Leader training session for Ada Lovelace Festival of Wikipedia

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• Date: Saturday 7 September, 12pm-6pm
• Place: Wikimedia UK, Basement meeting room 2, 56-64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT (Old Street tube station). Once you reach the main door follow the instructions. Directions.
• Registration: Booking was captured here.
• Contact: WMUK, Daria Cybulska on daria.cybulska (at) wikimedia.org.uk, telephone 0207 065 0994.

About the event

Lunch, but not cake, was provided!

This event was an informal training meeting to help anyone interested in the initiative to organise their own Wikipedia editing workshop. It aimed to give the participants some useful tips on running such an event, together with a brief introduction to editing Wikipedia.

The motivation for the event was the Ada Lovelace Day on 15 October this year, and Wikimedia UK's willingness to support as many people as possible to get involved! In general, Ada Lovelace Day exists to celebrate the contributions of women in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Ada Lovelace is considered the first programmer, due to her work on Charles Babbage's analytical engine. As such, she's someone we can very much hold up as a role model.

As a part of the run-up to Ada Lovelace Day, we wanted to encourage anyone interested to organise their own informal Wikipedia editing meetup. It was especially aimed at anyone belonging to a STEM-related group, who would, after this training, organise one meeting during the autumn to editing Wikipedia. Or offer to help put on a special Ada Lovelace Day meet-up for your edit-a-thon. We were keen to also attract anyone not belonging any official groups, who may be interested in gathering friends together at a pub with wifi and help each other research and create new entries, or expand existing stub articles on notable women.

We were also aiming to then help publicise the resulting events - e.g. it on the Finding Ada website, in this newsletter and on Twitter.

Why?

Wikipedia is a key resource for millions of people, but women are sadly underrepresented, both as article subjects and as participants. We would like to encourage both men and women to get together during October to add biographical information about notable women to the online encyclopaedia.

Agenda

• 12pm lunch
• 1pm
  • Short Introduction to Wikipedia
  • How to edit (both editors; references, biographies of living people, notability)
• 3pm
  • Organising and running an editing event - and Q&A
  • How can you support others during the event

What the attendees were asked to bring

• Laptop
• Information about your event idea
• Ideas for your topic target list
• Any questions about the event you may have

Attendees

1. User:Daria Cybulska (WMUK) - for training
2. Catherine Lenoble
3. The event was set up to support the events run by BCS Women planned in October. The date proved not suitable for most, and they were supported 1-1 to set up their events.

Additional resources

• Guide to running your own edit-a-thon

Outcomes

• Catherine Lenoble who has attended the training went on to organise her first event in Brussels - [1]. Also here.

• Andrew Davidson, who was not present but was inspired to run a webinar about editing Wikipedia and articles on Women in Science. First one was delivered in the beginning of October 2013. Article w:Sidney Kennon was created to demonstrate the process.
• A further initiative by Andrew was delivered for the Ada Lovelace Day on 15 October 2013 linked to the Women in Leadership group.