Commons:Wiki Loves Monuments/Organizing a Wiki takes

You can make it as big as you want, from 2 participants to 80 participants with press coverage shown on this picture from Cologne.

Wiki takes events have proven to be an effective way to on one hand reach out to non-Wikipedians to participate with Wikipedia and on the other hand to let Wikipedians meet up while doing something for Wikipedia. In 2011 around 10 Wiki takes... were organised in different countries. The concept of the contest varied from a one day event (classic) to a multi day event.

On this page instructions will be set out to create a classical Wiki takes the City event, on the end some case studies will show successful events in the past and variations which can be made on the classic concept. It's difficult to give exact instructions because you can change everything into your own way.

Preparation

Decisions

Wikipedia takes Andorra covered a big area, this resulted in longer walking distances.

First of all you've to make some decisions.

1. Which city or area will the event take place? Is there a specific city which could use a lot of pictures and where you expect people to come to the event.
2. Pick a date, in most countries a day in the weekend attracts the most participants for a full day event.
3. Most of the time it will be useful to decide on a certain starting point, this could be a café (a café is only suitable for small groups), or if you have another location to use that might be good as well. At the starting point you can give the participants instructions and hand out routes. Make sure your starting point is easy to reach for participants, do you expect them to come by train or car? Make sure it will work.
4. Decide on a point to come together after photographing, this could also very well be a café where you can take another drink.
5. Do you want it to be a contest or not? If it's a contest what are you going to compete on? Most photos (requires a lot of work) or best picture? This requires extra work because you have to judge the event in the end, if you want it to happen the same day participants have to upload there pictures at the end of the event, so that should be facilitated.
6. Do you want to focus on local non-Wikipedians or on Wikipedians to meet up? Or do you want just as many people as possible.

Preparations

1. Announce the event wherever you can: On Facebook, in local papers, on Wikipedia and maybe in the sitenotice for Wikipedia or a Geonotice. Write something to project pages on Wikipedia. And write something down on your website. And finally ask all Wikipedians you know who live in that area (user boxes!) in person to participate.
2. Send the international organisation a notice that you'll host an event. It'll be on the wikilovesmonuments website!
3. Create a page for the event where you give instructions to participants, don't forget obvious instructions (e.g.: "Bring a camera")
4. Create ways for people to sign up for the event, you want to know how many people will come, make this also an easy way for non-Wikipedians, a Facebook page or google survey is an option for that.
5. Make sure you do not underestimate the number of participants: Print enough routes and bring enough goodies (Wiki loves Monuments T-shirts or other Wikipedia things) with you to hand out.
6. Create clear instructions for participants about the event, but for new participants also instructions on how to upload (link to a page where it is described?), or who to send an email to when they can't figure the uploading out is very useful.
7. Create a category where people can upload the photos from the event to.

Compiling lists

People need to be able to identify their pictures when uploading, think about this. Most monuments allready have an identificator.

Create routes or a list of objects to photograph. Make sure you have enough prints with you. If there are a lot of monuments it's nice if you're able to divide the city into routes which you can give separately to small teams of participants. If you have routes with different monuments for each team of participants you can cover more monuments, and if you have two teams for the same lists, have them start from opposite ends and meet in the middle. You can better make the lists too long, rather than too short, but it's best if the route is easy enough to follow that the participants will probably reach your ending point in the time allotted. You can also decide (in a smaller town) to make one list of objects which is the same for every participant so that they can all decide on their own way, but this way you might get the same monuments getting photos, and some monuments without any photos. It is useful to give people a city map with them, with the route lined out on it, this way non-local participants won't get lost in a strange city. It is probably a good idea to give the participants some basic instructions on their routes, you should think of: the address of the meet up point at the end, and maybe a cell phone number so that participants can call you if they get lost.

To create routes it's useful to use the Map with all monuments which is build on the database. The blue points already have a picture, the yellow ones don't have a picture in the list, so you could decide to concentrate on the locales with mostly yellow points.

With this tool You can find all monuments in a certain city. You have to use the url to navigate. If you have troubles with that please ask somebody (User:Basvb for example) to help you with that. The link only shows monuments without an image in the monuments list at that moment. You can change the format into csv, and then it downloads the list in csv-format, which you can then manipulate easily into a walk sheet (street address + unique identifier, in walk order) in something like Excel by sorting the list by street address and then using that to make the routes.

Make variations in the length of the routes, in a crowded city where walking distance is no problem the quick people can photograph over 100 pictures an hour. But other people will take 5 minutes for each monument, and when a building is opened for public you can easily spend 30 minutes there. So make variations on this, preferably make routes with more monuments then you can photograph. Though people won't be done before the end, you will have kept them busy up to the end. But don't annoy people unnecessarily and try to make sure walking distances won't be a problem (try to make sure all walks end up near the meetup point).

The creation of routes can be quite difficult; asking somebody with experience on that part to help you is a good idea.

During the Event

1. Make sure the organiser is there on time, before the event.
2. Make sure the participants understand what you expect from them and understand the instructions.
3. Probably it's the most fun to walk around in the city in small groups (2 or 3 persons) rather then alone.
4. Meet up at a certain place after the routes are done, decide on a time because beforehand you won't know how long the routes will take, and this will differ from person to person (at the start ask them which kind of route they prefer.)
5. At the end you can decide whether you want to finish with eating together somewhere.

Case studies

Wiki takes Amsterdam

Material used in Wiki Takes Haarlem, similar to the material in Amsterdam.

Date, time and location: Amsterdam at 10 september 2011

• 13.00 Gather at a café
• 13.30 Instructions (and T-shirts) to participants and splitting up into groups:
  • Form groups of 2-3 people. The group forming should try to match people of a) same amount of time to spend on the event, b) same "walk" interest, c) same native language and d) at least one person who knows about WLM (or who has done a "Wiki takes" before)
  • Each group chooses or receives one or two "walk" sheets with a locale map and list of monuments in photographic order (and which should include the time and location for the later 16.00 meetup - see "Lessons" below). For Amsterdam, where monuments were on both sides of a street or canal, the list was split into one side of the street, followed by a list from the other side of the street, so two photographers could walk the same direction on opposite sides of the street. Some people were bold and rang doorbells to ask if they could take pictures inside or of the backside if there were monument numbers inside.
• 14.00 Take pictures
• From 16.00 onwards, meet up again at agreed location for recap of experiences
• Around 16.30: end the day and thank participants (first drink is on the organizers, afterwards, everyone goes Dutch)
• 18.00 Grab a bite for the interested ones.

Concept: Wiki takes Amsterdam was a classical "Wiki takes", a one day event.

It was not organised in a contest fasion. There were 7 routes of about 150-250 monuments. Six of these routes were chosen and "walked" (the red light district route found no interested persons :P), and some routes were "walked" by multiple groups. The wiki takes was organised on the same date as the Dutch European Heritage Day called "Open Monumentendag", a day on which monuments are opened to the public. This allowed some groups to go inside some open monuments and take pictures on rare locations.

Participants:

There were around 20 participants, and around 8 of these were non-Wikipedians, or "potentially new editors". The most important participant was the "walk" maker, who made the walks and copied about 8 copies of each walk for potential participants on the day itself. Other organizers were of course Maarten & Lodewijk who brought the T-shirts!

Results: Over 1000 monuments were photographed.

The weather was very good. Because some local people returned on later days to finish their "walk" sheets, not all of the "Wiki Takes Amsterdam" photos are in the category set up for the day.

Lessons and things to improve:

• Some participants forgot to upload their pictures, since they had two whole weeks after the event. We should have contacted them and reminded them more actively.
• Some participants had trouble locating the café at the end, so a small map on the "walk" sheets indicating this café should be added to the map of the "walk" itself.

Wiki Takes Andorra

Date, time and location

Andorra, 18 September 2011, 9:30 to 18:00h

Concept

It was organized as a Wiki Expedition with the aim to photograph the monuments that were missing to complete the list. There were 5 routes prepared: 3 to cover the entire principality driving from the capital to most remote monuments, and 2 for walking in the main urban area. At noon there was a meeting point for having lunch and to exchange experiences before completing routes in the afternoon. It was not a contest but a collaborative effort to achieve a common goal.

Participants

There were 6 participants, one of them a non-Wikimedian. Others were unable to participate but they collaborated indicating which monuments they could photograph on other days so we could focus on missing ones.

Results

About 900 photos of 60 monuments, completing all sites proposed although some were difficult to reach after driving an hour through mountain roads or walking an hour in a protected area.

Lessons and things to improve

A clear goal facilitates motivation. Well prepared routes and well identified sites are very helpful in remote areas. Local promotion was more effective during this event that in previous press releases. Some people recognized us on the way: "You are those Wikipedians I have read about in the newspaper..." (T-shirts helped). In the short term, after this event there was an increase of new local participants in Wiki Loves Monuments, but we should improve their involvement in the event itself.

Wiki takes Porto

Group picture

Date, time and location: Porto, at 24 September 2011

• 9:45 - Gather at Estação São Bento, in Porto historic center
• From 9:45 to 10:00 - Instructions to participants
• 10:00 - Starting the route (The participants were not split in groups as happened in anothers Wiki Takes, but instead did the full route together)
• 19:30 - Arrival at Funicular dos Guindais station. End of Wiki Takes.

Concept:

Well, that was a classic Wiki Takes, one day event. The wiki takes was organised on the same weekend as the Portuguese European Heritage Day called "Jornadas Europeias do Património" a weekend fully of activities related with Heritage and monuments. In Wiki Takes Porto, we provided every participant with the list of monuments to be photographed and we did follow that route around the historic center of the city. We also gave to all participants a "prize" for being present in Wiki Takes - the printing of 20 pictures 10x15cm, courtesy of Fotosport.

Participants:

We had 14 participants, and as far as the organizers know, none of them were Wikipedians. (we do have a list of all participants, and none mention be a Wikipedian)

Results:

That was a problem - we can only estimate because we did "watched" the users uploading the pictures. But if worth anything, we can see a HUGE spike after 25 September (who might or might not be related with the two Wiki Takes)

Lessons and things to improve:

• One of our problems was that the route was "too big" - we couldn't finish in the time frame, and decided to conclude the event in time to avoid any problems that might come from this.
• A problem both Wiki Takes had was we didn't measure the amount of pictures taken in the event itself.

Wiki takes Lisbon

Date, time and location: Lisbon, at 25 September 2011

• 14:45 - Gather at Largo do Carmo, in Downtown Lisbon
• From 14:45 to 15:00 - Instructions to participants
• 15:00 - Starting the route (The participants were not split in groups as happened in anothers Wiki Takes, but instead did the full route togetHer - the map with the route can be find here)
• 19:30 - Arrival at Largo das Portas do Sol. End of Wiki Takes.

Concept:

Well, that was a classic Wiki Takes, one day event. The wiki takes was organised on the same weekend as the Portuguese European Heritage Day called "Jornadas Europeias do Património" a weekend fully of activities related with Heritage and monuments. In Wiki Takes Lisbon, we provided every participant with the list of monuments to be photographed and we did follow that route around the historic center of the city. We also gave to all participants a "prize" for being present in Wiki Takes - the printing of 20 pictures 10x15cm, courtesy of Fotosport.

Participants:

We had 14 participants, and as far as the organizers know, none of them were Wikipedians. (we do have a list of all participants, and none mention be a Wikipedian)

Results:

That was a problem - we can only estimate because we did "watched" the users uploading the pictures. But if worth anything, we can see a HUGE spike after 25 September (who might or might not be related with the two Wiki Takes)

Lessons and things to improve:

• A problem both Wiki Takes had was we didn't measure the amount of pictures taken in the event itself.
• In some places it was difficult to "control" the participants - dispersed (in different monuments/places); intermingled with the crowd.
• More routes to visit and photograph more monuments (?) - increase the geographic range (= more people in the organization; instead, do some free routes)