Save the Date for the Wikidata Affinity Group First Project Series of 2025!

[Willey, Eric]

Hi All,

 

Happy New Year! We're looking forward to another exciting year of Wikidata Affinity Group, and we want to invite you to Save the Date for our first project series of 2025. This is the perfect way to begin your linked data year:

 

Eric Willey has planned an enjoyable and engaging series on Starting a Wikidata Project.

 

Preview of coming attractions:
Eric Willey will be facilitating a series of four sessions focused on starting a Wikidata project from the foundation up at your institution. Sessions will be held on February 4, February 18, March 4, and March 18, 2025 at our regular time of 9am PT / 12pm ET / 17:00 UTC / 6pm CET.

Here is the plan for the series sessions:

Session 1 (February 4): Selling it to Admin
Projects need staff time or money to succeed, and we’re all short on both. This session will discuss strategies for convincing your administrators that allocating resources to a Wikidata Project will benefit your users and institution. While Eric works in a university library, this discussion is intended to be as broad as possible and participants from GLAM or other institutions outside the academic library setting are very welcome!
Session 2 (February 18): Choosing a Project
We don’t need to reinvent the can of worms just to nail jell-o to a half-baked pie. This session will focus on current and historical Wikidata projects on various themes and their documentation/outcomes, along with other resources for your project. Those resources can be re-used or adapted to a project at your institution, giving you a valuable head-start and eliminating some of the planning and initial groundwork.
Session 3 (March 4): Making the Most of Your  Time and Work
There is a saying in the Midwest, “If something is stuck don’t use force, just get a bigger hammer.” This session will focus on tools, gadgets and strategies to maximize your time and resources, automate work, and achieve more outcomes for your project. There are too many great resources to do a deep dive into each, but attendees will be introduced to a variety of tools they can then follow-up on for their own work.
Session 4 (March 18): Reporting Your Outcomes and Results
In the movie Mad Max: Fury Road, War Boy and open linked data enthusiast Nux says, “Witness me, shiny and chrome!” This session will focus on reporting back on your project once it’s over. Various tools for data visualization and other ways to demonstrate the impact and outcomes of your project to administration and interested parties will be discussed. Again, these will not be deep dives into any one tool or platform in favor of providing a variety of options for attendees to select which suits them best.

 

We will hope to see you there.

 

On behalf of the WIkidata Affinity Group Coordinators,

 

Eric Willey