lightning talks – Jackie Koerner

Reflections on Learning Days at Wikimania 2018

A couple weeks ago, I started an adventure I never imagined I would. I traveled to Cape Town, South Africa to attend Wikimania 2018.

The past year has been amazing, getting to travel the world for the sake of free knowledge (1, 2, 3, 4). For this trip, I applied for a scholarship early and thankfully, I received a scholarship. This scholarship was for conference attendance and room and board, which made the trip much more attainable.

I left St. Louis midday on a Monday, flying through Atlanta and Paris before arriving in Cape Town late Tuesday night. I was optimistic about my ability to be bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (awake and aware) Wednesday morning for the start of Learning Days, but I think I overestimated my abilities.

After a very important hunt for coffee, I arrived 15 minutes late for Learning Days (yikes! Apologies, friends!). Learning days is a pre-conference set for upcoming and emerging leaders in the Wikimedia movement. It gathers us together to learn best practices and collaborate on challenges in the communities. I can personally say I learned loads from the other attendees just during discussions and our conversations between sessions. This is my absolutely favorite part about attending conferences in the Wikimedia movement – the natural way in which you learn so much just by talking to people. For the content that really stuck with me from Learning Days, let’s just say I have pages and pages of notes! I’ll try to keep my summary to just a few things.

Bag I bought while in South Africa with the quote “If you educate a man, you educate an individual but if you educate a woman you educate a nation.” It says it’s an African proverb. Some of my friends from India said it’s from Gandhi. Whoever said it, I like them. 🙂

The first piece that is highly important that I think everyone should continually practice: listening. Listening can be powerful and listening can be dangerous. Let me explain. Through listening, one can learn, build empathy, connection, etc. Through listening, people can also be tricked.

You see, it is a very dangerous thing to listen. If one listens one may be convinced; and a man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a thoroughly unreasonable person.

-Oscar Wilde, An Ideal Husband

Critical listening is, well, critical. Exercise your listening skills by doing the following:

Be present. Don’t think of other things or tinker on your phone while someone else is talking. Give them your attention and show that in your body language (eye contact, turn your body toward them, ignore your phone, etc.)
Don’t be quick to solution. We are creatures who like to solve problems, but maybe now isn’t the time, or the person just wants a sympathetic ear. Just listen.
Ask clarifying questions. Maybe you don’t know a detail or you want to make sure you’re fulling understanding, so ask. It’ll show you’re engaged and want to know more.

There are three types of listening:

Listening to win: listening to find information you can use to aid you in some way.

Listening to fix: listening to develop a solution to the issue at hand.

Listening to learn: listening to know more. This is the most engaging.

We learned about these different types of listening and how to recognize them in ourselves. We did this for the sake of community listening. To practice these we employed them during an exercise with a technique called Collective Problem Solving. We discussed community needs we had and assigned each need to a table. We then got to pick which table we joined. The tables were developed out of the needs we discussed, which included: community health, resources, volunteer retention, and cross-collaboration within the open movement.

During the Collective Problem Solving, we practiced the stages of good listening. First, we were listening to understand, and responding with clarifying questions. Then we asked deeper questions to get deeper understanding. Then we proposed solutions and worked collaboratively to understand the deeper problem and develop a solution. The solution to our table’s problem was so simple, but hugely impactful to the community health and could even reduce volunteer burnout, because the debates required over this topic would thus be reduced! Listening might just be the solution to world peace, or Wiki-peace, but for now, just start small and be a good listener.

We also talked about the differences among the scope of diversity, inclusion and equity. While the definitions above do not encompass the differences among these concepts culturally or linguistically, they do give us a starting point to help us recognize who is here and how they are involved. Diversity is equal participation and is about people. Inclusion is equal experience and about the process. Equity is equal outcomes and about the impact. These concepts were underlying themes during the whole of Wikimania. I’ll go into more detail later.

The next part that really stood out to me was storytelling for projects. This is something everyone needs to do because we want to have people engaged and caring about our projects. This framework tells you how to structure your story to make a good story that is impactful. Follow the ABCD framework:

Attention – get the attention of the audience
Because – tell them why it matters
Content – share the story
Do – call to action

Did you know the use of the word because increases engagement by more than 30%? Make your project stand out by telling the story and why it matters. You know your project, but others don’t. Practice storytelling for your next project and see what impact it has on engagement or acceptance. Even do it on a smaller level in daily communication and see how things change.

Photo of me presenting about survey strategies by Wikimedia Ghana User Group

During Learning Days, I presented about Surveys and how to properly design them to get the most out of them. Learning how to develop surveys is a highly important skill because when done correctly, it can give you the information you need. Note, I said information you need here instead of information you want. That is an issue I see with so many surveys and research studies. People have an idea of what they want to know beforehand and unwittingly ask leading or biased questions. This will not get the clean information and lead you into developing solutions for the community that they don’t really need! Check out my slides and the handout on Commons to get your survey is on the right track, and even to find out if a survey is the right tool for the job. Feel free to share and contact me if you would like some survey or methodological support for your project.

Oh, I hinted about bias in the paragraph above. I gave a lightning talk about bias. If you ever go to an event, go to the lightning talks. They’re always great because you can learn so much about the rest of the wiki community in such a short period of time.

The next thing we did during learning days that really stood out to me was the final activity on the second day. It stood out to me because I am an analytical thinker. Analytical thinkers are great at big picture thinking as well as seeing the complexities and nuance in a sea of grey. I cannot think of the name, but the activity was the one where there are two words placed on opposite sides of the room. You have to pick one, or a point in the middle. I dislike these activities because I generally think for the whole and not for myself. This is great because people like me help the NGOs of the world do amazing work, but it’s bad for activities like this because I cannot stop analyzing the situations in which one concept would be more important than the other, and visa versa. The world is less black and white but more grey, and often, ‘it depends’ is an appropriate response for this activity.

With that being said, I highly enjoyed Learning Days and hope to see it continue. I do hope, however, that some sort of cohort model can be developed so attendees can connect over a period of time before the actual Learning Days event and even after. I find the issue with in-person events is there is great momentum and excitement while we’re all together, but then we go back to our lives afterward without a clear plan to continue the enthusiasm.

Speaking of enthusiasm, you can clearly tell I am excited about this event because I have so much to say. The main event hasn’t even started at this point in my narrative, and this post is already pretty long, so I’m going to make it into two parts. Come back tomorrow for my reflections on Wikimania 2018. See you then.

Reflections on Wikimedia Leadership Bootcamp 2018

Wiki Boot Camp 2018 in DC, with David Ferriero by Andrew Lih CC BY-SA 4.0

Sometimes the best things come as surprises. That sentiment completely applies to the events leading up to what I did in mid-June.In early February, I received an invitation to attend Wikimedia District of Columbia’s summer 2018 Wikimedia Leadership Bootcamp. The Bootcamp was planned to be June 15 – 17 at the National Archives and offered leadership training and engagement with other emerging leaders in the community.

The email caused me a cacophony of emotions. I deal with imposter syndrome (a lot) and I have been rebuilding myself after post-PhD depression. I don’t recognize my accomplishments, and still doubt my knowledge and skills. Getting invited to this Bootcamp surprised me, but validates that what I am doing is good and impactful. I have traveled to San Francisco, Wikimania, Wikimedia Diversity Conference, and Wikipedia Day with Wikimedia NYC. I have done a lot of good in the past year, but it’s hard to remember that when you’re not receiving a paycheck for that work. For the better part of a decade, I have been working “for the greater good” and constantly have to remind myself of my own value. It’s invitations and recognition like this Bootcamp that help me with that process.

A few months after the invitation email, I booked my flight, confirmed my hotel, and I was on my way to Washington D.C. I was so excited because I have never been before. I booked my flights so I could have a few hours before the Bootcamp and after so I could wander around town. I decided to visit the National Museum of American History on the day I arrived. There was no way I could possibly do everything I have on my bucket list and I now find out fall is the time to go – no crowds! I’ll certainly have to plan a follow-up trip.

Now, let’s talk about the Bootcamp itself. First of all, the event taking place in the National Archives was enough to get me there. I was totally geeking out and really wish we had time for an edit party (my new, accessible term for edit-a-thon). The smell of books intoxicated me. Knowing uncounted volumes of information exchange occur because of this institution, it was really overwhelming. If you have a chance to visit and just ask questions, do. The people in these knowledge institutions are the lifeblood of the free knowledge movement. They want to share the information and help people develop meaningful connections with their endless treasure trove.

Everyone at the National Archives was completely accessible, and David Ferriero, Archivist of the United States, spoke to us to tell his story about information sharing and Wikipedia. He is the first librarian to serve as the Archivist of the United States and is doing incredible work to connect the community with content.

The rest of the schedule for day one was packed with keynotes about engaging with community, developing partnerships, safe spaces, and a crash course in Wikidata. Kelly Doyle started the day talking about engaging new audiences. She asked us to think about what we share with the users. She suggested asking questions like, “What can I provide the user?”, “What can the user provide?”, and “What is in it for the user?” These questions will help frame the program development and help enhance the possible effectiveness of the programs. This makes total sense as we need to help the community members identify with the Wikipedia movement in their own ways. Their connections and reasons for participating will all be different, but we need to make them all feel welcome and valued.

Next Ariel Cetrone from WMDC talked about partnerships. Some key pieces that stuck with me were questions she asks herself when developing new partnerships. The major question was, “How would I have liked to have learned about Wikipedia?” This is huge. We all know there are barriers and challenges to finding the information and getting involved on Wikipedia. I know there are some things I would have like to have learned differently. In some ways, getting started on Wikipedia is like water rushing down a hill: you can’t control where it goes and it’s a continuous flow. To the people working to make this process easier and who work with new contributors each day, you’re amazing and keep doing it!

The next session that really stuck with was Sydney Poore talking about Safe Spaces. I have long reflected on harassment and how bias, social dynamics and gender perception play into interactions in online communities and at in-person events with the people from the online communities. For policies aimed at addressing issues related to harassment, the Wikimedia community uses “friendly spaces” and “safe spaces” synonymously. These phrases have 2 very different meanings to me. I discussed this with another Bootcamp attendee, and they agreed.

A friendly spaces policy would be one to make spaces welcoming. This would be one addressing microaggressions and encouraging active listening. Most people are unaware of how their behavior impacts others and how it might be offensive to others. One example is when men interrupt and talk over women. Unless called out, they might not recognize it. Sadly, it is still socially accepted when a man interrupts or speaks over a woman because it is such a common practice. Friendly spaces would educate attendees about some common behaviors to bring awareness through education, and help create the friendly spaces this movement needs in order to meaningfully close gaps. For now, even though the friendly spaces policy exists, it only serves the purpose of a safe spaces policy. I look forward to a future truly friendly spaces policy.

For a safe spaces policy, this would be one addressing harassment and violence. There is a lot to be said about harassment, so I will just say this: I look forward to the development of tools and practices from the Wikimedia Foundation to address harassment in the community. This is not something we can expect volunteers to handle. Harassment is unacceptable and needs to be made so in the community.

After that heavy conversation, we left for dinner and drinks. Of course, we had to go to the place with a huge barnstar, Hill Country BBQ. Not the most vegetarian friendly menu, so I stuck with the macaroni and cheese and figured I’d grab some fruit and veg from the market later. I ended up grabbing drinks with friends instead. It was a better choice!

On to the second day of the Bootcamp! We talked a lot about community. There was much said about tools to make contributing easier, and ways to change thinking about contribution. Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight spoke about how she started editing after her son attended an edit-a-thon (read: edit party). She emphasized how important providing a positive experience is at events. It is not about the number of edits or new accounts created, but community developed.

We also discussed the value of contribution. Much of the measurement of success in the Wikimedia movement is considered in quantitative measures. I have a problem with this because one cannot measure all things in numbers. One cannot measure the impact an event had on a person by the presence of their body. Nor can one measure the impact an edit party had on a person’s information literacy skills. These “softer” benefits cannot be measured in numbers: number of people, number of edits, number of articles created.

Many of us at the Bootcamp complained about the focus on quantitative measure in grant funding. Simply some of the great work we are doing cannot be plotted on a graph, but the lack of quantitative metrics does not mean it has no value. We need to change the thinking in the Wikimedia movement away from impact measured in numbers to impact measured in value.

Following the community discussion, we presented our lightning talks. The lightning talks were another amazing part of the day. I was just completely overwhelmed by the amazing work my fellow Bootcamp attendees were doing. I was in awe and so inspired. I sincerely wish them well in their work, because it is all so very important. Later I plan to write a post about my lightning talk topic: my open relationship.

After the weekend was over, we discussed what could have changed or stayed the same. Our one biggest complaint was not having enough time together. Many of us, if not all, decided to start a group so we could stay connected and continue our growth. I suggested this Wiki Leadership Bootcamp turn into a year-long cohort where we meet in-person one time, but we could each take turns hosting video chats the rest of the year. There were so many things we wanted to know and learn from each other. This perhaps would allow the time and space for that to happen. Thank you again to the organizers of the Wiki Leadership Bootcamp, WMDC and the National Archives for making this happen. I have some new collaborations and projects to move forward on, and am excited to see what happens with future Bootcamps.