On 15 January 2001, Jimmy Wales typed the words 'Hello World' into a piece of software called Wiki. Twenty-five years later, Wikipedia has grown into one of the world's most important sources of information and the most successful non-profit website in existence. One of Wikipedia's greatest strengths: communities. Loose-knit groups of volunteers make Wikipedia what it is today. Europeana, Europe's largest heritage portal, similarly revolves around communities collaborating around different themes.
In this session, Anna Mazgal, director of Wikimedia Europe, and Harry Verwayen, director of Europeana, explore the power of communities. What does it take to build a community? What tools, knowledge, and resources are needed to form a resilient online community? And what can different communities learn from one another. What, for example, can TheNextSocials learn from Wikipedia or Europeana?
Topics include capacity building, governance, and organisational development; community formation and how to move beyond simply attracting users; the tension between centralisation and decentralisation; the role of technology in shaping communities; content moderation for small teams; heritage and institutional memory; participatory structures and democratic governance; scaling teams and structures; and long-term sustainability and continuity.