Unveiling the 1st Wikiadvocacy Meeting results.

Why, who and how to advocate for an open content world.

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Patricia Diaz Rubio/ Wikimedia Chile

• What was the 1st WikiAdvocacy Meeting.
• Who participated and which were their thoughts about it.
• Main analysis- What organizers learned from the event.
• Some proposals for the future.

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Presentation structure

What was the 1st WikiAdvocacy Meeting in Santiago?

A meeting to discuss what advocacy means within the Wikimedia movement.

Our goals:

• Identify the main social/tech/political concerns or threats for our movement.
• Build advocacy capacities among Wikimedians
• Shape and strengthen a global wikiadvocacy network.

We had a 2 days meeting, were we navigated through 5 main group activities:

• Fishbowl, to identify our current concerns.
• Sharing advocacy stories, to identify how everybody was working. 
• Open Space, to promote collective work around specific topics
• Collective initiatives to improve the advocacy group, to draw our future.
• Next steps, to determinate how to keep working together.

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Who participated and which were their thoughts

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We made an open call for Wikimedians and regional digital rights advocates.

We received +60 applications, and we selected a group of 36 participants.

They main criteria were:

• their experience in the advocacy field.
• their geographical diversity.

According to our post event survey, participants valued:

• The sense of community – knowing that they are not alone doing this.
• The opportunity to meet and to build trust among a diverse group of wikiadvocates.

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According to our post event survey, participants learned:

• Advocacy is a broader concept than what we thought.
• The Wikimedia model urges for a protection.
• Even thought we have the people to do it, we must consider our different profiles and expectations in group that is built both by volunteers and by professional members.

Main analysis. What organizers learned from the event.

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We identified 3 main concerns

• Need for capacity building in different practical areas like legal drafting, technical knowledge, and advocacy tools.
• The overall understanding of the Wikimedia model, including how members perceive themselves and how they communicate the model to others.
• Relations among the movement, including affiliates-WMF-volunteers and to better connect to support the advocacy work.

In the capacity building area, people were more interested in gaining knowledge in:

• Legal tools
• Tech tools
• Concrete advocacy capacities
• Communications skills.

All these tools were seeing as necessary to:

• Approach policymakers.
• Reaching other stakeholders.
• Answering request from other stakeholders.

From the Explaining the Wikimedia Model perspective, people were more interested in:

• Clarifying the WM identity and its current role, to better communicate it.
• Building a common language upon this, to clarify how we approach to external stakeholders.
• Working on a better way to documenting and mostly sharing the value information and data our movement produces.

Next steps.

How we keep working together?

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• Keep this topic alive and present in different Wikimedia gatherings.
• Regular online meetings.
• Documentation sharing
• Capacity building, supporting the sessions lead by the GA team but also proposing specific training sessions on tech and regulatory tendencies. 
• Working groups: divided by groups, regions or needs.

Last thoughts?

Unveiling the 1st Wikiadvocacy Meeting results.

Why, who and how to advocate for an open content world.

​

Patricia Diaz Rubio/ Wikimedia Chile