Wiki Loves Africa 2020/Online

News March 16th

Dear friends

Due to the coronavirus crisis, it has been advised that all offline in-person) public events funded by Rapid Grants, Project Grants or Annual Plan Grants had to be cancelled or postponed until further notice.

Naturally, it impacts the operations of the Wiki Loves Africa photographic contest.

An online meeting was organized on Saturday 14th of March to brainstorm and decide how to best mitigate the situation. The notes of that meeting may be found here : https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/WikiLovesAfrica_2020

Those are the main elements

Contest will close April 15th

It has been decided that the deadline to submit images would be extended by 2 weeks to accomodate the groups who had planned upload sessions and have to cancel them. Please note that the display of site notice calling for participation to the contest will not be extended.The site notice will be displayed till March 31th. But it will be possible to upload images till April 15h.

Ceremonies will be delayed until further notice

One of the important elements of the contest is to promote wikimedia projects in Africa, but also to rejoin and share a happy moment with wikimedians and winners. It would be quite unfortunate to replace ceremonies with simple sending of certificates and gifts by postal mail to thank winners. There is no urgency to decide on winners and to announce them, nor to have ceremonies. We propose that jury meetings and winners ceremonies can be delayed by a couple of months, or even to fall 2020.

Delays for reporting rapid grants will be asked to WMF grant teams

Naturally, if ceremonies are delayed by several months, it may be that the deadline of the rapid grant requests need to be extended as well. We will discuss that with WMF.

Increase of social media presence in the next 2 weeks

We advise that the social media presence (facebook, twitter, instagram) be reinforced until the end of the contest. Most countries are currently being quite active on social media, but their announcements are often focusing on offline events and announcements of outcome of such meetings. We advise that communication focus on

display of excellent images, disrupting images, funny images etc or
communication of figures of participation so far
or promotion of wikipedia articles reusing contest images

(those are examples, be creative)

Organization of online edit-a-thons by countries

Other wikimedia groups have done so last week-end, and it worked. This could also be done in local languages.

Organization of two online webinars (French, English) - recorded

We will try to organize in the next 10 days two online sessions, with

general presentation of Wiki Loves Africa contest. Its context. 5 years outcome.
this year contest. 2020 theme and examples. General outcome so far.
demo of the upload sessions
stories from local countries (1-3 stories from 1-3 people)
discussion

Those sessions will be recorded then posted online and promoted.
We will use EventBrite to record participation. We need volunteers to organize and host those sessions.

Online sessions planned

French session

The webinar took place on March 27th. It was recorded and is available on youtube. See more details here:c:Commons:Wiki Loves Africa 2020/Comment participer à Wiki Loves Africa tout en restant chez nous

English session

Volunteers

Geoffrey
Islahaddow (talk) 13:37, 16 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Shoodho (talk) 09:13, 28 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Summering2018

Event details

The slides used on the English Webinar

The playback of the English Webinar held on 28th March

Webinar for Photographers
Webinar focus:
- Why you should contribute your images to the Wiki Loves Africa photographic contest
- How to contribute
- Copyright considerations
- What will happen to your photographs on Wikimedia projects
28th March 2020 at 13h00 UTC
Zoom and Facebook live available: https://www.facebook.com/events/500722813930543/
Register and book your spot here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wiki-loves-africa-2020-africa-on-the-move-tickets-100299055174

Event results:

registered via eventbrite: 31
attended the webinar: 25 people
slides for Webinar, see the link to the right
playback video uploaded to commons and now available on YouTube

Arabic session

An Arabic Webinar was held. You can view it on YouTube