Plan/2014

Based on Wikimedia Serbia's Strategy of work and progress 2012-2014, we made this proposal as a plan of activities for the year 2014. Here are some basic activities.

Finances

Planned revenues: 88.462,18 €

Planned expenditures: 88.462,18 €

Office and staff

Executive Director

The position of Secretary General is expected to be superseded by the position of Executive Director.

Program and Community Manager

In the upcoming year, we are planning to hire one more person as a Program and Community Manager. This person is meant to structure and coordinate projects and programs and to lead volunteers in their work.

Projects and activities

Wikimedia Serbia Educational program

Educational program of Wikimedia Serbia consists of several different projects, for which we will give key objectives.

EduWiki Conference: This is a conference with the goal of getting educational and scientific institutions acquainted with Wikimedia projects, creating two-way communication, introducing Wikimedia projects in the curriculum of Serbia’s educational institutions and informing state institutions about positive aspects of free knowledge, which is a foundation of Wikimedia projects.

EduWiki Learning Day: This is a one-day event which would happen after EduWiki Conference. The key objective is exchanging experiences between project managers (both local and guests from abroad) regarding leading and realization of educational programs in the global community and strengthening partnerships.

Wikipedia in Schools: WMRS has a long tradition of conducting lectures and workshops in schools and faculties within projects for all types of educational institutions (elementary, high schools and university faculties). The goal is to use Wikimedia projects in educational purposes as a free platform that could be used in many ways. One of those ways is writing articles (seminal papers) on Wikipedia, which help increase quality and quantity of this project. Thanks to the lectures and workshops, new editors and users will be informed about the ways Wikimedia projects work.

Seminars and Trainings: This is a project that includes training teachers and professors to work on Wikipedia, so that they would be able to edit on their own and later train their pupils or students and use Wikipedia in their curriculum.

Professional Development: This is a project that deals with including seminars and trainings in the system of professional development of teaching staff through attending obligatory courses and seminars. In contrast to the “Seminars and Trainings” project, which isn’t compulsory and is conducted as an extension to the cooperation with an educational institution on a specific Wikipedia article writing project, “Professional Development” is a project where teachers and professors from all over Serbia attend a seminar because they are required to attend several of such seminars throughout a year, with the goal of professional development.

Educational projects have always had a role in popularization of Wikipedia and increasing participation in terms of editing. Cooperation with educational institutions through various projects increases Wikipedia’s visibility and enables even higher participation, and writing articles through educational projects increases the quantity and quality of Wikipedia articles. EduWiki Conference deals with increasing participation and reach.

Wikicopter

Wikimedia projects have large quantities of media files (photos and videos), but they are mostly of amateur or near amateur quality. Specifically, aerial photographs of Serbia are lacking or completely absent, since they typically require very expensive equipment.

The objective of this program is to enable Wikimedians to make aerial photographs, since currently they’re not able to. The project would be conducted firstly on territory of Belgrade, and later as a part of the Photo Safari project throughout Serbia.

This project would draw attention to Wikimedia projects since a quadricopter is a very interesting and novel object. It would increase participation in Wikimedia projects by people who would want to operate the Wikicopter. It would bring a number of novel high-quality aerial images to Wikimedia projects the likes of which don't yet exist. People interested in aircraft models who are not interested in Wikimedia projects might become interested because of the Wikicopter.

Competitions

The primary objective of this program is to increase free knowledge by creating new or improving existing Wikipedia articles that would unlikely be created or improved otherwise, except through on-wiki competitions. Additionally, competitions are a good opportunity to motivate community members to edit articles.

This project would bring attention to Wikimedia projects since the awards offered are somewhat unorthodox for an Internet project. It would increase participation in Wikimedia projects since people who would not otherwise participate will be drawn to the participation by the awards, and we have empirically observed that competitions produce positive effects on Wikimedia projects. As quality of articles is included in their assessment the competition will improve the quality of articles. Wikipedia's reach will be increased both by the new articles and via reports of the competition.

Free photo content: Photo Safari & Wiki Loves Monuments

Free photo content projects include the following

Photo Safari: this is a continuation of the Wiki expedition project from last year’s Annual plan. The main objective is to collect photos of not very well covered parts of Serbia, e.g. natural heritage, everyday life, places of greater importance in Serbian villages and smaller towns. If possible, we would like to engage with the local community.

Wiki Loves Monuments: mass collecting of photos of cultural monuments of Serbia through a well-known contest; also, one of the objectives this year will be to hold an article writing and improving competition regarding Serbian monuments. Additionally, we expect to promote the project through holding several exhibitions of the winning photos.

The main goal of these projects is to increase the visibility of Wikimedia Serbia, Wikimedia projects, especially Wikimedia Commons, and the Wikimedia movement as a whole. By getting thousands of new photos, articles about Serbian topics will be greatly improved. Also, the goal of the project is to give incentive to community members to work on the projects by way of giving awards and media attention.

Free content: GLAM & Digital Belgrade

GLAM: We will continue our work with GLAM institutions with the objectives being two-way cooperation, facilitating the release of photographs, texts and data under free licenses, and attempt to establish cooperation with institutions we haven’t previously worked with.

Digital Belgrade: We will continue our work on the project of placing QRpedia’s QR codes to Belgrade monuments.

The main strategic priorities of GLAM activities are increasing reach and participation and strengthening cooperations with local partners. By having a Wikipedian in Residence, we hope to increase the quality of many articles and quantity of photos available on Wikimedia projects.

Wiktionary

This is the continuation of the project of developing Wikipedia’s sister projects. Work on the project 1001 Arabic Words, that was started in 2013, includes writing Arabic-Serbian dictionary, articles about Arabic language and grammar, holding workshops and promoting the project. Our plan is to start some more similar projects related to Wiktionary, beside the one in Arabic, in partnership with the Faculty of Philology, University of Belgrade. Seeing as the volunteers who have participated in the 1001 Arabic Words project in 2013 expressed interest in actively taking part in other projects and activities of Wikimedia Serbia beside the Wiktionary project, we expect that other similar groups will show certain interest in internal going-ons in Wikimedia Serbia and its other projects.

By supporting the development of smaller projects, we are encouraging innovation and improving the quality of those projects. By engaging students to actively participate in projects like this, we will increase awareness regarding Wikimedia and hopefully attract new volunteers for Wikimedia Serbia.

Supporting regional cooperation:

As one of the oldest chapters in the region, Wikimedia Serbia has started many initiatives for regional cooperation. We have previously organized several very successful regional conferences - the most recent was the CEE conference in 2012 - which resulted in the formation of communities and chapters in the region. By continuing with regional cooperation, we hope to support development, strengthening and connectivity of communities in region. Our goal is to participate and enable participation of representatives of the broader community in events, to help in organizing events either by giving advice or active participation in the organizational process.

Communities in the region have similar history and face similar challenges in their everyday work on Wikimedia projects. Previous regional cooperation has shown that regional communities benefited from exchange of ideas, and has resulted in improving connectivity and strengthening communities. Strong community contributes more and better content, has more diverse members and can work more on promoting Wikimedia projects in public and attract more partners and programs. By continuing with active participation in regional cooperation, we expect it to gain improvement in quantity and quality of material on projects, increase in outreach and participation and through diversity in more and more innovative programs in local communities.

Community Support

The goals of this project are enabling communication across narrower and broader community of Wikipedia, other Wikimedia projects, as well as broader Wikimedia movement. Another goal is to inform the public about happenings in Wikimedia movement by writing and localizing blog posts and participating on social networks. Also, one of the goals is maintaining contact with the broader community in Serbia by visiting and enabling community members to participate in Wikimedia projects (e.g. participation in local and international conferences and meetings).

This project mainly addresses visibility and community outreach through posting on blog and websites, which we expect will result in an influx of new volunteers and partners. Traveling to places outside Belgrade mainly helps with strengthening and supporting the community in other parts of Serbia and enables us to reach out to people in remote areas to help them be more engaged in activities of Wikimedia Serbia.

Creative Commons & Wiki Loves Science

Creative Commons: Public in Serbia is not well acquainted with concepts of copyright or free culture licences. In the past, we had success in raising public awareness in that regard, which resulted in improvements is quality of Serbia-related multimedia content on Wikimedia projects. The goal of this project is to continue with popularization of free culture licenses in Serbia, by organizing lectures and promoting Creative Commons in Belgrade and Serbia.

Wiki Loves Science: This is a continuation of the same project from 2013, with the goal of promoting Open Standards and Open Access through lectures by experts and public debates.

By raising awareness about copyright, Open Standards and Open Access, this project will influence quality - as well as quantity - of Serbia related content on Wikimedia projects.

World War I: 100 Years Later

World War I: 100 Years Later is a project of commemorating 100 year anniversary since the beginning of World War I. Its objective is to increase quantity and quality of contents on Wikimedia projects related to World War I. The project will last through whole 2014.

Through editathons, this project will increase the number and quality of WWI articles. By being included in the anniversary of the beginning of WWI, we will increase visibility of Wikimedia projects and hopefully the number of editors. Through cooperation with other institutions, such as GLAM and state organizations, this project will increase the number of free photos on Wikimedia Commons.