Project grants/Wikimedia Commons advertisement business cards

Basic information

Project details

Full project name

Wikimedia Commons advertisement business cards

Project start date (include month, day, and year)

Indefinite length

Project completion date (include month, day, and year)

Indefinite length

Please describe the project in 1–2 sentences

It would be very useful to be able to provide Wikimedia Commons business-card sized adverts to photographers at museums/cities where events like Wikipedia Takes Coventry and meta:Meetup/Liverpool/11 take place. Quite often other photographers have better equipment, and will be taking better photos, than attendees, and encouraging them to upload their photos to Commons will be of significant benefit.

Amount requested

This depends entirely on the number of cards ordered, and the number of people that are interested in distributing them.

Project lead details

Are you an individual or an organisation?

Individual

Are you currently a member of Wikimedia UK?

Yes

Project lead name

Mike Peel (talk)

Project lead username or email

Mike Peel (talk)

Project lead title (position), if any

Volunteer

Project description

Please describe what the project will entail, in as much detail as you feel appropriate.

This project would consist of designing, printing and distributing business cards that serve as an advertisement for Wikimedia Commons to photographers at events and by current Wikimedia Commons photographers.

The business card would include the following information:

• Wikimedia Commons logo
• A brief description of what Wikimedia Commons is about, and why it's worth uploading photos to it
• A link (QR code?) to a welcome page on Wikimedia Commons
• A contact telephone/email address for further information, and to answer any questions

The steps of the project, if approved, would be:

1. Design the cards
2. Find out how many people (Commons/Wikipedia community) want to have a set to distribute, and solicit feedback on the design
3. Order the cards
4. Distribute to interested people
5. Measure metrics
6. Repeat 2-6 if further demand

Goals and measures of success

Project goal

Please briefly describe what will be accomplished if the project is successful.

Project goal

The aim would be to encourage new contributors to Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia.

Measures of success

Please provide a list of measurable criteria that will be used to determine how successful the project is. You will need to report on the success of the project according to these measures after the project is completed.

Measures of success

Number of people that access the link/QR code

Number of people that subsequently go on to upload photos to Wikimedia Commons

(Both of these depend on WMUK being able to track these metrics)

Budget and resources

Project budget breakdown

An initial breakdown might be:

• Purchase of cards: 400 cards, green paper, £97.90 from Moo.com
• Postage of cards: 5x£2 = £10

This can be shrunk/expanded to suit interest here.

Non-financial assistance requested

• Some design work for the business cards will be needed. This can be done by volunteers, but it would be good if staff can be available as a fall-back option.
• Someone will need to order the cards and distribute them. This could either be done directly by the office, or by myself.

Impact and benefits

How will this project support Wikimedia UK's charitable objects and its vision, values and mission?

Creating and supporting open content.

Discussion

Using QRpedia or bitly to track how the links is being used should be straightforward. How would the number of people who go on to upload pictures to Commons be measured? Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 12:38, 22 April 2014 (BST)

Possibly using UploadWizard's campaigns... Richard Symonds (WMUK) (talk) 13:12, 22 April 2014 (BST)

Maybe. It would be nicer to keep track of usernames rather than uploads if possible. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:00, 22 April 2014 (BST)

Surely if we know what files are uploaded we can works our usernames. CatScan v2 could do that, and since you can add categories with a campaign it would be straightforward to run a report. I think the bottom line is we should be able to measure it, so the cards could be a good investment. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 17:00, 25 April 2014 (BST)

• I've had similar thoughts to this in the past and I think this is a fantastic idea. Would it be better to have A5-sized cards as well as or instead of business-card sized? There's very little room on a business card, and we might want to explain (or at least touch on) things like licensing so that Commons' requirements don't come as a surprise when they get to the upload interface. Harry Mitchell (talk) 20:17, 28 April 2014 (BST)
  • Thanks Harry. :-) A6 might work, but I think A5 might be a bit too big. My rationale with suggesting business cards is that they'd be easy to slip into any sort of camera bag, which would make it less likely that they'd be left behind by photographers when they go on trips out, and they'd be easy for the recipient to tuck away in their own bag. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 20:32, 28 April 2014 (BST)

• A simple project that will cost peanuts but could deliver us a lot; sounds like a great idea to me. Looking at this useful guide for people, like myself, who are rusty on paper sizes, I would agree with Mike that A5 strikes me as too big. A6 could work, though I would say A7 is healthy size which could include enough concise text to be useful and readable. A8 would probably be too small. CT Cooper · talk 03:45, 30 April 2014 (BST)
• Regarding size, I agree that the business card size initially proposed could be most likely to be retained by others. There are, with apparently being the European standard. -- Trevj (talk) 09:01, 17 July 2014 (BST)

• Hi @Mike Peel:, pleased grants committee has been asked to look at this again. @CT Cooper: has emailed to reiterate his support, and I'm happy to do the same. Hopefully the office can work out some of the finer details with you. It would be good to have a clear idea what URL will be used (I'd suggest a short URL rather than QR code) for linking to Commons. I see the merit of phone/email on the card (easy to drop wmuk a message if out and about) but I did wonder if a wmuk link and possibly logo might be useful too (it flags us as an entity, and might be a recruitment opportunity (Goal 2a maybe) - at some point such a link could go to a 'photographer landing page'). Sjgknight (talk) 08:00, 28 May 2015 (BST)

I really like the idea of a photographer landing page for two reasons one it can be used to give specific and tailored support to UK photographers and two we can use the number of page hits for that page (assuming we don't have links to it in other places) as a measure of how successful the business cards are in recruiting photographers. I am happy to support this project. Theresa knott (talk) 13:16, 29 May 2015 (BST)

• I agree, and strongly support this. It's a simple idea that seems to be welcomed by volunteers and that could have a good impact at very low cost. WMUK seems to have a bit of a history of making a meal of discussing simple and cheap ideas for months and never getting round to implementing them. Assuming the grant committee approves this, it's an ideal project for a more or less entirely volunteer-based working group to get on and implement. Let Mike and volunteers discuss and decide the fine details of what should be on the card, but don't hold up approval if the grants committee are able to say yes to the concept immediately. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 14:16, 28 May 2015 (BST)

Draft design

is at User:Mike Peel/Sandbox. Please feel free to play around with it. :-) Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 23:17, 29 April 2014 (BST)

I think that looks pretty good. I like having a photo on the back is a nice idea – especially the 2012 picture of the year. The only thing that's missing is a campaign link so we can measure usage. Richard Nevell (WMUK) (talk) 11:08, 30 April 2014 (BST)

Thanks Richard. I wonder if it would be best to set up a WMUK URL to do this - something like wikimedia.org.uk/commons that then links through to the welcome page while providing WMUK with tracking information via stats.wikimedia.org.uk? Or can redirect to a more complicated URL on commons? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:01, 1 May 2014 (BST)

I like the design and text but wonder how legible it would be at business card size. I've therefore suggested amended wording within the sandbox design, for consideration/further amendment. I assume the cards would be professionally typeset, including image bleed on reverse (maybe with attribution in white within a dark area of the photo, rather than within a footer, e.g. rotated within LH edge may be an improvement). -- Trevj (talk) 09:01, 17 July 2014 (BST)

Approval

Based on the recommendation from the Grants Committee, the budget holder has approved this grant.