para seu conhecimento
pequeno relatorio de nossa viagem ao Brasil
abs

Carol

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Jessie Wild <jwild@wikimedia.org>
Date: Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 5:56 PM
Subject: Global Dev Brazil Trip Report
To: WMF Staff Mailing List <staff@lists.wikimedia.org>
Cc: crossini <crossini@wikimedia.org>, Barry Newstead <bnewstead@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:

Our proposed next steps here:

* 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:

*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:

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#Agenda
[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#Mobile_Landscape_in_Brazil



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Jessie Wild
Global Development, Manager
Wikimedia Foundation





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Carolina Rossini
Brazil Catalyst Project
Wikimedia Foundation
+1 415 839 6885 x6747
crossini@wikimedia.org