WMCH Annual Report 2021 | Full-length report (original) (raw)

Muriel Staub, Wikimedia CH Board President (3 - see the photo credits at the end of the page)

A word from the president

Wikipedia turned 20 in 2021. It’s almost impossible to imagine our lives without it – and the dimensions of its existence are overwhelming: in Swiss official languages alone, Wikipedia is more than 6.8 million articles strong. And together with its sister projects like Wikidata or Wikimedia Commons, it has become an essential infrastructure.

On an organizational level, Wikimedia CH reached another milestone in 2021 by becoming financially independent – meaning we are no longer relying on the support of the Wikimedia Foundation. With this important step, we were able to “release” funds from the foundation to go elsewhere and support other Wikimedia chapters, groups or individuals worldwide – who are not based in a wealthy country with generous individuals and a great local funding infrastructure.

With this newfound freedom, we dare to dream and start to envision our future together – by working hard on our five-year strategy. This strategy aligns with the Wikimedia Movement Strategy 2030 and guides us in how to focus our resources in the areas we aim for the greatest impact. Preferably, it will also help us flourish as a learning organization that continuously builds, experiments, adjusts and learns.

In 2022 and beyond, Wikimedia CH will continue to serve our communities and our mission – and do everything in our power to advocate for free knowledge.

From the bottom of our hearts, we say: Thank you to all the people out there who make these things possible. Thank you to the Wikipedians and Wikimedians, to this community, the Movement, the donors and partners – and to the team, the board and the members of Wikimedia CH. Merci, Grazie, Danke for your dedication, tenacity and passion for free knowledge and for extending Swiss heritage, culture and innovation throughout our country and worldwide.

Let’s keep taking good care of Wikipedia and all projects fostering free knowledge.

And let’s be kind and take good care of each other.

Muriel Staub

Wikimedia CH Board President

Jenny Ebermann, Wikimedia CH Executive Director (5)

A word from the executive director

Despite the continuing pandemic and the challenges it presented, 2021 was a successful year for Wikimedia CH. Our programmatic activities centered around three main focal points: Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary, 50 years of women’s suffrage in Switzerland and our new five-year strategy.

Our celebration of women’s suffrage attracted new partners and volunteers and developed and strengthened existing bonds. It was the first year we linked many events to a common theme, and we discovered that it built momentum and engagement. So too did flagship events such as the 20th-anniversary celebrations and the inaugural in-person WikiSwiss Awards.

Our first-ever bilingual workshop responded to the needs of today’s community members, while our work establishing an Innovation Lab laid the necessary foundation to support tomorrow’s members. Plus, our chapter’s new strategy for 2022-2026 will guide us in making substantial impacts over the next five years and learning from our work so that we continually evolve.

Looking to 2022, we will capitalize on the lessons learned in 2021. We will begin implementing the new five-year strategy while continuing to adapt our activities and organization to the ever-changing environment and Switzerland’s multilingual needs. As the pandemic enters its third year, we aim to leverage our team’s flexible, virtual nature and expertise, navigating the digital landscape to continue to build our reputation as a trustworthy partner in online knowledge.

I am exceedingly proud to serve alongside the chapter’s staff and board members and to be surrounded by a community, partners and stakeholders devoted to a concept as deeply fundamental as open knowledge. We contribute to the foundations underpinning not only our own work but the lives and livelihoods of millions worldwide. As we enter 2022, I look forward to working together to advance free knowledge for an informed and open society in Switzerland and beyond. And to close with the words of Thích Nhất Hạnh: “ The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.”

Jenny Ebermann

Wikimedia CH Executive Director

Strategy at a glance

Our mission

Wikimedia CH’s mission is to:

Our strategy

The Wikimedia Foundation officially recognizes Wikimedia CH as the Swiss chapter of the global Wikimedia Movement. We support and advance free knowledge, focusing on four impact directions:

  1. Program GLAM – We collaborate with galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) throughout Switzerland to provide digital access to memory institutions’ collections and artifacts. We aim to share the country’s culture and history in a sustainable format and across all borders.
  2. Program Education – We deliver and collaborate on education programs that advance learning for children and adults at every level. Our work supports lifelong learning as well as teachers and trainers at schools, universities and other higher education institutions.
  3. Program Community – We help the community of Wikipedians in Switzerland grow by supporting existing contributors and cultivating new ones. Among other activities, we train and mentor Wikipedia editors and support our community’s diverse and multicultural interests with targeted programming.
  4. Partnership & Outreach – We believe in using our unique position in the field of information exchange to be an influencer on national and international issues concerning open access and open knowledge. We offer our viewpoints on copyright, technology and more.

2021 snapshot:

Key metrics for the year

1.5 million people reached in Switzerland

300 newly registered users among 1,200 total participants

30,000+ content pages created or improved across all Wikimedia projects

10,000 items of content reused by other Wikimedia projects, showing we focused on quality impacts over mass uploading

GLAM

(Galleries, libraries, archives and museums)

In 2021, Program GLAM partnered with GLAM institutions in and outside Switzerland and collaborated with fellow chapters. The program built digital competence and technologies to improve access to cultural heritage and diversity. This year’s GLAM program was also packed with events celebrating 50 years of women’s suffrage in Switzerland. Existing and new collaborations coalesced around this theme. For example, we joined longtime partner Who writes his_tory? to lead an edit-a-thon concentrating on Swiss women filmmakers, described in detail in GLAM’s upcoming highlight section.

We strengthened and developed partnerships around the women’s suffrage celebration. And at the same time, we ensured a holistic Program GLAM and investigated ways to sustainably scale the program and build team capacity. One of many examples is Program GLAM’s work to share technological knowledge, which we achieved via two different approaches. First, we offered events that made tech-related knowledge more accessible, such as GLAM on Tour at the Enter Museum (a museum of technological artifacts and their manuals) and our various activities with the library of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Library). Second, we further advanced our own technologies and continued sharing them with the GLAM community, Wikipedia chapters and people around the world. They include the WMCH Map Service and GLAM Statistical Tool, allowing users to learn about GLAM resources throughout Switzerland and other countries and to easily discern how best to improve related knowledge shared on Wikipedia.

An ad for WMCH Map Service (9).

Highlight activity

50 Years Swiss Women’s Suffrage was a hallmark of Program GLAM in 2021. Multiple events contributed to a year-long celebration that inspired fantastic community engagement and helped develop new GLAM partnerships under a unifying theme. In fact, a new opportunity emerged as professionals from participating GLAM institutions asked us to repeat a similar event in their own organization. All event formats worked well – online, hybrid and in-person.

50 years of women’s right to vote in Switzerland, celebrated as Wikimedia CH’s theme for 2021 (11).

Of particular interest was a virtual edit-a-thon about Swiss women filmmakers that was part of the schedule for the Solothurn Film Festival. Led by representatives of Who writes his_tory? and Wikimedia CH, the workshop focused on Wikipedia articles about women in film and women’s suffrage in three languages (German, French and Italian). This edit-a-thon was our chapter’s first bilingual workshop, taking place in both French and German. (Italian was also an option. While there were no Italian-speaking participants, articles in Italian were created and edited during the event.)

In 2016, volunteer group Who writes his_tory? began a German-language initiative to increase and improve Wikipedia information about art and feminism. With this 2021 event, Program GLAM and Program Community partnered to reach German- and French-speaking community members alike. Furthermore, the writing workshop was a fantastic way to integrate the Wikiverse into the film festival, continuing the Who writes his_tory? partnership with this decades-old heritage institution that celebrates Swiss film productions.

Key program activities

Tape recorder from the Swiss brand Revox, in the Enter Museum (12).

Program impact

A balloon campaign for women’s suffrage, Bahnhofstrasse, Zurich (14).

Looking ahead

As Program GLAM turns its focus to 2022, we will introduce a new theme to leverage this year’s lessons. The Year of Sound celebrates the 100th year of radio in Switzerland and focuses on music, soundwaves, and other audio heritage. Just as with our women’s suffrage celebration, we intend to engage co-organizers and build a cohesive set of events around the new theme. We’ve already issued a call to Wikimedians, GLAMs and partners to participate, edit related Wiki content and/or plan events. Also, a workshop at the Swiss Postal Services, Telegraphy and Telephony (PTT) archives is already planned, as is a conference at the Enter Museum.

Of course, we will continue serving the interests across the spectrum of GLAM topics beyond the Year of Sound. Our longtime practice has been to scale programming that has proven successful in the past. The structure of GLAM on Tour events — whereby Wikipedians are invited to an exclusive, multi-day excursion at a select GLAM institution — is one that our community has always favored. As such, we are planning four GLAM on Tour events for 2022, including one confirmed with the Zurich Central Library.

Along with programmatic planning, Program GLAM will focus on improving and scaling operations in 2022. We will explore how to build the team’s capacity to manage our expanding program. Also, we will help integrate Wikimedia tools and workflows into Swiss GLAM institutions.

Education

As in past years, Program Education supported education for all age levels in 2021, particularly around tools for educators, digital innovation and access to education. We continued building and supporting scalable, reusable partnership models and free platforms for educational content. We also explored how to build the team to manage both educational activities and a new innovation space starting in 2022. Last, we helped teach learners how to write Wikipedia articles and evaluate an article’s quality to build digital skills and literacy.

This work was in line with Program Education’s strategy to provide material and tools to trainers, emphasizing the Theory of Change model where teachers can leverage their unique relationships with students to transform education. In Switzerland, educators are hungry for technology and new methodologies, and Wikimedia CH can provide solutions, particularly around online learning and open knowledge. These interests align with Wikimedia CH’s new five-year strategy (2022-2026), which adds Experimentation & Innovation as a fifth impact direction (in addition to the four current directions). As such, much of Program Education’s work in 2021 centered on building the foundation for innovation going forward.

Highlight activity

Program Education provided consistent funding to several free platforms that are pursuing their own independent programs to make educational content accessible to kids: (1) Wikimini, an online encyclopedia for and by students (older children help younger ones write entries); (2) Dicoado, a dictionary for and by students available in Switzerland’s French linguistic area; (3) Chinderzytig, a newspaper for young people published by an association of teachers; and (4) Klexikon, a German online encyclopedia for children aged six to twelve years modeled after Wikipedia. Wikimedia CH’s own openedu.ch offers even more tools for educators, providing them with a platform to search which Wikimedia and associated projects are available for their lessons.

Klexicon bookmarks (18).

Thanks in part to our support, several of the platforms were improved in 2021. Of note:

This work was essential to lay the groundwork for launching an Innovation Lab in 2022 as part of our Experimentation & Innovation impact direction. Our partnership model supports innovative projects and aims to advance innovation in the field of education. Each platform reports back to Wikimedia CH on its progress. Already, we have created a synergy with Chinderzytig and Dicoado by championing the new ideas they have shared with us. For example, Dicoado made software improvements in 2021, including implementing a chat feature, and the project leader shared with us the lessons learned from their implementation and related training.

Key program activities

Switzerland’s Wiki Science Competition 2021 (19).

Women in Science, an EPFL edit-a-thon (20).

Program impact

openedu.ch (22).

Looking ahead

In 2022, Program Education will incorporate a substantial portion of its work into Wikimedia CH’s new Experimentation & Innovation impact direction to enable innovation in education. We will build the team’s capacity with a dedicated resource to create the Innovation Lab.

This work aligns with the Wikipedia Movement Strategy. One of the strategy’s priority initiatives is to “enhance communication and collaboration capacity with partners and collaborators” (under the recommendation “coordinate across stakeholders”). The Innovation Lab will provide a sandbox where collaborators can invent and explore together. Another priority initiative is “continuous experimentation, technology, and partnerships for content, formats, and devices” (under the recommendation “innovate in free knowledge”). Similarly, the Innovation Lab’s reason for being is to inspire new educational technologies that make learning more accessible.

Throughout 2021, we worked closely with relevant partners and stakeholders to amplify our efforts and augment our sustainability and efficiency without reinventing the wheel. We’ll do the same in 2022. Our goal is to identify promising tools gaining momentum in Switzerland’s education community and help them flourish without competing with one another.

Community

As in past years, Program Community focused its activities on community health, community building, recruitment and international collaboration. Our 2021 activities were dominated by the 20th anniversary of Wikipedia, 50 years of women’s suffrage in Switzerland and the WikiSwiss Awards. In collaboration with Program GLAM, we held our first-ever bilingual workshop as part of the women’s suffrage theme, making the event more accessible to Switzerland’s German- and French-speaking communities. Thematic events also included the sixth edition of Women for Wikipedia.

The Swiss flag icon developed to celebrate Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary (25).

Program Community also launched a flagship event with our first-ever awards ceremony to honor key volunteers throughout Switzerland, as explained in Community’s highlight section. We enhanced our international relationships at WikiCons and Wikimania, and we promoted interests valued by our community, including the topic of Black people and culture, as well as climate change. We hope the WikiSwiss Awards and all our activities will continue to build connections and show our gratitude for years to come.

Highlight activity

Ulrich Lantermann, Community Manager for the German-speaking part of Switzerland, honors the community member with the username Hadi. The 5- and 10-year awards are in the foreground (27).

In 2021, Wikimedia CH conceived of and realized the first-ever WikiSwiss Awards and the accompanying in-person celebration on 12 June in Lucerne. We welcomed 55 guests to the event, and many of the attendees met in person for the first time. It received almost universally positive feedback and was a valuable networking opportunity. In addition to the awards, the half-day ceremony included a celebration of Wikipedia’s 20th anniversary, a networking lunch, two keynote presentations and a panel discussion. Read more about the speakers and the future of data in the Partnership & Outreach highlight later in this report. Or watch our video about the ceremony.

The WikiSwiss Awards honored the extraordinary work and dedication of the community’s volunteers. In particular, this year’s awards were given to those Wikipedians living in Switzerland who’d been active for at least the past five years and enhanced Wikimedia projects in German, Italian, French, Alemannic or Romansh. The winners contributed a minimum of 10,000 edits, including contributing consistently to Swiss-related content (at least 50 edits and 1,000 bytes in a single article) in the main categories related to Switzerland.

At the awards ceremony, we also celebrated the winner of Wiki Loves Switzerland 2020. While this contest actually occurred the year before, we handed out the award at our 2021 ceremony. You can read more about Wiki Loves Switzerland in Wikimedia CH’s Annual Report 2020.

Winner of Wiki Loves Switzerland 2020, awarded at the 2021 WikiSwiss Awards. An alphorn player taking a break after playing Swiss folk music for tourists on Mt. Pilatus (28).

Key program activities

Torchlight procession for women’s suffrage in Zurich. The banner reads, “We love our country too. Let’s be responsible for it” (29).

An atelier by Noircir Wikipedia at the Brülhart Gallery, which features contemporary art by African women (30).

Program impact

Advertisement for the Edit-a-thon on Women in Film at the Solothurn Film Festival. It was the chapter’s first-ever bilingual event and marked an expansion in the language communities embraced by the event’s host, Who writes his_tory? (32).

Looking ahead

In 2022, we plan to further explore how to scale our Community efforts to better engage volunteers. As mentioned in Program GLAM, we learned in 2021 that our chapter can build engagement and interest with a thematic focus and that we should engage co-organizers to marshal needed resources and extend the impact of thematic programming. These same lessons apply to Program Community. As part of our efforts, we will recruit a junior-level Community Manager to involve community members more actively. We will also promote community members’ ongoing involvement in yearlong thematic events centered around the Year of Sound.

Operationally, we will look at revamping some or all train-the-trainer programs so that trainers who prepare institutions’ instructors to host future workshops on their own are compensated for their time and effort – a clear demand from our community.

Partnerships & Outreach

A slide is from a presentation describing Wikimedia CH’s belief in and advocacy for open access and open knowledge — in Switzerland, throughout Europe and across the globe (35).

Wikimedia CH believes in using its unique position in the field of information exchange to be an influencer on issues concerning open access and open knowledge — in Switzerland, throughout Europe and across the globe. We offer our viewpoints on copyright, digital sustainability, technology and more, creating partnerships and reaching out to other actors in the various fields wherever possible. In 2021, our activities focused on national advocacy to influence policy while building upon existing relationships and starting new ones with like-minded organizations. For example, we continued our longtime affiliation with Parldigi, the Swiss parliamentary group on digital sustainability founded in 2009 that became an association in 2021. We also presented projects and examples of our work promoting free knowledge at the first Swiss Virtual Expo.

Furthermore, we began exploring a new focus on environmental issues and climate change. We collaborated with Klima-Allianz Schweiz, a new alliance for our chapter, and Alliance Digitale, which added the topic of climate change to its activities.

Our fundraising remained crucial to obtain a budget for 2022 activities, while our communication activities supported all our initiatives.

Highlight activity

As the Program Community highlight mentioned, the WikiSwiss Awards Ceremony was a half-day event that brought the community, donors and partners together for meaningful discussions and networking opportunities. While honoring the dedication of our volunteers, we also took time to discuss the future of data. Attendees were given the following prompt ahead of the event to spark discussion.

The monopolization and capitalization of knowledge: What is knowledge worth in the digital age? Who will control access to knowledge in the future? How can knowledge be made more democratic?

Attendees at the WikiSwiss Awards discuss the future of data (37).

Two keynote speakers addressed this theme. The first was Monique Morrow, an American telecommunications engineer and president and co-founder of Humanized Internet, a nonprofit organization active in protecting the digital identities of underrepresented populations. The second speaker was Hannes Grassegger, who is, among other things, a technology reporter, economist, former financial analyst, member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Experts Community and author of “Das Kapital bin Ich” (Kein & Aber Verlag, Berlin/Zürich, 2014) about why we should own our data. After the keynotes, four panelists discussed the same theme with attendees. (Watch our video about the ceremony, which includes highlights of the presentations.)

Key program activities

Wikimedia CH presented our work to promote free knowledge at the first Swiss Virtual Expo, hosted by our partner ated - ICT Ticino for its 50th anniversary (38).

New webpages on the Wikimedia CH site, including a link to the chapter’s new YouTube launched in August 2021 (39).

Program impact

Following the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Wikimedia CH supported ICOM’s appeal to preserve the country’s art and cultural treasures. This image is of a head of Buddha meditating from Haḍḍa, a Greco-Buddhist archeological site in Afghanistan (41).

Looking ahead

Wikimedia CH is a founding member of WikiFranca. As such, in 2022, we will continue supporting and helping to develop its new structure as a nonprofit association, aiming to build a viable partnership that continues to grow in its service to the French-speaking Wiki community.

More broadly, our chapter will continue maintaining and expanding current activities and advocating for issues important to the Wikimedia Movement, such as copyrights, freedom of panorama and net neutrality. We’ll also remain committed to environmental issues and climate change – a topic we began exploring in 2021 – especially as they relate to data and open knowledge. Wikimedia CH will analyze how to support and align with the Wikimedia Environmental Sustainability Covenant. Finally, we will proceed with defining the chapter’s key messaging to align with our vision, mission and values.

Looking ahead as a chapter

Our four impact directions – GLAM, Education, Community and Partnership & Outreach – intertwine with and support one another. And just as each program makes Wikimedia CH more than a sum of its parts, we strive to grow together to enhance the chapter as a whole. Beginning in 2022, Wikimedia CH plans to pursue a new five-year strategy, which includes the new Experimentation & Innovation impact direction. We also aim to become a learning organization that advances continuous, collective learning within our organization and with partners.

Specific to our programming, we will capitalize on our 2021 lessons learned by offering our community a theme around which we can build common interests, partnerships and engagement. To celebrate 100 years of radio in Switzerland, we will highlight 2022’s theme, Year of Sound, throughout many of our activities.

Beyond thematic activities, we’ll remain committed to scaling and leveraging past success rather than “recreating the wheel.” These include activities like the GLAM on Tour series, Lernfeld Wikipedia, the WikiSwiss Awards and our advocacy work with Parldigi. Similarly, we’ll continue advancing successful technologies, including the GLAM Statistical Tool, WMCH Map Service and openedu.ch.

Finally, we plan to build capacity in several areas, which is key to enabling our team. We recognize that with our chapter’s success comes more responsibility to follow through with similar programming. So, we will explore how to build the team’s capacity to expand Program GLAM’s activities, support Program Education’s work in the Innovation Lab and advance Program Community’s recruitment efforts. We’ll also foster more co-sponsorship opportunities and explore compensation for our train-the-trainer program(s) to extend our reach in partner organizations.