Wikimedia Accelerator UNLOCK | Demo Day

Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Serbia and Impact Hub Belgrade invite you to join us on October 27th as we set the stage for the participants of the UNLOCK Accelerator 2022: Seven project teams will showcase their prototypes at this year’s Demo Day!

In no more than four months the participants of the Wikimedia Accelerator UNLOCK have developed open source prototypes that offer concrete solutions to this year’s challenge “Access to knowledge is a matter of equity”.

Become inspired by a platform that safeguards indigenous knowledge on biodiversity in the Amazon; a tool that offers support in translating politically sensitive terms; a browser extension providing user-generated audio descriptions to the visually impaired; and many more!

We would like to invite you to meet the teams as they showcase their prototypes!

    1. WHEN? Thursday, October 27th, 2022 at 1-3pm CEST.
    1. WHERE? The Demo Day is a hybrid event. Join us online or in person at the Impact Hub Belgrade, Makedonska 21, Beograd 11000, Serbia.
    1. Please REGISTER HERE

** About UNLOCK **
UNLOCK is a program of Wikimedia Deutschland (WMDE), in collaboration with Wikimedia Serbia (WMRS) and Impact Hub Belgrade. The innovation-driving program was created to advance the implementation of recommendation #9 – Innovate in Free Knowledge. It was launched in 2020 and has been running for 3 editions now and has supported 17 projects in total. UNLOCK aims at promoting new ideas and activating new communities to develop innovative products and services for Wikimedia and Free Knowledge, on the one hand. On the other hand, we seek to anchor this program more and more in the global Wikimedia movement, using existing structures for exchange, collaboration and joint learning.

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@Zblace Se não for possível resolver isto até amanhã, suponho que poderia compartilhar o link do zoom com você… Avise se quiser e eu o envio numa mensagem através aqui do fórum.

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Excellent organisation, production, and presentation of exciting ideas at the Wikimedia Accelerator UNLOCK event. Congratulations to all organisers and participants!

Personally, I found the idea behind macht.sprache’s attempt to create a platform and discussion space for translating politically sensitive terms especially appealing. It tackles issues related to inclusivity and equity that are well known to Wikimedians who work in multilingual environments or are engaged in translating MS documentation.
It would be interesting to see them share some of their questions on the MS Forum.

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I agree about well organized and presented work, but for most of the projects I felt like there were no clear paths of involving Wikimedians or contributing to the Wikimedia ecosystem (even indirectly) and therefore it felt a bit strange to me. Not sure this should be funded as it was without intentionality of linking to Wikimedia. Hopefully some of these people will be reconsidering their work and make Wikimedia connections.

Thanks a lot for your feedback on the Demo Day. It’s a truly joint effort and I would highlight the incredible work done by @IvanaMadzarevic and our partner at the Impact Hub for the set up and “running the show”!

As for your input regarding the project macht.sprache: This is really valuable. I would like to continue this conversation, discuss it with the macht.sprache team and maybe establish some synergies between them and our work – either within this forum or on other platform that deal with translation. Thanks again!

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Dear Z,

Thanks for your feedback. I agree with your observation that the UNLOCK projects do not directly contribute to any current Wikimedia projects. However, it does not necessarily mean that the projects won‘t or cannot be connected at all. I certainly can see synergies between some of the UNLOCK projects with Wikimedia projects and the Wikimedia ecosystem. I believe that the synergies can still be developed given the fact that the prototypes are at their early stage and they could be further developed after UNLOCK ended.

We believe that innovative ideas that contribute to the further development of existing Wikimedia projects as well as that explore and expand the range of free knowledge ecosystem should be supported. We build our assumption upon recommendation #9 and it’s objective.

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Please do not get me wrong… I think it is worth giving them space and independence, but if they do not connect to any Wikimedian (even individually) or WikiProject (even if just as a point of minimal interaction with informed) then it is really outside the 2030 Movement Strategy dynamics… It can and should still be supported by WMF and WMDE from their own funds for external partnerships - No?

Now we had the paradox that people from the Belgrade based partner had no clue about Wikimedia Movement strategy and Wikimedia values *(their lead literally mentioned commercial start-ups, when there were none), aside the most generic things about Wikipedia. I am being critical as I am interested in this program to get better and be more useful, not because I want it to be shut down.

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Sorry for this pause in the discussion.

In my view, the value of startup accelerators and all the ideas and projects they help incubate is their ability to set and direct the larger thematic framework. The result of this - as demonstrated in the case of cooperation between UNLOCK and Impact Hub - is the emergence of ideas and projects with the potential to become bridges connecting, or facilitating connections, between different parts of the Wikimedia ecosystem and the proverbial “outside world”.

@Kannika_Thaimai_WMDE - Apparently, some of the macht.sprache’s project leads are also active Wikimedia volunteers. I had quite an interesting discussion with Lucy Grasser during the event; I think they are interested in bringing some of their conversations to this forum. That could be the “bridge” I mentioned above…

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See also