Dear Wikimedia New York City,
As many of you know, I'm part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program to find better ways of getting teachers and their students to contribute to Wikipedia and of mobilizing the volunteer community to support such students and teachers as "Wikipedia Ambassadors".
Right now, we're recruiting professors for the spring semester (the second, and last besides possibly the summer term, wave of classes before the pilot program ends and turns the future of the ambassador program entirely to the volunteer community). The basic way that we're going about spreading the ambassador program is by selecting and training volunteers who will serve as "Campus Ambassadors" to provide local support to professors doing major Wikipedia assignments in their classes. A couple of ambassadors from each region where we have participating professors will be brought to San Francisco in early January for a two-day 'train the trainers' program, and then return to their own regions to run ambassador training events for other volunteers. For future terms, the ambassadors will be in charge of figuring out how to train new sets of campus ambassadors, and how fast it is feasible to spread the program.
I think it would be a shame not to get a foothold for the ambassador program in the NYC area for this next term. Given the concentration of Wikipedians and the strong interest in Wikimedia ambassadorship in the general sense, having an ambassador training event in NYC makes sense. For that to happen for the spring term, though, we need to find NYC-area professors who teach public policy-related courses and want to participate in the Public Policy Initiative. We have one prospect at NYU, but don't yet have a verbal commitment on that. But most of the WMF staff focus for the coming term is on recruiting from women's and minority colleges and universities, and I don't anticipate we will spend much time trying to find professors in the New York area. Which gets to the point of this message:
Please help recruit one or more professors who teach public policy-related courses to participate in the Public Policy Initiative for the spring semester. This page [2] has an example email you can use to contact professors. Later this week, we should have the new versions of the "memorandum of understanding" and assignment guidelines that we are asking professors to sign and use for designing assignments, respectively. Those, as well as this example syllabus [1] can be used to give potential participants a good idea of what the program is about and what it will involve on their part. If you find professors who are interested and make the initial contacts, then pass the conversation on to Annie Lin (alin@wikimedia.org), the Campus Team Coordinator for the project; she will handle the final stage of securing commitments and discussing the final versions of the requirements, etc.
The soft deadline for putting interested professors in touch with Annie is next Friday, 19 November.
If we can get to the point of verbal commitments from NYC professors, then we can start identifying and selecting campus ambassadors in the area, including someone to come to SF and return to lead a training event in NYC in January. The basic plan is to have the training events be open to all interested Wikimedians who think they would benefit from it, not just those who are selected to be campus ambassadors.
Please keep Annie Lin informed of interested instructors and feel free to contact me about questions and/or let me know if you're trying this out. Thanks!
-Sage Ross
[1] = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Resources/Example_syllabu...
[2] = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Recruiting_instructors
A quick update:
We didn't end up finding public policy professors in NYC, but it turned out that NYC is best location to have a regional ambassador training for the whole northeast. It will be January 11-12 (a Tuesday and Wednesday... unfortunately, a weekend wasn't possible for the ambassadors who are leading the training. There will also be a an ambassador training in DC on January 8-9 (Saturday and Sunday).
I encourage any Wikimedians in the area who want to get involved with on-campus outreach (such as recruiting professors in any discipline, or starting a Wikipedia student club, or other outreach activities, or just serving as a campus ambassador should interested professors turn up) to apply, if you could make it to either the NYC or DC training. (We're still sorting out what will happen with would-be ambassadors who can't make it to a training... there may be a second opportunity in the coming months, they may have to wait until a later training cycle.)
There's also been discussion about connecting the ambassador program to GLAM / cultural outreach efforts, with a GLAM Ambassador role. Nothing is solid in that direction yet, but if that's something you're interested in, you might also consider applying to the ambassador program. (At this point it would probably be more like working with Liam Wyatt and the ambassador program to figure out *how* to train people to be GLAM Ambassadors, and figuring out what that role means, rather than going through an already-developed training program.)
Here's the Campus Ambassador application form, which you can send to ambassadors-en@wikimedia.org along with a resume/CV, with "Campus Ambassador app: YOUR NAME" in the subject line: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wikipedia_CampusAmb_App.pdf (If you'd like a .doc version, email me and I can send it to you.)
And finally, we're going to need a LOT of Online Ambassadors next term to help the hundreds of students in participating classes. Basically, the requirements are that you be a friendly, competent, active Wikipedian who is comfortable giving detailed feedback on articles (both new starts and substantial, fairly mature articles). There's no training requirements for this role if you already know what you're doing (although we're working on a training program for less experienced Wikipedians who want to learn.) Instructions for applying as an Online Ambassador are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Online_Ambassadors
Cheers, Sage
On Tue, Nov 9, 2010 at 4:01 PM, Sage Ross sross@wikimedia.org wrote:
Dear Wikimedia New York City,
As many of you know, I'm part of the Wikimedia Foundation's Public Policy Initiative, a pilot program to find better ways of getting teachers and their students to contribute to Wikipedia and of mobilizing the volunteer community to support such students and teachers as "Wikipedia Ambassadors".
Right now, we're recruiting professors for the spring semester (the second, and last besides possibly the summer term, wave of classes before the pilot program ends and turns the future of the ambassador program entirely to the volunteer community). The basic way that we're going about spreading the ambassador program is by selecting and training volunteers who will serve as "Campus Ambassadors" to provide local support to professors doing major Wikipedia assignments in their classes. A couple of ambassadors from each region where we have participating professors will be brought to San Francisco in early January for a two-day 'train the trainers' program, and then return to their own regions to run ambassador training events for other volunteers. For future terms, the ambassadors will be in charge of figuring out how to train new sets of campus ambassadors, and how fast it is feasible to spread the program.
I think it would be a shame not to get a foothold for the ambassador program in the NYC area for this next term. Given the concentration of Wikipedians and the strong interest in Wikimedia ambassadorship in the general sense, having an ambassador training event in NYC makes sense. For that to happen for the spring term, though, we need to find NYC-area professors who teach public policy-related courses and want to participate in the Public Policy Initiative. We have one prospect at NYU, but don't yet have a verbal commitment on that. But most of the WMF staff focus for the coming term is on recruiting from women's and minority colleges and universities, and I don't anticipate we will spend much time trying to find professors in the New York area. Which gets to the point of this message:
Please help recruit one or more professors who teach public policy-related courses to participate in the Public Policy Initiative for the spring semester. This page [2] has an example email you can use to contact professors. Later this week, we should have the new versions of the "memorandum of understanding" and assignment guidelines that we are asking professors to sign and use for designing assignments, respectively. Those, as well as this example syllabus [1] can be used to give potential participants a good idea of what the program is about and what it will involve on their part. If you find professors who are interested and make the initial contacts, then pass the conversation on to Annie Lin (alin@wikimedia.org), the Campus Team Coordinator for the project; she will handle the final stage of securing commitments and discussing the final versions of the requirements, etc.
The soft deadline for putting interested professors in touch with Annie is next Friday, 19 November.
If we can get to the point of verbal commitments from NYC professors, then we can start identifying and selecting campus ambassadors in the area, including someone to come to SF and return to lead a training event in NYC in January. The basic plan is to have the training events be open to all interested Wikimedians who think they would benefit from it, not just those who are selected to be campus ambassadors.
Please keep Annie Lin informed of interested instructors and feel free to contact me about questions and/or let me know if you're trying this out. Thanks!
-Sage Ross
[1] = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Resources/Example_syllabu...
[2] = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Ambassadors/Recruiting_instructors
wikimedia_nyc@lists.wikimedia.org