Thanks Lodewijk for being so enthusiastic that you
beat us to posting our recap first. ;-) Lori and I have been a
bit worn out the last couple of days. Ed's Signpost article is a
good start, especially since he was in attendance (
);
please do read it. I wanted to talk a little more about this
event, which took place this past Friday and weekend, from April
26–28, in Washington, D.C.
The idea for GLAM Boot Camp was first proposed and
developed at GLAMcamp London last September, as some of you
may remember. You can see our original notes from GLAMcamp
here:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM_Boot_Camp.
The event we just held was
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Boot_Camp. The
stated, ambitious goal of the first GLAM Boot Camp was to
broaden the participation of the general Wikimedia community
in GLAM-Wiki movement by inviting and training key Wikimedians
I think that we were successful in taking a big step towards
that goal. Another goal was to establish a model for future
similar events, and I hope that as we work on our
documentation, others will be able to use our experiences to
guide them in making another GLAM Boot Camp elsewhere.
All of us who have been to events like GLAMcamps or
Wikimanias know that oftentimes the most important thing is
not the structured sessions, but just being with a group
people for a couple of days and sharing perspectives—even
over coffee or back at the hostel—so both of the main
takeaways for me were about the attendees. The fact that we
fully funding all attendees from across the US and
Canada was integral to ensuring we were able to bring in
fresh people. Second, we specifically invited the people
we thought would be key, rather than hoping people
would sign up. This ended up making even more sense in
retrospect, because we were so happy with who came, but if
the idea was to reach people who were not normally part of
GLAM-Wiki projects, we were trying to reach people who
wouldn't already be following our normal channels and who
might not sign up even if they heard about it because for
some reason they haven't already gotten involved whenever
they have heard about GLAM-Wiki already. This also allowed
us to try to get a diversity in terms of geography
(especially folks in areas without chapters or meetups) and
in people's types of on-wiki activities.
As co-organizer, I want to tease out a few more important
points:
Attendees:
We
posted
a list of attendees to the page; the names in green
were those who we invited as full participants for the
entire event. Of these, only about 3 had actually signed
up or registered interest before we started inviting. For
the others, I spent hours looking asking for opinions of
others and looking through user contributions of people
who had participated online in any GLAM WikiProjects,
participated in meetups, or participated in any of various
other Wikimedia activities or subcommunities, like
administrators, featured content writers,
Wikisource/Commons editors, Did You Know writers,
WikiProject organizers, education program participants,
and so on. Participants came from all over the US (New
York, Maryland, LA, SF, Portland, Philadelphia, Kansas,
Michigan, and Chicago) and Canada (Halifax, Vancouver, and
Winnipeg), not one from the same metropolitan area, and
most from areas without regular Wikipedia events. For more
than one attendee, this was their first time at a
Wikipedia event of any kind. The size of the group, 12
regular attendees with about 5 more at any given time with
guests and organizers, was the perfect amount to allow for
productive discussions.
Program:
We designed a program very unlike GLAMcamp, and a lot
more both structured than a lot of Wikimedia
unconference-type events are, but more practical than a
traditional conference—it was something between a
Wikipedia Academy and a campus ambassador training. You
can see our program here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:GLAM/Boot_Camp#Program.
We generally moved from presentation-heavy to
discussion-heavy sessions. Generally, the first day was
our high-level overview of and introduction to cultural
institutions and the history and present circumstances
of GLAM-Wiki. Michael's inspiring talk to lead off was
really to give them an insider perspective of cultural
institutions, and we talked a lot about institutional
missions and how to connect the work of Wikimedia with
that of cultural institutions. The second day we moved
into more practical matters, going through the whole
"lifecycle" of a Wikimedia project, and talking about
specific events and projects. By the third day, we spent
more time in discussion, and getting the boot campers to
articulate their own visions of GLAM-Wiki, and how they
personally could improve upon or contribute to it. We
ended up having unplanned breakout sessions a couple of
times because attendees were so exited ideas they had as
we showed them things like our one-pager or the portal
pages they wanted to actually have time to edit them. If
you would like to dig into the etherpad notes from each
day, they are listed at the top of the program.
Logistics:
The event was possible for us in the US because
logistics and funding were largely handled by James Hare
and Wikimedia DC. They funded us with approximately
$8000 USD from their
2013 Outreach grant to the WMF, as
well as covering group dinners and some incidental costs
over budget from general funds. The large majority of
the money (about $5500 out of $8500) went towards
funding the travel and accommodations of attendees. All
attendees were fully funded, and this was an essential
characteristic of the event. Most of the travelers had
their flights booked by WMDC and stayed in a hostel
(same as used for Wikimania 2012 and GLAMcamp DC). WMDC
also hosted two dinners and provided coffee/refreshments
throughout the day.
Speakers:
The ambitiousness of the workshop, with three full days
of programming, meant a lot of talking from Lori and I. We
broke things up a little by inviting special speakers in
certain topic areas, often where they had as much or more
expertise as either of us did. Some of these speakers were
locals from the DC area that agreed to come in, and some
were attendees we invited to present to the group on
something they are skilled at. Examples include the
Wikisource and Commons workshops, a session on event
planning, a session on grants and chapters. We also led
off with special GLAM professional guests: David Ferriero
gave a welcome and Michael Edson, who just got back from
keynoting GLAM-Wiki London gave an epic talk for most of
the first morning. At least half of the sessions were led
by Lori or I, though, and future GLAM Boot Camps probably
would want to find ways not to give so much work to two
individuals, for their own sanity. ;-)
Venue:
The venue was provided by the U.S. National Archives,
though there were pros and cons for this. The main pro
was that there was no cost associated with securing a
venue! We might have been able to find a room elsewhere
without a cost, but 3 days, all day for no cost is a big
ask. The other main benefit was that we were in a good
location and were able to take advantage of having David
Ferriero make appearances. We did face typical problems
with working with a bureaucratic venue, like catering
and security all taking more time than we wanted.
Outcomes:
For me, the most important outcome was seeing the
attendees who were all *not* the same old faces as at every
other GLAM-Wiki event come in excited and gradually take
more ownership and responsibility for GLAM-Wiki, as they
began to feel more empowered and a part of the effort. There
were practical outcomes, like specific documentation or
project pages to improve. More than that, though, most
attendees came away intent on contacting local institutions
or organizing their local Wikipedia community. I am as
excited by the overall community-building I think we did
around GLAM-Wiki, which will help it be more successful as
it is more accepted and integrated with the Wikipedia
community, as I am by any specific skills attendees may have
learned or GLAM projects they may go off and start.
The need to reach out more to the Wikimedia community, as
much as to cultural institutions, is something I feel very
strongly about, so I am so glad we were able to hold this
event, and grateful to everyone who made it possible and
attended.
We'd love to hear your thoughts and questions.