Thanks for the update! This all sounds great!
Some thoughts:
1. Producing spoken versions of Wikipedia articles is an excellent idea. Bear in mind producing good audio versions takes a lot of time. Therefore, it would make sense to put in that time only for articles that are already quite good and comprehensive (like Featured Articles on English Wikipedia).
2. At the same time, if there's a basic article that we would like to see as a spoken article as well, it may be very motivating for the Swahili Wikipedia editing community to see a template on that page saying something like: "A spoken version of this article is being planned. Before we record it, it would be great if the article could be improved in the following ways: A, B, C", where A, B, C are specific problems with the article, e.g. missing information, bad grammar, etc.
3. Re Wikipedia Takes Nairobi -- perhaps there are additional groups to partner with. E.g. does Nairobi, or Kenya in general, have a historical society of some kind? If so, perhaps they would be willing to send a representative who could brief the participants about worthy, lesser-known sites?
4. Re museums, I recommend that as a first step, care be taken to ensure that the English and Swahili Wikipedias have entries about these museums. Even basic ones. (A basic entry is a good thing to show to a museum and explain we want to broaden the article and enrich it with content from the museum's holdings.)
That's it for now. Excellent work!
Asaf
On Fri, Jan 21, 2011 at 9:27 PM, Abbas Mahmoud
<abbasjnr@hotmail.com> wrote:
Hi guys,
As you were aware, Alex and I went to the ICT Board office today morning for a follow-up meeting.
In attendance:
-Kaburo Kobia, Project Manager: Digital Local Content;
-Abbas Mahmood;
-Alex Wafula.
I started by debriefing Ms. Kobia on what a Wikimedia chapter is all about, how many we were, our objectives and most importantly, our projects -- both current and in the future. The following are some of the projects that we discussed/proposed:
- Wikipedia Takes Nairobi -- this is a project/competition/whatever-you-may-call-it that will entail participants taking pictures of monuments, buildings, celebrities (and anything else) from Nairobi. The pics will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons and to their relevant Wikipedia articles (if any). This will help in improving the quality of the pre-existing Wikipedia articles. This project is not new in the Wikimedia community: several other chapters have done this as well e.g Wikipedia Takes Manhattan[1]; Wiki Loves Monuments[2], etc.
- Wikipedia For The Disabled -- This will be a project that will focus on adding audio/spoken articles to Wikipedia. This project is aimed for those who are blind and therefore rely on their hearing aid for most of their day-to-day life. A magnificent example of an article that has Spoken Wikipedia in it is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_Tree_Frog. Unfortunately, I do not know of any article on the Swahili Wikipedia that has audio in it.
So, we suggested that a plausible launch for the above two projects would be in May/June. The ICT Board shall assist us in looking for sponsors, launching the project, press & advertising as well as fundraising.
Other projects that we discussed, although to be taken at a later date were:
- I also told Ms. Kobia about Wikisource; and the fact that the Rome Statute on the International Criminal Court[4] was there but the new Kenyan Constitution[5] was not. So again, there was a lack of local content on 'Source as well. Ms. Kobia said that she was going to talk to the Kenya Law Society and see what she can do about that.
- Basing on the fact that there is a GLAM[3] bazzazz in the Wikimedia community at large, I also suggested that we should partner with Kenyan Museums (there are 27 museums, counrtywide) & the Kenya National Archives. We could also partner with Kenya Wildlife Services and come up with, ermm... I dunno...a project about taking pics of wildlife (I mean, the game reserve is what Kenya is known for:-))
- Swahili Wiktionary -- I also suggested partnering with KTN Leo so that we could increase the Swahili vocabularies online. FYI - KTN usually shows a new Swahili word everyday in the middle of the 7 o'clock news bulletin.
Notes:
[1]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Takes_Manhattan/Spring_2008
[2]
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Commons:Wiki_Loves_Monuments
[3]For more info about GLAM, check out:
http://www.wikimedia.org.au/wiki/GLAM-WIKI and
http://outreach.wikimedia.org/wiki/GLAM
[4]
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Rome_Statute_of_the_International_Criminal_Court
[5]
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Kenyan_Constitution
Another followup meetinng is scheduled in the next few weeks.
Cheers,
Abbas
--------------------------------------
Feel free to contact me:
Abbas Mahmood
Tel: +254722215101
Skype: abbasjnr
Wikimedia Kenya Member
"Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That's our commitment."
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