Dear friends,
Greetings!
I am here to introduce to you our audiovisual documentation project.
Africa is proud of 2000+ indigenous languages. Most African languages
disappear as their speakers die out
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death> or shift
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_shift> to speaking other languages.
To mitigate the risk effect of language loss due to mentioned instances,
and with support from the Wikimedia Foundation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Special:MyLanguage/Wikimedia_Foundation>,
the Wikimedia User Group Nigeria (WUGN) had conceptualized the idea of
audiovisual documentation of indigenous languages for enriching the
Wikimedia projects.
The Nigeria audiovisual language is a project designed to produce
high-quality audiovisual content on indigenous languages in Nigeria and
make it available for use on Wikipedia and education and research purposes.
We use audiovisual documentation methods (photography and film-documentary
techniques) to *record, capture and archive the different facets of lives
and user stories by ordinary people.*
The team has successfully executed the first phase of the audiovisual
documentation of indigenous languages in Nigeria. See the result here
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Nigerian_Language_Oral_History_Documentatio…>.
Currently, the team is finalizing the 2nd phase of the project.
We observed that the requisite skills needed to execute a similar project
are limited in the movement. Hence, the idea is to recruit and introduce
volunteers to the basic skills required to replicate a similar project in
other African countries.
Volunteers would learn about the followings:
1. Interfacing with experienced Cinematographers on how to produce
high-quality audiovisual content.
2. How to build elicitation protocol for an interview subject.
3. How to create comprehensive metadata for an audiovisual.
4. Knowledge about archival activities that are involved in language
audiovisual documentation.
5. How to identify an endangered language and proposal writing
techniques for an audiovisual project.
6. How to analyze a language knowledge gap.
7. How to create awareness for content on the internet. e.g. social
media. (product sharing)
8. How to manage copyright licenses on the material used for audiovisual
documentation
9. How to determine various Wikipedia articles where the languages can
be used ( Language counts)
Are you interested?
Please fill out the attached Google form by the 10th of July 2022.
https://forms.gle/9wx9hsJhoMP13wHM9
Project manager
Olushola Olaniyan
Dear Community Members
The 2022 African Wikimedia Technical Community Hackathon which is a hybrid
event is scheduled to take place on Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th July 2022
respectively.
We will be introducing the following contribution areas during the
hackathon: website, security, front-end, back-end, documentation and
translation. By participating in the hackathon, you have the opportunity to
work on issues that matter to you and advance your skills/experience while
joining this regional, diverse and inclusive team of contributors and the
African Wikimedia Technical team members.
This event is calling on volunteers who are interested in Wikimedia’s
technical areas such as code creators, maintainers, translators, technical
writers and other technical roles.
By this email, we are placing a call on volunteers who are willing to lead
and host sessions. These sessions can be under any Wikimedia technical
project, topic or technical area of interest like, Wikidata, translation,
etc.
You are welcome to bring a new project on board or join an existing
project, or create something new with others.
The choice is yours!
You are by this email invited to participate in this year’s Hackathon.
Kindly fill out this form
<https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1zNaTqJZ24e8knuJkLepNcV4WDkwDOiSLnPGRwi40Od…>to
participate as well as give details of your Session if you are interested
in organizing one.
For more information, visit our meta page.
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Open_Foundation_West_Africa_Community_Hackat…>
Date: Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th July 2022.
Venue: OFWA Premises, Opp Bosphorus, Labone
Time: 10:00 UTC - 15: 00 UTC
NB: For those who will be joining us virtually, a link will be shared soon.
Best Regards
[image: AWMT Final flyer.png]
--
Eugene Makafui Masiku,
Communications Officer
Open Foundation West Africa
Hello Wikimedians,
Earlier this year we sent out a notice of our intentions to rebrand
the "African
Wikimedia Developers Project" to "African Wikimedia Technical Community" which
will involve not only developers but other technical contributors like:
Designers, translators for localization, Documentation writers, Data
Science Professionals (Data Scientists,Data Analysts, Machine Learning
Engineers, AI professionals and NLP Specialists) and QA Engineers from
Automated Testers to Manual Tester.
We put out a survey as part of the rebranding process seeking your opinion
of the change of name and whether or not the African technical community is
in agreement with it. The survey results saw 93.8% in support of the name
and the idea behind it with just 6.3% opposing the idea. Considering the
results from the survey, we are proceeding with the name African Wikimedia
Technical Community
Following the change of name, we encourage all members or new members to Sign
Up here <https://forms.gle/Yq5Ed8uZqnRJmUpbA> to be registered as official
members of the community.
We are super grateful for your contribution during the rebranding process,
we have exciting projects you would totally love to be a part of. One of
these projects is the *AWMT Community- OFWA Hackathon*.
For more information about the hackathon, visit the landing page
<https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/African_WikiMedia_Technical_Community_-_OFWA…>
.
Cheers!
--
Eugene Makafui Masiku,
Communications Officer
Open Foundation West Africa