Bureau of Indian Affairs Wikithon

Jul 12, 2012

Mobile Gov Experiences are agency stories about creating anytime, anywhere, any device government services and info. This entry is a story shared by Bureau of Indian Affairs.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) held three separate Wikithons in three different locations to help improve and build upon their Wiki pages.

Why We Did It

The goal of these was to promote creation of employee profiles on our Wiki and to get people started on writing articles.

What We Did

BIA's advertisement for a Wikithon showing a photo of a women inviting employees to drop in and update their profiles on BIA's internal wiki.

With some very solid advice from some folks at GSA, we held three seperate Wikithons in Reston, Herndon, and D.C. offices.

Thanks to gallons of coffee, mountains of cupcakes and doughnuts, and a lot of hard work we’ve gotten some great results!

  • Created a total of 82 profiles, doubling the number of profiles.
  • Wrote 46 articles, so we now have over 170 pages of excellent information.
  • Uploaded over 50 profile pictures, including 20+ that were taken at the Wikithon itself (we set-up a photo booth)!

It Worked

We had a total of 61 people who participated in person at the Wikithon.

What We Learned

Considering the first 80 profiles took months and the next took a couple days, that’s pretty remarkable. The Wikithon is a good place to start to collaborate on creating profiles. Also the employee profiles with photos is crucial because it helps match a name to a face for the Wikithon and for the future as well.

What’s Next

We’re really happy with the results and are already planning at least one more Wikithon in the coming months with a keen eye on expanding access to the event.

Contact

Stanley Smith | Stanley (dot) Smith (at) bia (dot) gov

GSA

Jul 12, 2012