Scaling Up: Can Wikimedia Become A 300 Million People Movement By 2020?

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Scaling Up: Can Wikimedia Become A 300 Million People Movement By 2020?

Panelist Erik Möller (Wikimedia Foundation)
Themes Communities
About the panelist
Erik Möller is the Deputy Director of the Wikimedia Foundation.
Abstract

Wikimedia's projects combined have a global audience of more than 300 million visitors every month, according to comScore. About one among one thousand people makes at least a small number of edits and other contributions every month. In 2008, the Wikimedia Foundation formulated its "big hairy audacious goal": "To increase Wikimedia's educational reach to one-third of the planet's population by 2020, and to motivate every 10th reader to become an active participant."

Such a "BHAG" is intended to be an almost impossible and highly aspirational goalpost. But what does it take to massively scale up both our audience and our number of participants? This presentation will explore a number of strategies, with a focus on what it takes to convert a larger share of our global audience to become active participants in a world-wide movement for free knowledge. This includes a much simplified editing workflow; more obvious opportunities for people to contribute knowledge in various forms; new types of activities that we can use to get readers engaged, such as article reviews; improved multilingual communications; a greater presence in the physical world through chapters, partnerships, and user groups; and technologies which help to empower people to participate who are currently able to even get online.

In the coming year, Wikimedia will engage in an open, collaborative strategy process to engage both the Wikimedia community and the world at large in helping to answer the question of what it takes to scale up our world-wide movement and our social impact. This presentation is intended to help jumpstart this longer term conversation.

Update September 1, 2009: Documentation of this talk: slides (PDF), video (Ogg Theora)

Language English
Slides (download)
Video (download)