A couple of topics were discussed during the meet-up, notably the next Maker Faire, the next meet-ups and the possibility of organizing a regional Wikimedia conference later this year, probably around November. I am also going to try and promote Commons as much as possible while I’m here.

Preparation for Maker Faire also include generic pins & stickers. (CC-by-sa by Elke Wetzig)

As people were talking about the need for various kind of documents and goodies to hand out at the Maker Faire, I realized that we could actually organize some sort of Marketing Marathon during the next meet-up. The goal would be to write together the content of documents, based on pre-arranged templates so that it fits with the design.

I have to admit my other responsibilities within the Wikimedia movement have distracted me quite a bit from the Wikimedia documents initiative I launched in May last year. It would probably have helped a lot if some people had responded to my call for volunteers. Not only would it have saved time, but it also helps immensely when other people are interested in your work: it puts some friendly pressure on you.

The Marketing Marathon proposal was well received and we agreed to organize it as part of the preparation for the Maker Faire during the next meet-up. I now have volunteers willing to help, and a draft timeline with the next meet-up and the Maker Faire. Besides, I hope to benefit from the research made by the Bookshelf project, which already answered one of my questions: what standard format to use for documents intended for an international use.

If you would like to help, or if you think you have good ideas, feel free to contact me.

One of the goals of the initiative is to build a consistent visual identity across documents used for communication and outreach. (CC-by-sa by Elke Wetzig)

Why? (Learning from the past)

The PR material cleanup showed that many documents about PR, marketing & public outreach were scattered across many wikis; as a consequence, they weren’t regularly updated. Besides, they often looked very different, not sharing any visual identity. Despite the amount of documents, there was no central place where volunteers could easily find the documents they needed to stage an event or to assemble a press kit for journalists. Last, most documents have been created using expensive proprietary software or fonts.

What? (Goals)

The WMDOC initiative’s goal is to maintain a set of core documents such as leaflets, cheatsheets, presentations and one-pagers¹. All-in-one kits with several of these documents will also be offered for Wikimedians who want to stage an event easily. More specific documents such as posters can be created but they won’t be a part of the core set of documents (unless our manpowers allows us to)

How? (Tools & fonts)

In order to allow for maximum flexibility, dissemination and responsiveness, all the documents produced as part of this initiative will be created using open fonts (mainly the DejaVu family), libre software and open formats.

Example of free software:

• Scribus for most of the desktop publishing
• LaTeX Beamer for presentations
• Inkscape for vector graphics.

The matrix

In order to manage the mass of pages and documents, I proposed a naming scheme based on the name of the document and its language. All the existing pages and their translations are now linked from the WMDOC matrix on meta-wiki. It is unlikely that all the documents be translated in as many languages are there are in the matrix; the amount of languages is a consequence of the fact that any language in which a document existed was added to the matrix. Most of the pages linked from this matrix right now are old versions of the documents; they’re in the process of being updated. The code of the matrix was simplified in order to facilitate its modification.

Join us!

The initiative is looking for volunteers with various skills:

• experienced editors who are knowledgeable about Wikimedia projects and have excellent summarization capabilities
• skilled designers and users of Scribus & LaTeX Beamer
• translators to help localize the documents.

To join the initiative, you may leave a message on the talk page of the initiative, join the dedicated group on Identica (!wmdoc) or contact me directly.

Notes & references

This project was started by Sean Whitton as a ComProj initiative in August 2008, but it slowly died of inactivity. This time, fewer people are involved, but hopefully they’ll commit more time to this much needed project.

This project is the first step of a major revamp of PR materials related to Wikimedia projects. We’re currently in the middle of the inventory, which includes a very needed assessment of out-of-dateness of all documents.

Documents are usually inconsistent and rapidly outdated, especially in printed form. (CC-by-sa by Elke Wetzig)

The main goals are to:

• identify and archive obsolete documents that could alter or damage our image
• dentify all kinds of PR, marketing & outreach documents that could be useful.

For example, I know that nl.wikimedia.org hosts a press book with press articles about Wikimedia projects. This is perfectly fine on nl.wikimedia.org, since as archives they can’t be obsolete, and we wouldn’t import them on meta because our local EDP doesn’t allow them. So, this kind of stuff can be skipped in the inventory :) However, if you are aware of presentations, posters, cheatsheets, leaflets, handbooks, etc. that are not listed already in the inventory, that’s what we want :)

We listed the wikis that are the most likely to host PR material, but if you are aware of others, please add them.

This message aims at:

• asking you to add any document or page you’re aware of to the inventory, if it’s not already there;
• letting you know that this cleanup is being done and that a major revamp is the next step.
• if you have some time, asking you to help us with the ruthless job of finding, describing, labeling and assessing all PR materials :) We’re also counting on the ComProj members for that.

Thanks for helping out!

Update: Read the announcement of the Wikimedia documents initiative.