Wikimedia Conference 2017/Program/19

19: Working together: Wikimedia Foundation Communications and Wikimedia movement affiliates

Audience

Affiliates doing outreach and communications activities with local audiences

Session Format

Workshop

Length

60 min

Description

The Wikimedia Foundation Communications team uses a variety of messaging, branding, and outreach approaches to raise awareness for the Wikimedia movement, mission, and projects. We do this through media and public relations, strategic messaging, brand management, campaigns, blog and social media, audience development, communications capacity building for global contributors and affiliates, and written and visual products of the Wikimedia Foundation, its departments, executives, the Board of Trustees, and the Wikimedia movement. Partnering with affiliates is a key part of how we collaboratively reach global audiences. Come meet members of the Communications team, learn what we have planned for the next fiscal year, and how we can collaborate and support the work you have planned. We’d love to connect with you!

Desired Outcome

Increased awareness amongst affiliates about the activities of the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications department. Better understanding of how to work directly with that department in regards to affiliate communications.

Next Steps and Milestones

Department is having 1:1 discussions with a number of affiliates and then doing a survey with all affiliates to help assess communications activities and identify ways to support working together in the future.

Speakers

Gregory Varnum, Juliet Barbara, Ed Erhart, Zack McCune, Heather Walls (all WMF)

Documentation

The Communications Team of the Wikimedia Foundation introduces its work and workfield. Zack talks about audience development in terms of specific audiences. (a group of people, e.g. people in Brussels working on copyright law). Ed and Zack continue talking about digital media/live and social media, that they use to showcase the Wikimedia movement to the world.

Afterwards, Greg continues to talk about "Corporate Communications", like supporting communities/affiliates in their communications development, helping plan press releases, logo adjustments, skill building for external communications. Greg highlights that they have created the "Communications Resources Center", which aims to serve as a center for everyone that need communication resources.

Juliet finishes the presentation talking about general public and media relations, i.e. publicising community projects, where the community is going, public speaking for Katherine etc. Juliet gives examples as the op-ed on right to be forgotten in Le Monde or the Wikipedia Zero launch in Iraq.

Questions & Answers

• Q: What about the change in colour for the logo?
• Heather: Consolidate some of the branding, freshen up, etc. We will be explaining any changes in the session at 12:15 tomorrow and our learnings in doing so.
• Zack: There was a challenge using a tri colour logo on various backgrounds.
• Jan Apel (WMDE): WMDE adopted the logo and liked the idea of the open source fonts.
• Greg: However, we are not imposing a logo on affiliates.
• Heather: We’re hoping to do a larger brand strategy project consulting the community in terms of brand.
• Zack: Montserrat is the new font choice. Different fonts work better for different languages.

• Q: Local chapters can just import brand?
• Heather: Yes, and we’re happy to have meetings to support this.

• Q: We’re finalising our own branding guidelines. What tips are there to encourage buy-in?
• Zack: Consolidation of new resources. Don’t reuse old templates.

• Juliet: How else can we support you?
• Lucy Crompton Reid: How can we better communicate, especially regarding negative press.
• Juliet: Negative news stories. Education and clarification is important, present facts to journalists, they are compelling. Longer term, build relationships with reporters, to form more pro-active relationships. Generally journalists are interested. How we can all work together? WMF Comms generally try to contact locals to coordinate responses. In order to gain local context on the situation. You can contact us for assistance at press(_AT_)wikimedia.org We can work with you to find someone who has local expertise.
• Comment: WM Foundation Comms team were very helpful in terms of supporting WMPL in a negative press situation.
• Zack: We’re working on our New Readers project to develop our understanding of media in countries like Nigeria. Incredible differences, such as newspaper growth in India. Radio is more popular in Nigeria, and other variations.
• Comment: Press releases should have some bad news and good news to attract attention. Explain our differences.

• Q. How do you stop getting written out of press releases/stories?
• A. Ask to review any content produced before publishing.

• Q. What general materials do you have to educate press on Wikipedia?
• A. We can produce content for you. Templated materials.

• Q. How do we develop a profile of a chapter beyond Wikipedia?
• A: Messaging strategy will help here, i.e provide a framework for this. What is the key message about your organisation, and what is unique about that.
• Zack: Brand strategy and how to talk about Wikipedia/Wikimedia. Building messaging frameworks.

• Q. Collaborative tools at a usergroup level. Can you make them available to user groups?
• Zack: Most stuff is available via Google, which can be a bit clunky but are freely available.