File:Uzo Iweala, Nigerian author, working on movement strategy.webm

TRANSCRIPT BELOW

ZACH: Hey folks on Blue Jeans, we're still waiting on Uzo. He's running a little late, but will be getting underway eventually. Thanks.

Hey folks, watching the YouTube stream, we'll be getting underway shortly. Thanks.

AUDIENCE: Hey guys, do you know if the lounge is muted?

AUDIENCE: I hope so.

AUDIENCE: Yeah. I can definitely see [INAUDIBLE] talking, and I've never heard Zach this quiet, so.

AUDIENCE: I can see Louis. Look at him.

AUDIENCE: I know.

AUDIENCE: He's getting [INAUDIBLE].

ZACH: Toby, are you there? I heard you speaking--

TOBY: I am here. Pardon?

ZACH: I heard you speaking in the room. Hi everyone. We're--

[NOISE]

--just about to start here. We're waiting on Uzo.

AUDIENCE: He's right there.

ZACH: Uzo, are you here? All right. Two minutes.

ZACH: Check one. Red check one, two. Hey, yellow one, two.

ZACH: Hello and welcome. I'm very pleased to welcome you to the Wikimedia Foundation, and also, Dr. Uzodinma Iweala with Adele Vrana as well. This is a big honor for us.

We're hosting a brown bag. So, bring your questions. Bring your thoughts. The way we will set this up is that we'll hear from our two guests. They'll talk about some of the work they've been doing for the movement strategy. And then we'll ask a few questions that have been prepared in advance, common questions.

But really, we want to keep this as a dialogue. So if you have something related to what somebody said, raise your hand. I'll come find you in the room. And if it's on chat or in IRC, or elsewhere, Brendan, give me a signal and we'll figure that out.

So the first thing I'll say is a little bit of an introduction for who we have here. So, Dr. Uzodinma Iweala is joining us from Nigeria. Uzo-- better known as Uzo-- happens to be a physician, as well as a best-selling author, as well as the CEO and editor-in-chief of Ventures Africa, which is a publication that looks at business, and policy, and culture, all across Africa.

He has also been our lead for Track D work from the movement strategy in Nigeria. Track D, for those who might not recall, is the work we're doing that focuses on countries, regions, languages where Wikipedia movement awareness and usage is rather low. So these are places where we think there's a big opportunity to do more.

Adele Vrana leads the global reach team on our partnerships team. She is just returning from Brazil where she was doing Track D research of her own. Was it three, four, workshops? How did it go?

Oh yes, on the bottom here, tap that. There you go.

ADELE VRANA: Is it working? Hi everyone. We interviewed more than 60 people in Brazil, over a week and a half, research-range. So it was really, really good. And the week before that, Ravi was representing our team in Indonesia with [INAUDIBLE] team there, having the same process. So we have findings from Indonesia and Brazil.

ZACH: Fantastic. And for those who don't know, some of the work that the global reach team does, includes trying to expand access to Wikipedia. So the Wikipedia Zero program has expanded access to Wikimedia projects in over 50 countries. And that's just one of the many things they do. Also, Uzo, that's for you to know.

So the first thing I wanted to start with today is just a quick summary of how things went in Lagos and Brazil. Uzo, do you want to tell us a little bit about what happened in Lagos?

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Sure. Well first of all, thanks for having me. It's good to be here. I think you can also probably speak about what happened in Lagos because you were there.

We had, actually, a really good series of discussions. I think one of the things is, was trying to really hit three points, was to try and understand what people know about the Wikimedia Foundation, about Wikipedia.

And then, the second major point was to really think about, what are the issues that people have in terms of access? Why are people not using more? And how can people improve, in terms of the way that they use or access all of the products that the Wikimedia Foundation offers? And then, with that in mind, how do you then expand what people are thinking about in terms of usage, and what the presence of the Wikimedia Foundation could be in Nigeria, but again, across the continent?

So what we ended up doing was setting up a series of dinners with people in different fields in Nigeria, in Lagos. And we picked, really, three sectors that would give people a broader idea of what people are thinking about in terms of usage within the country.

So, we looked at what media folks are doing and what social entrepreneurs are doing, and then also what educators are doing, spread across those three sectors, really trying to get people's understanding. Three dinners, really, really interesting insights. Pretty good turnout for the first two. I wasn't there for the last one, for the education one-- but you also weren't there for the education one-- but we can talk a little bit about those insights.

But really, just in general, just trying to get a broad overview of how people see the products that you guys offer, and really, how those can be tailor-made a little bit better for the environments in which you're thinking about expanding in to.

ZACH: Adele.

ADELE VRANA: Hello. Yeah, no it is. So thank you everyone, as well. Good morning, or good evening, depending on where you are.

So before I even get to Brazil, I just wanted to just recap the work that we are doing for this track is really about the new voices. And I have been receiving questions, like, what do you mean about when you say new voices? And we really are thinking about movement strategy as this big conversation, that we are deciding and we are asking ourselves, who we want to be, and what we want to achieve together in the next 10 to 15 years.

And historically, we have asked that of ourselves before. But we have not included some of the voices of partners, donors, experts, and users-- not only editors, but readers-- and people that come in contact with our projects. This time around, we are going to the countries where we have low awareness and low usage, and asking them. So we are asking experts-- as we have done in Nigeria, in India, in Indonesia-- and we're asking users, themselves.

And we are also trying to go over the same areas. What are the barriers for access? Do you know Wikipedia? Do you know Wikimedia? Do you recognize this as a movement? Why and why not?

So in Brazil, we have done that. And we have done intercepts when we really approach people on the street, and we ask them questions about Wikipedia. We really try hard not to lead them-- And and you have done that in Nigeria-- and some of you have done that in other countries.

Working with Reboot, is really trying to come to the user and meet them where they are. So we have done that. And it has been really, really amazing to start from the bottom-up, in terms of needs and necessities. And really fulfilling our mission, starting with who is using us, or what is the potential, the impact that we could have.

So we chose to go to a stage in Brazil that is really more representative of our reality, as a country, than Sao Paulo and Rio. So we followed the recommendation of our communities and went to Bahia, where more than 60% of the population is black and brown Brazilians. And we have a lot of impoverished and vulnerable areas.

And there, we were able to find fascinating insights of how we, as a movement, can really be impactful in peoples' lives. And I cannot wait to share more about that. But that's like the high-level of what we have done in Brazil. And we have done a similar thing in Indonesia as well.

ZACH: So let's talk now about some of the patterns and habits around information sharing, that already exist in Nigeria, Africa, Brazil. Uzo, what kind of things, again, that may have come up in the workshops, or just you've observed at Ventures Africa?

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Right. I think what Adele's saying in terms of accessing new voices, is super important and actually, really the name of the game in Nigeria. And I think, when you think about accessing new voices as you're getting to, you're also thinking about the different ways in which people access information.

Now, if you take a place like Lagos, Nigeria, which in some sense is representative of the broader swath of the country, because of the different populations and people who-- it's a nexus, essentially. On another level, it's a big city. So you're not talking about rural areas, just to put that out there.

But when you start thinking about Nigeria in this particular space, you're thinking about people who access the internet primarily through mobile. I'm sure this is not news to a lot of you. But you're also talking about a country where mobile penetration isn't necessarily super high. So you're dealing with that thing, that people who know, and who will access, and who will use Wikipedia, for example, are going to probably be interacting with it through mobile.

The people who don't, you know, that's another issue that one has to think about. How do you get those people online? How do you bring them into the fold? And that was one of the things that was a big part of the discussion, which is, the cost of access, the cost of data. And I think that came up in Brazil. That came up in Indonesia, the findings that have come up from the Reboot study.

You know, it's all well and good to talk about people accessing information and sharing knowledge, but if the barriers to entry are super high, then you have a whole other place that you need to start from, in terms of where you're building insights, what you're looking at. That's one thing.

I think the other thing that came up is that people are hungry. I mean, the very basic thing, people are hungry for alternative sources of knowledge. You're dealing with a country like Nigeria, where school systems, or educational systems are not necessarily as robust as they could be. So the desire for self-improvement and the need for tools for self-improvement is very strong. And I think one of the things that came out of the discussions that we had was that people want to have tools that they can use to improve themselves, and want tools that are trustworthy, essentially.

And I think that's one of the strong points about Wikimedia, about, for example, Wikipedia, is that people do see it as a trustworthy product. It's just, when they know about it. And I think that's the thing, is you have to get to the knowing first. And then you can start thinking about, OK, how do people within the society really access?

In general, in terms of informational trends-- and not to bore everybody-- it's just, you're talking about an environment where you've got 180 million people in Nigeria, largest country in Africa. Lagos is a city of 21 million people, sixth largest economy in Africa, if you want to put it that way. Lagos itself, right? But you're talking about, probably about one cell phone for each-- or, 1.5 cell phones per person, in Nigeria. Just something to keep in mind when you think about, how are you going to get to these people?

But you're also talking about a per capita income of about $1,000 per person, but hugely skewed. So the people who do know and who do have access, have a little bit to spend on that access. The people who don't, really don't.

But the people who really don't are the ones that you're really going to want to get to, because they're the ones who are actually going to make a difference, in terms of how this product is used, and the transformational ability or capacity of the product itself, within the society. I think that dovetails with a lot of the other stuff that's coming out of other countries.

ADELE VRANA: Yeah, absolutely. And I think the access and affordability, specifically, in terms of access of a barrier to access, came up as well, especially in Brazil. And I think you were touching base on inequality. So Brazil is also marked by a few that have a lot. And the majority of that, don't have much. So inequality, it is a hard thing and a present thing there, in Latin America and other countries as well.

And when we look at the numbers for Brazil, we have a country where mobile penetration is really high. And even, I think it gets you two mobile devices per person, in Brazil. So we have more mobile devices than individuals in the country.

But, when we look at the cost of data, people cannot afford. Having a cell phone doesn't mean that they will be online. And this is like really, really interesting for us to look at. What is it that we have? What is it that we can do within that reality?

And one of the major barriers, we had a lot of indications of that. But I think, after this trip and after the research, digital literacy came up as a really, really, real barrier, for not only us, but I think for like, the world, in general. The fact that you have a cell phone you might be able to afford. And then even when you do, you don't really know what the internet is, how does that work, and what are the benefits of that.

And what we heard from one expert in Brazil is that the internet, as we know it, is dying. And Wikipedia is part of that old internet. What people know today is Facebook, WhatsApp, our properties, our applications. They don't know the open, full internet that we are really like, one of the guardians, one of the good guys, and examples, right?

So, it's really interesting for us to think about how we position ourselves in that new reality where the internet is not a concept anymore, that people are talking about those big properties. So that is a really, a thing really interesting to think.

And then, the other thing too, when we think about there's a spectrum of digital literacy, we're really thinking that the people that don't know about us, but they are coming online, are probably the best audience for us to start working with. Because once they are in the mid-way of the spectrum of digital literacy-- they're already using the internet-- but they learn that anyone can edit, their trust plummets. Right, like really dips and goes down.

And we need to do a better job in terms of explaining that anyone can edit, because we have seen that one of the main barriers is trust, regarding Wikipedia. And this is coming from the educational sector. And this is coming from just us not really explaining the full, like yeah, anyone can edit, but doesn't mean that you can put anything you want in Wikipedia. We have editorial rules, and et cetera. So we need to increase and improve the communication, in terms of our model, and what are the benefits that that model brings.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: That's good. Riff off what you were saying, I think one of the things that's going to be really interesting is how Wikimedia really thinks about some of these new platforms, and how you engage and interact. I mean, if you think about Nigeria, for example, that comment about Facebook being the major portal that people use to interact with the internet is very, very true. I mean, that is the primary way that people access the internet now, if you're accessing.

Or, other things like, WhatsApp. Again, this is stuff that's in some of the studies that have been done, but WhatsApp grew. Before WhatsApp, it is actually BlackBerry Messenger. That was a really big thing until BlackBerry messed up and decided to not make Africa a major market. But I'm not mad. I hope BlackBerry's not watching this.

So I think, it's the way that people access information now, the way that people share, has changed a lot. And so the idea of one, verifiable source is a difficult one. But you also see that though-- I think, it's just a pattern in the way that people access information in the countries that we are.

So the idea here, everybody is going crazy over the big networks are untrustworthy. I think, for example, in Nigeria, no one has ever trusted the major newspapers as real, solid sources. Right? So it's sort of the thing, you might read it in one newspaper, but then if you see it in multiple newspapers, you're like, OK, well I have this person's perspective, because you know who owns that paper. You read another newspaper. I have this person's perspective. And because of all that, I can now assimilate and source information.

What social media has done, what WhatsApp has done, is it cuts down the amount of time you need to do things like that. Because if your friend-- who you trust-- has done the reading for you, you can now basically say, OK, well this friend said this happened, and therefore I believe it.

But, it's going to be interesting to see how, when you're trying to merge from an old internet perspective-- if that's what we want to call it-- into how people are actually accessing the internet in these countries. And think about it, they're accessing it without any knowledge, or without any real interaction with the old internet, right? Who wants to waste time going through all those search portals, or whatever, when you can get information through Facebook, when you can get your news through Facebook. Or you can get your news off of WhatsApp group.

And so, how do you adapt to that is going to be a major question, I think, going forward. And that's going to be a question that's, I think, answered here, but also through real discussion with people on ground, in terms of how you verify, or how you trust information that comes from multiple sources at once.

ADELE VRANA: One thing that is interesting-- and that we have seen this in Brazil-- people are trusting digital influencers to create the content that they want to receive. And they wanted to receive it. They don't want it to go somewhere. They don't want it to go to a destination and find that content. But it's interesting because they trust other people to create the content for them, but they don't trust individuals to produce the content, especially if they don't know who the producer is.

So we have asked the students in Brazil, OK, if you want to know about someone, like a personality, or someone that you really admire, where do you go? And they were like, Instagram. And it shocked me, right, like Instagram is, you're seeing pictures, videos at best. How are you going to know something there? And they were like, yeah, I want to know the human being that is behind the professional, that is behind the content.

So there was a lot of this uncovering who is behind the production of knowledge. Yeah, it was really, really interesting.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: But I also think within that, when you start talking about new ways that people access knowledge, with, for example, Instagram pictures, video, one of the things that came up in one of the dinners we had-- and I think this was one of the points that we all left thinking, wow, this is amazing-- was, when you think about what has been privileged in the old model, where it's the written form, written contents, that's verified by multiple sources, but in environments where people are not necessarily dealing with that.

Again, forget digital literacy, you're talking about just general literacy, where a lot of history, or a lot of storytelling, has been done orally, right? So in Nigeria, we have a lot of historical information that's maybe not verifiable, that's not on record because it's oral history. A personal example, I can talk about my own background, my own lineage. We can trace back to maybe the 1400s, but no one would believe because the start of that is in the 1800s, when the British came in and started keeping paper records. But the stories go back way, way further.

So one of the things that came up is people want to be able to document that, and they want to have trustworthy sources for that information. But how do you do that if the portal that you're using won't accept the form that you would do it in? Are there ways to adapt to that?

If video is becoming a big thing, is there a way of having a verifiable video entry? If oral storytelling, or oral history, is a way of capturing a historical event-- say the sack of Benin, or even before that, the rise of Lagos as a city-- is there a way to tell that, and have that be part and parcel of a larger body of information that maybe is hybridized? And then you can incorporate some of these new forms. You can incorporate somebody on video and have that be sent out over the social media networks that people access.

And I think that was a really interesting insight that came up, that people are hungry to incorporate these new forms. And I think it would actually, per environment, maybe here, in San Francisco, it's a different thing. But in Lagos, Nigeria, I don't know, in Salvador and Brazil, maybe the access and the popularity increases if you expand the forms that people can actually use to access.

ADELE VRANA: Yeah. I think we have seen that we have the content. And we have some areas in terms of growing the potential to have the content, especially in local languages, but we don't have the right packaging.

And then, even to be even more provocative, a lot of the experts in Brazil are questioning us, are questioning the Wikimedia movement in terms of, is it the path to try to adapt Wikipedia, which is an encyclopedia and has been created, through Western models? Or is it to think about something else, that it's not here yet, that it's not something that we know.

So we were questioned in some of the interviews and conversations in a really provocative, hard way. Is an encyclopedia the best way to have every single human being sharing and producing knowledge through videos, photos, et cetera? And I think we need to have that conversation.

ZACH: Are you saying that, knowledge exists everywhere. It just looks and acts differently. Is that something that's coming out as a finding?

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Yeah, I think that's a really good way of summarizing it. Definitely looks and acts differently, and what then is privileged, depends very much on the cultural context in which you're accessing that knowledge. If somebody sits down with an older person and listens to a story, in the Nigerian context, that might carry more weight than here where somebody will just be like, it's an old person talking. What am I supposed to take from that?

But it's important. It goes back to the influencers in who you decide to use as influencers. I mean, I think we all feel a little bit icky about the idea of the influencer in this modern internet era. But it is a thing, right? And it's with us, and it's the way that people are beginning to-- the way that a good chunk of people are accessing the information that they use. And that's not just here, that's around the world, we're finding. But you have to really think about how you build a model around that, and around the cultural context of the knowledge that you're trying to get people to absorb, or share, or disseminate.

ADELE VRANA: Yeah, and I think to complete that, it's not even much about all the forms of knowledge that then feed into our product, but is how you make sense of that in a movement context. How do you inspire emotion? How do you make sense, and you have a value proposition to the people that are now consuming information like this? I think that is the bigger question here.

And we have heard from a lot of people that movement and feeling part of something, it's about emotion. It's about feeling connected, like you have a flag that you can stand behind. And you're going to make sense of that. And I think that is what we need to think about, how to put that emotion and to create that, and to make sense to them.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: When you talk about emotion, I think one of the strangest things, or most interesting things about the series of dinners that we had-- so we did the media people first, and we did social entrepreneurs next-- and I had thought, just based off of the folks that we invited, that the second dinner that we had was going to be the one where people spoke a lot about some of the logistical issues and challenges. It usually comes up.

And I think it also is worth saying here, because people like to skirt around it, but a lot of this has to do with money. It's how much money do you have to be able to expand access. We'll come back to that.

But that actually came up in the media dinner. And I guess media people are just cutthroat because media is a tough business, right, right, where people were just like, resources, resources. And they were very practical and concrete in thinking about what access means, in thinking about what Wikimedia, what Wikipedia could be as a product.

What was interesting is the social entrepreneurs were very emotional. It was more about sentiment. It was about, what do we need? What is it that we're missing that this thing could potentially feel, in an emotional sense, in a storytelling sense?

So there was a lot of discussion around, in the Nigerian context, the fact that history is not privileged in our current context. And there are political reasons for that, or whatever, but can this thing really help us develop or disseminate a sense of our own identity?

And that, I think, is super, super important to think about. That's how people engage. That's what will make any of the products or any of the services being delivered important to people. And that's what will get buy-in for people is, does it really connect, and then, do I feel like when I use this I'm actually influencing, or have the potential to change or reshape the society in which I live?

And you have to remember that a lot of these environments, change is an intense and sometimes-- it's disconcerting everywhere-- but when you can really see it, and when you can really see things move extremely fast and without, necessarily, a sense of security. The idea of who you are, and how you shape that, and how that then is projected onto the rest of society, becomes extremely important.

I think we're seeing it more here, in these contexts, as things unravel. But there, that's always been the case and that's always a thing to really make sure that you're getting at when you speak with, interact, or propose anything to people.

I think that's a first, and then when you start thinking about other things you're getting into, one of the things that came up was just-- sorry, brain freeze, just got off an airplane. Again, sort of funneling into that which is, how do you open up the space so that people can have the necessary information to construct that? So when I say open up the space, I mean how do you aid people in the political issues that they'll face, as they try to open up and construct that space?

So when it comes to things like access to data, you're dealing with governments in certain places. Nigeria's one might be better than others-- I don't know about Brazil-- but where access to data becomes a problem. And it's not just a problem in terms of, how do you access it? It's a problem in terms of, should you even be accessing it? Will people give that information to you? Will you get in trouble for accessing it?

And I think, again, anything that helps people-- and again, there are reasons for that-- but anything that helps people break through those things creates an emotional connection. You immediately gain trust. You gain respect. You gain purchase in a society that is very difficult to get people to trust you in.

ZACH: I'd like to ask about volunteer culture, which was something that came up in our dinners in Lagos, and I wondered if it also came up in Brazil. Essentially, there was discussion around, what are the expectations and traditions of people contributing their time, their knowledge, their efforts-- free-- to benefit something, perhaps lofty or abstract.

Uzo, do you remember this discussion around volunteer culture? And, I wondered also if you could tell folks a little bit about the traditions in Nigeria around, students, upon graduation, I believe have to do a full year of public service. And what's expected of that public service?

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Yeah. There is a particular conception of what it means to be a volunteer within this environment. And I think that's, again, very culturally conditioned. In Nigeria, there are a number of factors that go into what volunteering is and what it means. When you think about family units, and you think about social units as being a bit different there than they are here, a lot of people will be volunteering or will essentially do volunteer work without realizing that that's what they're doing.

But then when you take that out, you're trying, in a sense, abstract it and attach it to something that's maybe outside of the religious context, or outside of the family unit, or social context that people really understand, it becomes a bit different. I think, understanding what it means to be a volunteer in that context becomes a little bit different, or maybe slightly difficult for people.

That said, to go to what you were talking about, Zach, and talk about what we have in Nigeria, which is this idea of national youth service. It's the National Youth Service program. Little bit of history. It was developed after Nigeria's civil war, '66 through 1970. And the real purpose of the program was to unify the country.

And they said, look, we've had this brutal civil war. We've had people from different parts of the country who don't really know each other. We think that one of the reasons for this civil war is that people weren't interacting in the way that they should. So we're going to take every single university graduate in Nigeria, and we're going to make them do a year of service for the country.

And in its initial stage, I think it was a really important and interesting thing for people. I haven't done it, and I probably should do it. That's another thing.

My parents' generation was really the first generation to interact with this whole National Youth Service Corps idea. And you were not allowed to serve in a part of the country where you were from. And then you were also positioned based off of what you studied.

So if you were a doctor, for example, they would send you off to a rural clinic. Let's say you're a doctor from southeastern Nigeria. They might send you to a rural clinic in northern Nigeria, and that's where you would be. You'd be interacting with the people there. You'd be providing services.

If you were a graduate in English, from Lagos, they might send you to the south, south of the country. It's the oil producing region. And you'd teach English, or you'd teach primary school, or whatever there. And so the idea was, this was a real part of what it meant to be a Nigerian. And how you get people to move from service to community, to service to country.

As the country has matured and as the program itself has matured, and been hit by a lot of the things that you find in a country like Nigeria, it doesn't necessarily serve the same purpose as it did. And there are a lot of loopholes. There are a lot of ways to not actually have to do what you're supposed to do with youth service. However, the idea of that, as a rite of passage, is incredibly important and still really strong in society.

It's a thing to look at, not just for what you guys are thinking about, in terms of how you interact with volunteer culture, but just everyone in general. You have a ready-made pool of young people who are just out of university, generally between the ages of 20 and 26-- probably the bulk, it skews a bit later as well-- but who are tech savvy, or who would be the ones who are interested in using the internet in the new ways that they use the internet, and who essentially, don't have very much to do.

If you get posted to a school in-- and I've been to some of these places-- like god-knows-where in northern Nigeria, you're there. It's you, in a school house, in a rural area. You have a lot of time on your hands. You have a lot of time to think. You have a lot of time to do and develop stuff. You're just not utilized the way that you could be. And I think that's something that, within government, they're really trying to think about, at least some of the people I've spoken to who work at the Youth Service Corps program.

But it's also a situation where there's a lot of opportunity for interaction with organizations that can propose, look, this is how we think that people could spend their time. If it's a bunch of kids who are teaching, and you know you want to be a source of knowledge for a larger body of people. You want to say that Wikipedia could be actually a teaching tool for primary schools. That's a really good port of entry and something to be considered.

ADELE VRANA: Yeah, and that was the portion that really came out from Brazil, that we usually-- when I think about programs in education-- we really think about the students. That's the sexy angle, right? We go and we target them, and we're really not thinking about it in full and intermediaries there, which would be the teachers. So a lot of the trust problems and the non-adoption of Wikipedia, and projects in general, come from teachers telling you, you should not use it. You should not trust it.

And then, in terms of thinking about volunteering and editing, and how to actually foster that, what came out of the research is that we should be starting there. And we were really pleased to see that the community group in Bahia just closed the partnership with the major training teacher of the state of Bahia to do that. And they sat down with a group of teachers and they were talking about our projects, and how we work, and how we should and could incorporate Wikipedia in the classroom. And they were amazed. They were never thinking about the project and the ease of that in the classroom, and how that could benefit them.

And we also saw a lot of schools and students reporting to us that they have computer labs that no one is using. No one is there making use of the computers and the internet of those centers, and they don't know really how to use technology in the education field.

ZACH: Was there a reason why? Did they have an idea?

ADELE VRANA: Yeah. Actually, they--

ZACH: Oh, are they monitored?

ADELE VRANA: They were saying that they don't have-- actually they have computers, but they are not connected to the internet. And they were saying that if they would be, people would be using Facebook all day, or not really being there to learn something. So the teachers only use the computer and the computer labs to do PowerPoint presentations. That's the use of the computer lab in Brazil. And the teachers really refrain to even going there or trying to use technology in the classroom.

So that was one of the bridges of, let's think about literacy, digital literacy in education, and how we actually train the trainers, like how we actually address one of the audiences that is really draining the trust. Because we saw a lot of this-- the teachers telling students not to use Wikipedia.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: I think again, it just goes back to the idea that people are actually really hungry for this. I was in the south, south region of Nigeria, in this place where we were filming a documentary about oil. But we actually filmed a certain segment of that at a school.

And one of the teachers at the school came up to me and said, afterwards, he was like, listen I need your help, I need your help. We need to get computers because I can see that my kids, they want to use this stuff. They want to be on the internet. I can see that there's so much they can learn from being on the internet, from having access. And he's like, we're falling behind in this community.

This is a guy who's maybe, 25, 26. Again, one of these people who has been posted to this area. And he can see from outside what's happening. He can see that the community itself wants it.

But then we get back to this idea of resources, like how do you funnel resources? How do you channel resources? And the resources issue then goes into this idea of what it means to be a volunteer. I think in a place where there is-- for want of a better term-- leisure time, where you have more choice about how you spend that time, then the concept of volunteering is different.

In a place where you're stressed for resources all the time, where every second you're not working is a second that you could be closer to some kind of disaster, financial or whatever. I don't want to stress the idea of disaster, but just look, people live in very different economic circumstances. You have a lot less time to actually volunteer, in that sense. You might devote time. You might be volunteering. You might be helping, but not realizing that you are volunteering, or whatever.

And so I think for Wikimedia, for anybody who's looking to be effective in one of these environments, you have to take that into account. You have to take into account, how can you provide resources to make it easier for people to spend time that they don't really have? Or to devote time, to move time from one thing to another. How do we get that teacher that I was talking to-- how do we give him the ability or the opportunity to actually spend more time with the students that he wants to, but can't, because one, he doesn't have the resources. And two, he doesn't have the support.

ADELE VRANA: Yeah, and I think just one to add to that, one of the things that really moved me when I was in Bahia, is to even see that some of the existing editors that are already volunteering their time. We're lacking, in terms of support. And it starts with having a machine, having a computer, and/or having data that they can use their cell phones to add it.

We have been hearing that, but I was able to really confirm, and feel and hear that, in person, from the ground. And it really moved me, in terms of how we expect that they're going to volunteer their time, they're going to put contents to your projects, if they're lacking basic support and resources.

ZACH: We're going to open up this discussion now. So if you have questions, give me a sign in the room. Brendan, I'm going to come look, if there's any discussions there as well. OK, Anna, you're first.

AUDIENCE: Now? Yeah. First of all, thanks. You guys are awesome. This is great. Thank you so much.

You were talking about the new internet and the old internet. New and old, and you're talking about what our projects do there, and whether we're going to adapt in these new environments. And what I've been thinking about-- this is kind of like a comment to riff on, rather than answer my question.

It seems like our roots were in knowledge disruption. And that's the thing we've lost. We've kept free knowledge. We've lost the desire to disrupt the knowledge space. At least that's what it seems like to me. So I'm super excited to hear you guys talking in this way, because I believe our roots are as much as in disruption as they are in free knowledge. And if we can't find a way to shake up this space again, then we could just settle into mid-age, and have some tea and whiskey. Where's the disruption going to come From and I'm really hoping that it'll come from new insights from new voices.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Yeah, in terms of that, I think that's very, very true. It might just, in some senses, be being like a victim of one's own success, being super established. When people think about one of the first places to get information and knowledge, you think, OK, Google. You think, also, Wikipedia. I think people understand, especially in this context, about the verifiability of information. Some of it you can-- you know is absolutely certain. Some of it might have cross-check, and you also do know it's updated, or whatever. But I think it's in that sense, being a victim of one's own success. You get very comfortable where you are.

And the truth of the matter is other parts of the world are really adopting how people use the tools to access knowledge. And that's changing the way that knowledge itself, is constructed. And yeah, you're right. If Wikimedia, or Wikipedia, or any of the products are going to be relevant in these places, then you have to take into account the way that people use the tools for disseminating knowledge, how that's changing the way that knowledge itself, is perceived.

I think this is a really good start. I think the movement strategy stuff is a really good way of asking people in their environments, OK, what is it that you see? And how can we be relevant to you in that context, as opposed to, this is the model that has worked for us. You either take it or you don't.

ADELE VRANA: And I think when we also are thinking about the disruption, what we also have been hearing is that we're not alone. There is this knowledge ecosystem, and people are looking to this organization and the movement to be more like leaders in that. And it's not so much about open and free-- it's also about that, for sure-- but it's about access to knowledge, how we can actually be voices and leaders in terms of access to knowledge.

And I think that is where the disruption has come from, when we just see outside of those walls and really look into the ecosystem, and understand that we have a role to play there. And people really want to see us playing that role.

ZACH: Anthony, I hear you have a question. Would you like to ask it?

AUDIENCE: Absolutely, yeah. So my question is about interactivity in the vein of what Uzo said about video and audio content. I'm curious if you've heard anything about that interactive media, specifically, like games. For example, I think my children would probably prefer an interactive game of learning, say, frog anatomy to an article on frog anatomy. So, that's what I'm curious about.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Yeah, I would be interested to see what people came up with in Brazil. In Nigeria, I think the idea of gamification around education-- and I don't know that it was discussed specifically at the dinner or the gatherings that we've had-- but in other conversations, that idea has come up, which is, how do you make things more accessible to an audience that isn't, like you said, just going to sit down and spend 20 minutes reading an article about frog anatomy, which I'm sure is really interesting. But how do you improve people's--

ZACH: The doctor says, right?

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Given that I also learned all my anatomy on Wikipedia, but whatever.

AUDIENCE: [LAUGHTER]

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: How do you improve? In a situation where you're competing with so many other sources, or where you're competing with so many other things for attention, how do you improve people's attention? How do you improve your ability to get people's attention? And games have come up in terms of education.

And I think in Nigeria, again, there are a lot of really interesting new companies that are looking at, how do we do this around languages? How do we do this around literacy? How do we do this around science and technology? How do we bring games, whether it's in the low-tech fashion-- and that's people creating textbooks that are just straight, paper textbooks that are more interactive-- to how do we incorporate gaming in technology?

Again, I think for our particular context, you're going to run into people's ability to access. You're going to run into the fact that, you've got a school, and do they have the ability or the money to have tablets, for example? Or, forget tablets, computers. Do they have the ability to-- I mean, do they have electricity?

Those are some of the things that you think about in our context that you have to work around. It's not impossible. Again, obviously, look, if you're talking about mobile phones, people charge their mobile phones all the time. People figure out ways. If it's important to you, you will figure out a way to make it useful to you. But we just have to keep that in mind as we think about, how do you develop these new forms of interaction that would, maybe, keep people's attention for longer.

ADELE VRANA: Yeah. Gamification didn't really come out as strongly in Brazil and Indonesia, even though people are using, in Indonesia, a lot of Instagram and Snapchat. So, using video and pictures a lot. One of the things-- what I was going to say-- brain freeze. Charging, charging. I don't-- I cannot remember. OK, I'll get back to that. I think, oh, yes, I remember it.

YouTube. YouTube was the main thing coming out of Brazil. There are these video classes in YouTube that they're using to learn a lot of content. But they're also just spending time hearing people to say, OK, this is what I ate today, kind of like the blogs type of things, that we had a really hard time understanding. OK, what are you getting from that? But yes, there is educational content, and also a lot of entertainment and leisure coming on. But YouTube was the thing in Brazil, and really surprised me to see all this and then say, yes, that's where I'm going and learning from.

And also professionals, like if I need to learn a new skill or something, I would go, and then it's easier. I can really relate to that person, and I'm seeing her doing it. So that was one of the other major properties that we haven't mentioned today, but came out really, really strongly in Brazil.

ZACH: Other questions? If not, I'd actually like to push on language, which you mentioned, Uzo.

So when we think about new voices, I think, late in question is, what language would those new voices be speaking? What expectations would they have to read, or to learn, within? And I wondered what you could say about that consideration from Nigeria, where there are such an incredible range of languages, and yet a kind of, assumed, dominant language. And then in Brazil, where I'd love to know the difference between what happens in Portuguese and what happens in other languages.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: For us in Nigeria, I think the language that everybody will access most things in, in an official space, is English, because of history of colonization. So education is predominantly in English. Information that you access on the internet is predominantly in English.

That said, I think what people have found a lot of success with-- and the BBC has actually had the biggest success in Nigeria with this and been a pioneer in this-- is local language distribution of information. So, one of the most listened to news services in the world is BBC Hausa. So they do all of the reporting, all of their programs in Hausa, which is the language that's predominantly spoken in northern English.

One of the things that they also find, for example, in southwestern Nigeria where it's predominantly Yoruba, is that some of the local newspapers-- so forget Lagos-- but you go to some of the smaller secondary towns, literacy and local language is really, really high and important. And so I think, again, some of the bits and pieces of information-- if you're talking about Lagos, it's one thing-- if you're going now to maybe some area in rural northern Nigeria, and you're talking about something of historical significance, you're probably more likely to get that story in Hausa than you are in English.

And how do you then move that into the official space? And is that going to be that you're going to now transcribe and translate that into English? And the question then becomes, what do you lose?

Or, is there a way for the people that are going to predominantly access that information? Can you just figure out how to go straight to having that information online, or available to people through the internet, or whatever way they access it, but in the language that they speak?

So local literacy, I think, is extremely important because it automatically expands the number of people that feel like they have an emotional connection to the product that you're putting out there. If I don't have to go the extra step of having someone translate, or having the internet itself translate for me, then I'm probably more likely to find this thing to be useful and relevant in my context.

ADELE VRANA: Yeah, and for Brazil, our mother language is Brazilian Portuguese. And the people do expect to find content in Portuguese. And we have seen them looking for things. So where they're interviewing someone, and when they are looking for something on Google and then hitting Wikipedia and not finding that, they would immediately go back and say, uh-oh, no, this is in English. I have to go back and find the article in Portuguese. So we saw people bouncing right back to Google when they were not finding the article they wanted and they needed.

And there's expectation, right? Still, speaking English in Brazil, the landscape has been changing. But it's still more reserved to the people that are highly-educated, and they have the economical means to learn English. It's not something that you would go to Bahia and interview a lot of people in the streets, and then find a lot of English speakers as a second language.

AUDIENCE: So with local languages, we're looking at different programs or volunteers are trying to expand content in languages like Yoruba. There we go. Sorry.

The question is, do people search for things if they don't-- would Yoruba speakers search for things that they're interested in, in Yoruba, or would they search for it in English? What is the default? And if there is a default to searching in English versus a local language, then I guess we need to do something to redirect them.

ADELE VRANA: I can answer that quickly for Brazil. They started with Brazilian Portuguese. They're not going to start searching for that in English at all.

And only professionals-- we have seen journalists then coming to the English version of Wikipedia to see and compare the articles, or professors, but really, highly-educated people-- not really the users that we were meeting in other conditions. They were coming for the Portuguese version of it, and using Google in Portuguese.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: And I'm going to give you a non-answer to your question, which is, I don't really know. And I don't know that we know enough right now, in terms of context for people accessing the information. So I think that's going to highly depend on if you're doing it in the educational, formal sector, then probably I would assume that you're more likely to access in English, or the language that you're taught. Beyond that, I can't say that I really, really know.

AUDIENCE: One of the reasons I ask, or an interesting opportunity here, is the smaller language projects usually have a lot more freedom to do different things. Once you're on English, or French, or Spanish, or even Portuguese at this point, you have to follow a lot of rules that are very codified. But, I would imagine that in languages like Yoruba, for example, there aren't as many editors. And we've identified that ways of documenting history, science, knowledge, is different. It would be interesting to explore, do we have freedom in those spaces to do the disruption of knowledge production?

I encourage people, if they're going to do an education program, for example, in Benin or in Nigeria, go for Yoruba if you can, because that's going to be an easier place for someone to learn how to edit because they won't get smacked down.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Yeah.

ZACH: So another area I'd like to discuss for a moment, is basically, the society of knowledge within these communities. So some of the ways that this has been raised is the idea of word of mouth being an incredibly influential, formal way to learn something.

Now, I want to raise this by saying that I read an amazing study about media in Nigeria, that said that about 80% of people in Nigeria get their news every day from the radio. They're listening to the radio, and they're hearing news on the radio. And immediately following the radio was word of mouth, as a formal thing.

And I wanted to ask if that's something that you could comment on, Uzo. And also, Adele, if you could discuss word of mouth and relate it-- kind of a hypothesis or just an idea-- which is, these chat applications that are so influential. Are these basically an extension of word of mouth? Is this word of mouth in a technology framework?

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Yeah. I don't think Nigeria is necessarily even that different from a lot of emerging markets, countries, but radio is hugely influential. Again, it comes down to existing infrastructure. Radio is not that hard to do. It's not expensive, and it's been there for a very long time.

You don't need to have a fancy new thing to access radio. So yeah, if you're in northern Nigeria, what you'll find, for example, even in the most remote areas, someone has a radio. And then people will gather and listen to BBC Hausa or whatever else it is. In the cities, radio stations garner a huge number of users. That statistic is very much true.

After that, in terms of word of mouth, I think that's also true. And I think that idea of, are chat applications then important? And are they an extension of that? Yes, and I'll give you an example.

So, I guess it's three years ago now. Or, two years ago, at the start of the Ebola crisis in Nigeria. So, we weren't hit nearly as badly as any of the other countries-- Sierra Leone and Liberia-- but we did have maybe about 25 cases.

What was really interesting to see was how the federal government actually used chat applications to reach people and spread information and knowledge, sort of as an extension of this word-of-mouth thing. And also to use it to counteract false information that would go out through word-of-mouth channels.

The best example, I think, is of-- it started going out over BlackBerry Messenger, because BlackBerry Messenger was way bigger than any of the other ones at the time-- that if you drank tons of salt water, you would be able to cure yourself of Ebola. That went out, and that spread like wildfire. I mean, that was all over the place, on BlackBerry Messenger and on text.

Literally, within 24 hours, the government had realized that this is the way that people are actually getting this information. So what did they do? They collaborated with the mobile phone companies-- and that's something for everyone to consider-- to get both, over text messages. So, free text message alerts going out that people would then see, and then pass on and forward, and then also over BlackBerry Messenger.

And I think you're seeing the same thing-- I mean, I can't tell you how many updates I get about political issues, about economic issues, or whatever in Nigeria, from either people or chat groups on WhatsApp, where people will just send things out. You now have this phenomenon of being added to WhatsApp groups that you didn't even know existed, right, which shows you the power of this way of disseminating information.

And again, it's a village square in some senses. It's on a formal channel, but it's a place where people have developed a certain amount of trust around a shared interest. Things go out and they spread really, really fast.

ADELE VRANA: Yeah, I think that it's the same for Brazil. But I think in parallel with radio, we have TV. Brazilian television and the Brazilian media, through television, is our fourth power. So it's really, really strong. And who has not heard about soap operas in Brazil? So, yeah, that is how people are still getting the information, through TV.

We have one major TV channel and property that controls the message that is going out to the masses, to the bigger public. And in terms of the chat applications, it's funny to hear you saying that, and how you were receiving and people were receiving information during the Ebola crisis, and me sitting here, because I was already working for the foundation.

We were contacted by some of the organizations working in Nigeria and some of the affected countries that wanted to use our content. And then we were like, yeah, of course, our content is open. You can use that during the crisis.

The challenge was, who would create the content? And then one of the things that we didn't really talk about, but came out strongly, there needs to be creation of the content. No one has time, in all these patterns of online information and search, to really go and read long forms of articles.

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: You should have called us.

ADELE VRANA: Yes, I should have called you. And then the reply at the time was yes, you have the content, but you really don't have the right packaging. I cannot really get the full article off Wikipedia and then send through text message to people. So we were out of the action, and we could have been impactful.

The content was there and was important. And we were working with Wiki Mag Foundation, and the doctors that do add content in multiple languages, with medical content. And we were not really able to push that through because of the content not being in the right format for that distribution, for that environment. So yeah, it's really interesting to hear that, and then to have that back story.

ZACH: We have completely run out of time with this animating discussion, so I will put out a last call to see if there are any urgent questions. Jorge,

AUDIENCE: I'll try to be very quick.

ZACH: You get the last one. This is the final question, from Jorge.

AUDIENCE: First of all, thank you for being here. Uzo, I've heard a lot about you, so I'm super interested and very happy that you're here.

One of the things that we've been hearing a lot during the process of new voices, is not only around new languages, but also around new models of sources to get that knowledge, and how that conflicts directly with the Wikipedia or the Wikimedia model of how a source is traditionally defined, which is a published book, a published, unbiased, neutral internet site, for instance. But there are so many voices that collect their knowledge through some other kinds of recordings, like, oral tradition fits there, for instance.

My big question is, do you think that there could be a redefinition of this, maybe Western, maybe traditional concept of how knowledge is conserved and preserved?

DR. UZODINMA IWEALA: Yeah, I'm going to just be very bold and say, you're going to have to rethink it, especially to be relevant in a context like Nigeria. You just will. It's not going to work otherwise, for all the various reasons I think we have stated, in terms of, one, it's just people's ability to access published material.

People in contexts like Nigeria, how many books are you going to see, for example, about some of our historical things? They're there. Let me not say that they're not there. People have written about these things, but the majority of people-- if you want to have a wide audience-- are going to have different sources or different things that they trust. And you will have to bring those in to the fold, and have to figure out a way to make those relevant, and verifiable, and trustworthy to an audience beyond say, the Nigerian context, so that it becomes legitimized within the larger family or the larger group.

Otherwise, I just don't see-- if that's not done, and I think this was the point that was made in that second session that we had. People were talking about-- there was a project done by this program called the [INAUDIBLE] Institute, where they're going around-- this is in Nigeria-- and trying to capture the histories of people who had lived through the Civil War, just oral histories, as a thing, as a document, as a text for people to access in Nigeria. Again, because we're not teaching that history within schools, or whatever.

If you don't find a way to incorporate stuff like that, you're not going to succeed. And it's just that plain and simple.

AUDIENCE: Thanks.

ZACH: Uzo, Adele, thank you for being here. And thank you all for joining us, in the room, and on Blue Jeans. This has been our brown bag. Thank you so much. Thank you, everyone.