 Starting now. Hi, everyone. Good morning. Happy Sunday morning here. Thanks for joining us at an early time and in this vast space. Hello, everyone. I'm Rupika Sharma. Welcome to the readership panel. That's right. This is the readership space. I'm Zach McKeon. Really happy to be here with Rupika. And today we're going to be speaking about readers, a very important part of our ecosystem of free knowledge. And something that we think many of you probably have some experience with. A question we come to a lot is... What is a reader? But actually it's a weird question, isn't it? Very weird. Who is a reader? Let's hear from the audience. Who's a reader is better? Hi, Anas. Yeah, you're a reader. Who else is a reader? Any other readers in here? Yeah? Yeah, cool. Yeah, so we are all readers, but we wanted to ask you just to shout out to us. Could you name another reader? Somebody else you know who's a reader. Your mom. Your husband. Your kid sister. Flossom yourself. Yeah, there are many readers. And we know them very well. And why do readers matter? Let's hear it again. Why do readers matter? Yeah, why does your mom matter? Why does your kid sister matter? Why does your husband matter? Flossom, why do you matter as a reader? If you stop to read, then content creators will suffer. Aha. Very nice. Readers are people, we are people, and we are also knowledge consumers, so readers matter. Readers matter. We like to remember that while this conference focuses so much on the people who make free knowledge happen, readers are a part of that system. They're the people that have motivations like us to learn and to grow and to improve their understanding of the world around them. And in that regard, they depend a lot on the work of Wikimedians like you. And let's see how many readers we have in our Wikimedia. A lot, as you see, and one of the most interesting things I find is how many languages we have in readers, 294. A lot. A lot. And how many readers we have from different projects? Wikipedia. And as we see, there are lots of other projects. Wiktionary, Wikicomments, Wikidata. Who here thought Wiktionary would be number two by Pageviews? Or who is surprised by that? Surprised. Yeah. Wiktionary. Currently number two on Pageviews. So this is just one metric here, like looking at Pageviews, right? Not unique readers. And this analysis actually includes machine visits as well. So bots and crawlers for the web. And so this is from actually last year. But we expect these numbers to change a little bit. As for example, Wikidata becomes read by more and more machines and networks. We're going to see this shift again. And how many readers are still missing? Well, by one measure, looking at data from last year, if we imagine that all of those 1.5 billion unique devices were readers, and then we compare that to the expected amount of internet users, we would see that in 2018, we had a gap between the approximately 3.7 billion internet users and our 1.5. But as we look forward, the gap would grow. So as we meet here in Stockholm to think about readers and to work with you and to work with our panel guests to think about how we reach more readers, we have literally billions of people to think about and to reach. Yep. And what can we do to increase readership? What can we do, Zach? We've got lots of things to show you today on exactly that. Things from around the world. First up, from Mexico, we have a video that was produced last fall in October with the aim of explaining Wikipedia to internet users in Mexico. Let's take a listen. Why don't you hit it here? Okay. Oh, yeah. This was produced in Mexico last year, and Ivan Martinez and Carmen, who are representatives from Wikimedia Mexico here at the conference, can tell you a lot more about this project. It also featured a young, as you saw, a young lady, a superdotada, a know-it-all, a girl who knows everything, which became the title of this film. So let's take a look at some more efforts. Not that. There we go. How do we advance? Next up, we have a project that has come out of the New Readers program at the foundation. And Angie, who is seated in the front row, will tell you a lot more about this project in detail. But if you are sitting in front of a computer or a mobile phone, we invite you to check this out yourself. It's called Cricut Info, and the URL is CricutInfo.io. Cricut Info was a site that was prepared in time for the Cricut World Cup. If you're not a Cricut fan, let me tell you this is a big deal. It was in England this year, and it wound up with a thrilling, literal overtime showdown between New Zealand and England. But the site was prepared primarily for New Readers in India. And so when you're on the site, you will notice that not only is there a great deal of content about teams and players, there's also the ability to switch between languages. What were the languages again, Angie? Hindi and Tamil. All of the content on Cricut Info was Wikipedia content. But the ways in which you can interact with it, as you will find, are very different than the Wikipedia site design today. There are stories in an Instagram-like format where you can actually advance between rich images. There were polls, which I have been told were very popular, where you could talk about your favorite parts of the tournament, your favorite players. And of course, there were little modules like the ones you see on screen so that you could learn about individual teams through kind of a team hub. We'll talk about that a little bit later. We also are excited to show work by Blossom, who will be joining us on the panel a little bit later. I think we can just let this video play, because Blossom has done amazing things in Nigeria introducing Wikipedia to New Readers. Let's take a look. Hello everyone. This is Blossom from Zerumba. My name is Kaiba. My name is Mara. I'm from Makayabu, Wikipedia. What's your name? I'm from Chuku. Chuku? I'm from Makayabu. What's your name? Wikipedia. I'm from Makayabu, Fembo. I'm not from Fembo. I'm from Makayabu. I'm from Makayabu. I'm from Makayabu. My name is Ije, not IG, not wikipedia, not oldRTG. I know him very well. I know what he's like, he's always open. Thank you so much. Yes, man. Thanks Blossom. There's a lot more of those. Blossom, how many did you make in total? Forty. Wow, alright, well that's one. I think they're at all at that level. And let's see more efforts by other community members. Next we will talk about Instagram campaign done by Sam Oye from Nigeria. Let's hit it, okay, I think we need access. Oh. Okay, I have that in, okay, we should then maybe just skip it. Sam Oye, who is also here at the conference, is a community member from Nigeria and he produced a series of videos where he asked people across Nigeria to explain what Wikipedia is, to basically create a campaign where readers promoted Wikipedia to other readers. So if we're able to load these videos, what you'll see is the wide range of ways in which people responded to that challenge. Some people created songs, some people signed their explanation of what Wikipedia is and others went ahead and actually did it as like a lecture or a sermon. It was very eclectic in the ways that people did this but it enabled us to reach hundreds of thousands of additional readers in Nigeria in a way that was entertaining, authentic and original. Rupika, it's okay if we can't play it. We can leave it for everyone else. Okay, great. Okay, let's take a look at the next campaign which was by Bitplub and Tulsi from Nepal. It's not going down, okay, great. So every billboard tells a story and every time you pass a billboard, there is something that you know. And in Nepal, Bitplub and Tulsi presented billboard and every center spot of the city. So every time people passed by, they knew something about Wikipedia. So amazing efforts to increase readership, yeah. And let's talk about community marketing experiments. Back over to you. Over the past year, the foundation has collaborated with lots of communities that want to do marketing projects and these have been all funded with small what are called rapid grants or inspire grants. If you're interested in that, we're gonna be talking a little bit about grants later today with Woobzena who is the specialist for grants at the foundation. Currently, a inspire grant or rapid grant can be up to $2,000 in value. And here, this was a collaboration between Bengali Wikisource and Tamil Wikipedia that use that $2,000 to make a series of short videos and social media posts. So their target locations were two areas, West Bengal, India and Bangladesh and then Tamil Nadu and Sri Lanka. And they were for two different projects. So this morning we've been speaking a lot about Wikipedia but in this particular campaign, Wikisource was a project that was promoted. For that first group promoting the Wikisource two videos were made and a series of holiday social media posts were made as well. You can see on either side, the moving gifts here are the two videos and in the center that's social media copy. These videos were really fun. You can see the one happening with tea, some great chai being produced. That video featured two people arguing about politicians and finding common understanding by going to Wikisource and finding the original document that they were debating and reading it closely. Studying brings people together. The second video titled Watchful Eyes is one of my favorite plots I've seen recently in a short film. What happened was that a young gentleman was basically trying to leave the home to go be with his friends. But his mother stopped him on the way out and said, where are you going? And he said, oh mom, you know me, I'm a hard working student. I need to go to the library and prepare for my exams to which she replied, no worries my son, you can just get everything you need on Bengali Wikisource. And he didn't get to go see his friends. So that's where Wikisource is positioned right now. And the results were astounding. During the campaign period, we saw that site views really increased. And even after the campaign ended, we were pleased with how the site visits remained rather high. On the Tamil campaign, most of the media files were actually just commons images that were featured on Tamil Wikipedia. The question was asked to readers, do you know these animals? And if not, come on to Tamil Wikipedia to learn more. There we saw similar increases in page views during the campaign period and afterwards. So not only did we see that more people came to the site while this content was going on and being shared in social media, but again, after we saw that the resting level was now higher. So you are in this room with us in the readership space and you may be asking, how can you help increase Wikimedia readership? What can you do? And you can stay with us for the panel and you can also consider hosting events and producing different animation videos, other campaigns that people have been doing in other countries. And you can also apply for a grant and we will have a grant sessions in the next coming few hours. You can stay tuned in the readership space and I would like to invite our panel, Blossom and Angie to on stage. Welcome, come on up. Let's hear it for our panel. Thank you so much for making the time this morning. Welcome, Blossom. Hello. Blossom, welcome Angie. Thank you. Hi Angie. Hi, how are you? Please tell us a little bit about yourself and your project. Good morning, everyone. My name is Angie Mwegai. I'm a Senior Product Manager at the Wikimedia Foundation and I'm part of a new team that's thinking about how we drive new readers to our projects through product interventions. I am from and live in Nairobi, Kenya. Explain it. Good morning, everyone. Good morning, Rupiker and Zach. My name is Blossom Uzurumba. I live in Abuja, Nigeria. I am a public servant and I volunteer as we all are to various projects of the Wikimedia Foundation. I love television. Yeah, I love television. So it's, you know, the project I did was just only natural for me. I'm light as a compare, so I always would love to hold the microphone. So when I got to know about the Inspire Compare and what really stood out for me was, okay, it's an opportunity to go into the streets and just be the talent in front of the camera. I don't want to be behind the camera. So it was just fun. And then having all these conversations in my local language, it was just this feel good, exciting kind of shot videos and it's something I'm really, really excited about and I hope we can continue probably expand the scope of the audience with time as well. Thank you. Wonderful, thank you so much. And tell us a little bit more about your experiences, how the idea of the entire project came to be and how we developed on the way. Okay, so why is that? You can start and I'll go next. Okay, so the idea for me is, we always have this funny member videos where in my country, we have a lot of people just go into the streets and then just ask random questions. And then the response you would see, sometimes you would wonder, did they actually hear the question that they were asked? Maybe they asked you what is A and then you're answering Z is this. So it's totally divergent. So we felt okay. We can also do that kind of stuff with Wikipedia and then see if people know it. So if you watch some of the videos, I was just holding this pillow that has Wikipedia written boldly on it. And then some people would, I would ask them, can you pronounce this? And then they would tell me stuff like, whisper die. And then stuff like, wiki badia, you know what I mean? It's all shades of funny. Not because they don't know. Maybe they just did not take the time to look at that very well. So we decided to just include all that and then just make it a whole three, six thing. So people know about Wikipedia. Some people don't. So for those that know, applause for those that don't, then it's an opportunity to then introduce that to them and then hope that they would use it. And then for those that could not pronounce it, it was also an opportunity to teach them how to pronounce. You have to know how to pronounce this thing before you then embrace it and adapt to using it, you know? For us, we were thinking about people who have not heard of Wikipedia before, do not have any expectations of what Wikipedia looks like because they're starting to come online for the first time. And for the people who are coming online for the first time, the introduction to the internet is products like Facebook and YouTube and Instagram. And so what does Wikipedia look like for people who are introduced to the internet in those modern forms of experiences? And so what we did was we took some content from Wikipedia, we played around with how it looked, made it feel easy to consume, put it into little chunks and pieces because the type of readers that we wanted to reach with the experiment was people who are not quite comfortable with English. And so when articles are only available in English, how do you simplify that for them? And we were starting this experiment in India to begin with and cricket is big in India. Like a lot of people like Zach said, love the sport. And so we chose that as a subset of content to experiment with and we saw results around how people decide when to switch languages, when they prefer to read content in their local native language. We experimented with how when it's available only in English, what does that look like? People have expectations that they're gonna see lots of images. So we put that in as well. And we're also continuing to experiment at this conference. So I'd love to be able to show it to some of you and get you to play with it and give us feedback on how we can start to bring these types of experiences to our project. Fantastic, very inspiring. Thank you. And what are the learnings and best practices? Blossom, you think community members can adapt from your project and maybe even replicate if they want. Initially, the audience actually had a mind at the start where mostly young people. But sadly, I live in the central part of Nigeria where you don't have as much native speakers of Igbo language. So yes, that was the location we chose, but then what that meant was I had to sort of not focus anymore on young people. So I had to go into the marketplaces and where you have a lot of artisans. So you see a lot of conversation with much older people. So that was not the initial plan. But because I could not see the target audience that I really saw in the location that I was. So I had to make do with that. But then the learning for me really is, it's always easier for you to be able to form that synchronize between what you originally want and then probably in location scouting and stuff. So like she said, cricket is big in India. So it was just easy to marry what they would naturally want to consume with the location that it is tailored and fit for. So that was just the first learning for me. So if I am to repeat this process again, I would definitely not want to do it in Abuja, Nigeria. I'll probably want to go down to the south where you have a whole lot of native, evil language speakers. Wow, great. And Angie, what were the best interesting things you found about the project during the development and even now? One of the interesting things is we all know people don't consume content online. The way it was when some of us were first coming online. When, if I look around the room, some of us have been online for a couple of years and it was mostly text heavy and expectations have changed now. So the challenge that we faced was how do we take the content as it exists today on Wikipedia and start to break it down into those forms? And we found that there wasn't really a simple way to do that. So ways that the community can start to get involved is if we want to break Wikipedia content into small, snackable, bite-sized chunks, how could we do that? Either manually or through technical means. How do we make that available in several languages? Yeah, those are some of the challenges we face and I think it's a problem that we need to come together to start to solve. Great. And how can community collaborate with this project to make it more expanded and diverse? Like, what's next? The next step would normally have to be two flanks. So I don't know if it's something that the Foundation would want to continue with, but on a personal basis, it's something I definitely would want to continue with. But I am also looking at, I had to get cameras, make it all high-tech and stuff, but I'm thinking that I probably might just want to step it all the way down and make it something that is just quick to do, quick to post, easy to consume. So probably I would want to use a mobile phone and then let it just be something that you don't need to plan for. You don't need to set aside a specific day to go and shoot and go with the crew and all that. So it's something that I can easily probably just with a mobile phone have a quick conversation with someone and then not too much technical editing and all that and then just upload it and then probably just make it a bit more of a continuous thing that wouldn't even require much funds to do as well. Wow, that's interesting. Thank you. Angie, would you like to share how can we further collaborate and what's next, the cricket info? Sure, as people who are creating content, the types of new readers we want to reach, particularly in emerging markets in Southeast Asia, India, parts of Africa, Latin America, think that most of these people's experiences is on their phone first. So as you write your content, think about what it would look like on a mobile device first. We would love to show you some of the ideas that we're thinking about to get your feedback on them. We would like to get ideas from you as well. So if there are some ideas on how the readership, how the reading experience could be better, please drop that to us where the new readers engineering team on Media Weekie. And once some of these features start to come out, then spread the word, let people know that there's different ways that they can read content and then contribute to it. Cool, thank you. Plus, would you share some of the hardships or challenges you faced during the implementation of the project from designing it to devising it and to creating such amazing video? How did the process go? The only part that was a bit of a challenge for me was like I earlier noted, just having that technical skill. So I was more or less at the mercy of people that could provide that service. But then if it's something that can be quickly done with a mobile phone, then I don't think that would portray a challenge going forward. It's just easy. So people, yeah, people would want to look out for excellence, but in this age of mobile first, a lot of people will just be interested in quick things that can get their attention before they move to the next attention to demanding conversational content. So I would want to probably create a balance between professionalism and just getting your content out there. So if I'm going to look at mobile first, I might not have this challenge again because it's something that I can probably simply do. And I'm also looking at not just being me. We have a lot of community members that I can also probably encourage wherever they find themselves. It could just be a good opportunity to ask if people know about Wikipedia and then see it as an opportunity to let them know if they don't know and then just document that whole conversation or the whole experience with your mobile phone. Wonderful. And how did the collaboration go with the community members and people you outsource for creating the professional video in the end? It was quite easy in the sense that we had to... I think it was just exciting because number one, like I say, that lived in Abuja, Nigeria. So by the time I went into the areas where you have a lot of artisans and native speakers, the field that knew about Wikipedia, it was like, they were just looking at us and see if we came down from space, like, oh my goodness, this thing we only see and hear about, it's come down here. So we're feeling funky like journalists or something. And then we had this branded t-shirt with Wikipedia on it and then boldly written Dewo in Igbo language, Dewo means greetings. So it was just this amazing reception and then we went with some very small gifts. So you come as a talent in front of the camera. When you're done, we'll probably just give you a very simple gift and then we'll then have people that would go and then pack everybody in their community or in their mood and say, come, come, come, you need to come and have this conversation. And then they have to sum that. They can't speak Igbo and then they felt really bad. Oh, why can't you just do this in English or in house or something? But sadly, that was not the scope we were looking for. So but then there were still some that we just had to just interview like that in English language just to make them feel like a part of the whole process and then to also make them go away quickly so we can continue with what we're doing, you know. Overall, it was an enjoyable process and it was also a good opportunity to gauge the feel of people in terms of accepting this brand called Wikipedia and its other sister projects. Thank you. Wow, wow. And Angie, can you tell us more about how the development team worked on this New Readers project and how the collaboration of this project came from start to finish? So what we wanted to do as we were thinking what new ideas we could have to bring New Readers, I see like we're on the other side of the coin. So Blossom is trying to bring new people on and then when they come, what do they find? What do they see? Do they find information easily in their language? And so what we did was based off of knowing what topics of interest there are, we put that together in a way that was easy for people to consume. So what we did was we went where our next set of target users would come from. We decided to do this in India. We traveled to Bangalore and that's where we did ideation and talked to people who matched the kind of readers we would want to bring on and wanted to understand, speaking to them in research sessions, does this work for you? Does this make sense? Would you find frustrating what could be better? And that's how we put together what you see on the Cricket experiment site. Wow, wonderful. Blossom, what advice would you give community members who want to do projects for increasing Wikimedia's awareness? Do you have some advice they can follow? Yeah, the first thing is if you look at the user interface for Wikipedia for instance, it's already too serious. It's already too technical. It's already too, you know, just imprim and proper. So the only advice I would have to give is when you're welcoming people into that space, just go infuse a lot of play, infuse a lot of excitement. And fun. Just make it look so simple and easy so you don't push people away. You know, in Nigeria where I come from, we already have so much problems. So you don't want to add to people's, you don't want to put so much pressure by saying, oh, come. Okay, thank you for content translation for instance. You know, before now, if I'm doing, let's say translation, translated turns, it's a big issue. I'm battling with trying to remember the few technical stuff I know and then transferring that knowledge to someone that has never gone to a back end of anything before. And of course, next time, the person will not show up. So it's very important that we infuse a lot of play in how we communicate and in how we also sell this to people so they can enjoy it so it comes naturally. I think play is something that comes naturally to people, a lot of people, not everyone. So if you go with that approach, I can assure you that you would have a lot of people that would be willing to listen to what you have to say. At the point, you saw me dancing in the streets and all that, it was just part of the plan to just make this thing as simple and easy as foreign as it could get, you know. Well, thank you for this wonderful advice, yay. Angie, what is the message you want to convey to Wikimedia community and our readers out there? I would say for those who are contributing to projects, don't only think about writing. There are several ways that people consume content online now. So create videos, create audio files. Many of the languages in parts of Africa where I come from, I think it's similar in parts of India and Latin America that people want to consume content in videos and audio because that's how they live, that's how they communicate in their language and with each other. So let's continue to add text, but also put that in mind. And let's continue talking. Let's come together on ideas on how we increase awareness and bring people to our projects and get them to continue contributing to the knowledge that we have because that's how we'll start to become more diverse. Thank you so much. And now we will open the panel to audience. Any questions from audience? Questions here, here. Any questions in the room? I can bring this to you. Ah, there's a question, yay. Here we go. Hello. I have a question about the India New Readers program that you did. So Cricket was number one. Did you have any follow-up topics that you thought would be the next areas to focus on? But let's say number two was something else that was popular. I'm just curious as you gathered that information what that list looked like. That's a very good question. So one of the things we thought about is how do we make it current to what's happening there or in other parts of the world? And so one of the things we talked about was the political situation. So there's a big election that just happened in India and how do people find out about who's running, where they come from, and things like that. So that was where we were thinking of next. But we would love to welcome ideas in terms of what topics would drive reading or watching in this small format. Not every topic fits that. So books, for example, could be one of them finding out about an author or movie stars because Bollywood is big in India. But it's not just about India, we're thinking about other parts of emerging markets as well. Thank you. Any other questions? Is that a question up top? I'm sorry. No, I don't want to put anyone on the spot here. We know it's early. Going once, going twice. Well then, perhaps we can just leave it there and if you have any additional thoughts you can find us at the front here or throughout the conference. Thank you again for joining us this morning. Thank you so much. Thank you Blossom. Thank you Angie for being a part of this panel and sharing your experiences and wisdom with us. Thanks everyone. Thank you so much. Great work. We will be on the lightning talks shortly after 15 minutes break and stay tuned to know more about interesting case studies by our community members. Thank you.