion exhibited by the lead co-organizers at the end of March. Part of the reason we seek to hire a part-time Administrator/Project Manager is to address this issue. As well, our plan to further decentralize the project will lighten our workloads.

Incidents

Although Art+Feminism has elicited an overall positive response the project has received some unwanted attention. For examples, each year there have been reports of harassment at events. As well, there have been incidents where individuals have not followed our materials and this has resulted in several articles for deletion. We are gathering together committees to create resources for dealing with both these issues. As well, we plan to be more direct in our communication with organizers about these issues, and communicate more regularly with them. It is our hope that these materials and approaches will address these issues, insofar as it is possible.

Growth

The project has exhibited exponential grow over the past three years, as you can see in our growth model. This growth could become a burden. Alternatively, it is unclear when/how it will taper off. Many of the strategies listed above are meant to address this risk and make the project more sustainable.

Budget

Please find a spreadsheet of our budget on this google doc.