para seu conhecimento
pequeno relatorio de nossa viagem ao Brasil
abs
Carol
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jessie Wild <jwild(a)wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 5:56 PM
Subject: Global Dev Brazil Trip Report
To: WMF Staff Mailing List <staff(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: crossini <crossini(a)wikimedia.org>rg>, Barry Newstead <
bnewstead(a)wikimedia.org>
Oi pessoas!
Barry, Carolina Rossini and I spent the last two weeks of June in Brazil
working on a variety of initiatives in support of our Global Development
work (and overall WMF goals). For those of you who are newer, Brazil is one
of the three priority regions we identified as a movement as being critical
to bring onboard for the future growth and health of the projects and which
may require external catalyzing on our part.[1]
Our days were packed with a slew of meetings and presentations (the entirety
of our agenda can be found on meta[2]), but by means of a brief summary, our
primary focuses were around:
1. Community meet-ups: met with individual community members in Recife,
Campinas and Porto Alegre, and held larger meet-ups in Sao Paulo, and Rio.
2. Outreach: spoke at different universities (UNICAMP in Campinas, IFPE
in Recife) with students and professors as well as FISL – one of the largest
open-source conferences in the world. Topics included general overview of
Wikipedia, intro to Wikipedia in Higher Education, Mobile and Offline
projects and specific volunteer opportunities.
3. Business Partnerships: met with mobile players (Claro & Terra/Vivo) on
the potential of zero-rating mobile Wikipedia and low-cost computer
manufacturer Positivo on pre-installing offline Wikipedia prior to computer
distribution (potential of ~8M computers)
4. Brazil office set up: met with lawyers, recruiters/head hunters, and
shared co-working spaces to determine logistical steps for starting an
office in Brazil
5. General networking: several one-off meetings/meals with different
“experts” on Brazil—e.g., VC investors, researchers,
education-technology
experts, foundations—who offered many suggestions for how we might have the
highest leveraged work within Brazil
Also, with the support of the communications team we developed Bookshelf
materials to support the work in Brazil.[3]
There were specific insights from each meeting, but the primary takeaways
and actions items are included here:
* COMMUNITY HEALTH: The Brazil community is incredibly fragmented, with a
mix of people desiring a chapter, some anti-chapter, and some incredibly
private. Several of the Wikipedians we met who had been editing for years
had never before come to a meet-up or physically met other Wikipedians!
There are three main concerns here:
- Online community: Interactions on the Portuguese Wikipedia are,
anecdotally at least, harsh to each other and appear to be unwelcoming to
newbies. All editors described in length their personal battles to overcome
the obstacles upon the beginning of editing, and admins likewise described
frustrations and impossibilities of handling disputes due to their limited
capacity (only ~30 admin on PT:WP)
- Offline community: there is not much of a culture for meet-ups, though
it is desired by those we talked with (a self-selected group who showed up
at the meet-ups). Our hope is to encourage more such meet-ups particularly
given the broader Brazilian culture of socialization and humanizing what can
otherwise feel like the “Wikipedia Machine.”
- Portuguese vs. English editing: many editors either started in or
switched to editing EN:WP as opposed to PT:WP. The reasons cited for this
were (a) quality perception of PT:WP, (b) broader readership of EN:WP, and
(c) fewer disputes / easier dispute resolution on EN:WP.
Our proposed next steps here:
- Work with WMF Community team & others to help brainstorm ways to
approach this
- Do in depth analytical research to uncover the true causes for editor
stagnation and general health diagnostics. Hopefully we can leverage a lot
of the editor trend research as well as the summer of research work to get a
jump start on what sorts of analysis should take place.
- Conduct some sort of “community reconciliation” process. Discussions on
the practicality and benefits of this are ensuing :-)
- Develop a fellowship/internship opportunity to help execute such work
* EDUCATION PROGRAM: A highlight of the trip was a meeting with Juliana, a
professor of Ancient History at UniRio and an active Wikipedian. She just
had a seminar course approved in which her students will edit Ancient
History articles in PT:WP. She has done a lot of homework on our education
program and attended the Wikipedia in Higher Education conference. We see
significant opportunity for the growth of the education program across a
range of higher education institutions in Brazil.
* OUTREACH: The minimal outreach events done by the Brazilian community
tends to be constrained only to a small portion of Brazil (mostly Sao Paulo
and southern Brazil), and it is important to begin this work in order to
both recruit volunteers and improve awareness around the whole country. The
general public questions the accuracy of the Portuguese Wikipedia, which
limits interaction with the content and curbs desire to contribute. While
some of that perception is warranted based on the life stage of the project,
much is based on stereotypes.
Proposed next steps:
- Identify highly leveraged events at which to speak and host information
areas.
- Work pro-actively with universities to improve quality, bring in fresh
new community, and leverage quality marketing
- Work with other institutions (e.g., GLAM) to help improve quality and
quality perceptions
*BRAZIL OFFICE: We gained some good insight into the needs for the team in
Brazil There are elements such as program work that will be similar to
India, but the issues around community health might require some different
community supporting skills on the team. We garnered good insights into the
operational issues relating to setting up an office and recruiting staff. We
met with lawyers who will help us figure out the right organizational
structure and also toured a really great co-working space (the Hub) which
could provide inexpensive working space, immediate camaraderie, and
beneficial networking. One somewhat unexpected issue is the cost of living.
Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are both really expensive cities (more
expensive than San Francisco), so we’ll need to adjust our cost
expectations.
*BUSINESS PARTNERSHIPS: The big takeaway with this is that we need to have a
clear product offering available to work with global partners. For example,
Positivo Informatica – which has ~33% market share of PCs in Brazil – is
eager to put a version of offline Wikipedia for Schools on all of their
computers prior to retail, but we need an appropriate version in Portuguese
first!
Next steps here:
- Offline Wikipedia: recruit teachers/academics to help create an offline
version of Wikipedia in Portuguese, and then work with Positivo to install
on computers prior to next product launch in October 2011. See: Offline
Projects.[4]
- Understand and, maybe, participate in the Brazilian governmental
process to have PT:WP approved for the computers distributed to every public
school in Brazil (Positivo is also the #1 computer supplier to schools)
- Mobile partnerships: Follow-up with Claro (2nd highest market share in
Brazil [5]) at America Movil headquarters in Mexico D.F. Regarding the
possibility of zero-rating Wikipedia & marketing the mobile Wikipedia
portal.
Thanks for reading, and please join us for a discussion tomorrow over
cookies to dig a bit more into these topics! As always, please feel free to
reach out to Barry, Carolina, or myself with thoughts or suggestions!
Jessie, Carol, Barry
[1] Brazil Catalyst Project:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project
[2] Agenda:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Brazil_Catalyst_Project/Agenda_June_2011#Age…
[3] Bookshelf:
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/Bookshelf
[4] Offline Projects:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Offline_Projects
[5] Mobile market in Brazil:
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Global/Brazil/Brazilian_Digital_Landscape#Mo…
--
*Jessie Wild
Global Development, Manager
Wikimedia Foundation
*
--
*Carolina Rossini*
Brazil Catalyst Project
*Wikimedia Foundation*
+1 415 839 6885 x6747
crossini(a)wikimedia.org <carolrossiniatwiki(a)gmail.com>