[Wikimedia-l] IEG 2013 Round 2 Grantees Announced

Tue Dec 17 13:12:29 UTC 2013

Today we’re announcing the second round of Individual Engagement Grantees.
[1]

These grants from the Wikimedia Foundation support individuals and small
teams of Wikimedians to experiment with new ideas aimed at having online
impact on Wikimedia projects. We’ve learned a lot from the first round of
IEG grantees over the past 6 months, and look forward to seeing what this
next group will accomplish.[2]

Seven projects have been recommended by the *Individual Engagement Grants
Committee*, a group of volunteers from across the Wikimedia movement who
reviewed a set of more than twenty proposals, and approved by the Wikimedia
Foundation for this round.[3][4] These selections represent a broad range
of projects focusing on activities from outreach to tool-building and are
all aimed at connecting and supporting our community.

Grantees are trying out new ways of engaging with women and young
Wikipedians, fostering participation in Africa, and supporting
cartographers, researchers and developers to better engage with projects
like Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata, and Wikipedia.

The seven selected projects are:

*Wikimaps Atlas*

Led by Arun Ganesh and Hugo Lopez, funded at $12,500.[5]  Hugo and Arun
will be building a system to automate the creation of maps in standardized
cartographic style using the latest open geographic data.  With new
workflows and scripts, they aim to make it easier for Wikimedia’s
cartographers to generate and update maps for use in Commons, Wikipedia,
and beyond.

*Mbazzi Village writes Wikipedia*

Led by Paul Kikuba with collaboration from Dan Frendin, funded at
$2880.[6] This project is a collaboration between Mbazzi villagers,
Wikimedia
Sweden, and the Wikimedia Foundation to build a Wikipedia center in Uganda
where volunteers can to contribute to Luganda Wikipedia, particularly
focusing on articles related to sustainable development.

*What is about - C'est quoi. A series of communication tools about
Wikipedia in Cameroon*

Led by Marilyn Douala Bell and Iolanda Pensa with collaboration from Michael
Epacka, funded at €15,000.[7]  The team in Douala, Cameroon will engage
local artists to create comics, video, and other materials to raise
awareness about Wikipedia and free knowledge.

*Visual editor gadgets compatibility*

Led by Eran Roz and Ravid Ziv, funded at $4500.[8] The team aims to map,
organize, and surface lists of gadgets used in different language versions
of Wikipedia to improve sharing of gadgets across language communities.
They’ll also be piloting and documenting an approach for adapting the
most-used gadgets for Visual Editor compatibility.

*Wikidata Toolkit*

Led by Markus Krötzsch with collaboration from students and
researchers at Dresden
University of Technology, funded at $30,000.[9] Markus’ team will develop a
demonstrator toolkit for loading, querying, and analysing data from
Wikidata. The project experiments with ways to give developers,
researchers, and Wikimedians easier access to use Wikidata in applications,
research, and other projects.

*Women Scientists Workshop Development*

Led by Emily Temple-Wood, funded at $9480.[10] Emily is piloting a model of
regular, incentivized editing workshops aimed at college-aged women to
encourage them to become regular contributors to Wikimedia projects and
combat systemic bias with quality content. If the approach is successful,
she’ll use lessons learned in order to develop a scalable kit for other
groups to use.

Finally, we’ve provisionally approved a seventh project:

 *Generation Wikipedia*

Led by Emily Temple-Wood and Jake Orlowitz, funded at $20,000 - provided
that legal dependencies can be satisfied.[11] This project would pilot a
week-long summer conference for young Wikipedians and Wikimedians from
around the globe to connect, share skills and build leadership and
community capacity among our newest generation of editors.

The ten grantees from Cameroon, Uganda, India, Israel, France, Italy,
Germany and the United States will begin their projects in the new year;
most will run from January through June 2014.  They’ll be regularly sharing
their progress, experience and lessons learned from their experiments
throughout this period, so please feel free to visit their respective pages
on Meta for project information and updates in the coming months.[4]

Thanks to everyone who boldly created a project idea or shared feedback and
suggestions in this round!  The next round of IEG proposals opens on 1
March 2014. We look forward to seeing more of your ideas and engagement in
2014.[12][13]

Sincerely,

Harold A. Hidalgo

On behalf of the *Individual Engagement Grants Committee*.

-----------------------------------

1. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG

2. http://blog.wikimedia.org/2013/08/01/ieg-learnings-call-new-proposals/

3. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Committee

4. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-engaging

5. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikimaps_Atlas

6.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Mbazzi_Village_writes_Wikipedia

7.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/What_is_about_-_C%27est_quoi._A_series_of_communication_tools_about_Wikipedia._Cameroon_pilot_project

8.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Visual_editor-_gadgets_compatibility

9. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Wikidata_Toolkit

10.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Women_Scientists_Workshop_Development

11. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG/Generation_Wikipedia

12. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IEG#ieg-applying

13. https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Ideas