Grants:PEG/WM AM/CEE Meeting 2016/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY Pending has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/WM AM/CEE Meeting 2016.

You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Project status

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?: YES

Is your project completed?: YES

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

Preparations

During WM CEE Meeting 2015 organized in Voore, Estonia the CEE community agreed on organizing the next CEE Meeting in Armenia. The preparations of the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016 began long before the conference. At the end of 2015, at the beginning of 2016 Wikimedia Armenia got an agreement with UWC Dilijan College to host WM CEE Meeting 2016 there. After an agreement WM AM staff created the meeting page on Meta and began asking the communities to fill "Question and Needs" section. Wikimedia staff began simultaneously working on the grant proposal of the event. WM AM had several meetings with its volunteers to find out the responsibilities they would take in organizing the meeting. Wikimedia Armenia with the collaboration of the venue decided to hold the conference on August 27-29.

On May 14 the Armenian team of the Programme Committee announced about adding new members from the international community to the committee, new members would help with the selection and scheduling of talks and other activities related to the conference program. After the Programme Committee was finally formed they began working on the program of the event based on the section "Question and Needs" which the community had filled earlier. Once a week the Programme Committee met via Google Hangout to discuss and work on the program. Programme Committee had 7 hangouts in total.

On June 26 the registration of the meeting began. Once in a week or two weeks, WM AM staff was informing the communities the updates of the meeting organization via CEE mailing list and Facebook group. We had 5 updates. Meanwhile, agreements with the hotels, taxis, welcome dinner were done. After the grant was approved, WM AM began contacting the participants individually and booking/buying the air tickets. Simultaneously design and printing of all materials of the meeting (banners, name tags, t-shirts, etc.) were implemented.

We formed a volunteer team who would meet CEE participants at the venue and solve different logistic issues there. This team was also responsible for answering participants questions and providing info regarding the conference.

WM AM team had a surprise for all the participants of the conference. The surprise was in the form of Wikipedia globe weighing more than a ton which was installed in front of the venue where the conference was to be held. The sculpture was created by diver's club "ArmDiving" to be later sunk to the bottom of the Sevan lake and serve as an artificial reef. The author is Ashot Khndzrtsyan.

Organization team

Our organizational team included not only WM AM staff but also volunteers and members of Wikimedia Armenia who had a long experience in supporting WM AM in different projects. On 30 April 2016 a meeting was organized with Armenian community members to represent CEE meeting, its organizational issues, and details and to find out volunteers who would assist organization team in its activities and be responsible for a number of issues. As a result, the organization team had such a look:

Communication - David Saroyan, Lilit Tarkhanyan, Dato Abuladze (was responsible for the communication with local participants)
Reception desk - Chris Ginosyan, Karine Vardanyan, Argishti Tigranyan, Haykuhi Grigoryan, Armen Mirzoyan. Alina Parazyan was responsible for the Reception desk.
Local issues with the venue during the conference - Armen Mirzoyan, Alina Parazyan, Vachagan Gratian
Programme Committee - from local team: Lilit Tarkhanyan, Vachagan Gratian, user:Chaojoker, from international community: Nikola Kalchev, Asaf Bartov, Tomasz Ganicz, Nat Tymkiv
Collaboration and partnership - Susanna Mkrtchyan
Travel and accommodation - Lilit Tarkhanyan, Mher Bekaryan, Anna Bakhshyan
Session facilitators - Cornelius Kibelka, Liam Wyatt, Tomasz Ganicz, Asaf Bartov, Siebrand Mazeland, Claudia Garád, Philip Kopetzky, Vachagan Gratian, Nikola Kalchev, Tobias Schönberg, Edward Galvez, Michał Buczyński, Kaarel Vaidla, Shani Evenstein
Photographer - lubekar
Print and design - Mher Bekaryan, David Saroyan
International guests accompanying to/from airport - Lilit Tarkhanyan, Gevorg Gafaryan, David Saroyan, Mher Bekaryan, Dato Abuladze, Armine Karapetyan, Rosie Mkhitaryan, Armen Mirzoyan, Alina Parazyan, Alexey Chalabyan
Responsible for press - Susanna Mkrtchyan
CEE grant and reporting - David Saroyan, Lilit Tarkhanyan
Evaluation & survey - David Saroyan, Edward Galvez

Pre-conference events

For those participants who have arrived earlier, a city tour was organized, which included a walk in the center of Yerevan, a visit to the repository of ancient manuscripts, research institute, and museum - Matenadaran, ending up in Yerevan Pandok, where the Welcome Dinner was held. Those who did not participate in the tour joined the Welcome Dinner too. The Welcome Dinner provided a free space for the newcomers to get acquainted with the whole CEE community. The CEE community members who were interested in the work and activities of Wikimedia Armenia were hosted at the WM AM office where they got familiar with the office, staff members and the organization projects and activities.

Main conference

Following the Welcome Dinner in Yerevan, the conference began in Dilijan on 27th August 2016 with the registration, official speeches of WM AM, WMF and UWC representatives, as well as with the opening of the Wikipedia globe sculpture placed in the school yard. The program of each day consisted of two parts: main part held at the venue and additional part held at the Dilijan hotel halls. The main part included two parallel sessions held in two different conference rooms.

The participants had presentations, lightning talks on social media, education, GLAM, Wikidata, gender gap, project and conflict management, CEE spring language tools, best practices, and projects of different CEE communities, grants, and others. Each presentation had its own facilitator who was previously chosen by the Programme Committee. Facilitators' responsibilities included the review of the presentation before the conference, short introduction of the speaker and topic, and time management of the talk. There were 51 presentations selected by the Programme Committee, a few of them were presented online because the speakers could not attend the conference. The speakers were mainly from the CEE communities but there were also invited speakers from WMF.

The community also discussed the Wikimedia Movement strategy with WMF executive director Katherine Mayer, WMF Board activities with the Board member Nataliia Tymkiv and the future of the CEE Meeting. During the last discussion, along with other topics, the next CEE host candidate communities were selected. As the number of candidates was more than one the selection process continued after the conference. The additional part included a meet-up on the education program and Wikidojo.

Submissions of Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016

Presentations of Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016

Photos from the conference

Other photos: Commons:Category:Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016

Follow-up

During the preparations of the conference, WM AM organization team contacted the WMF Learning & Evaluation team to help with the conference final survey. The survey was made with the help of Edward Galvez from WMF during and after the conference. The survey was sent to participants soon after the Meeting. Besides, Armenian conference participants were asked to write down their learnings and impressions from the conference. The conference was also followed by the main financial transactions and a part of participants' reimbursements.

Lessons learned

What worked well?

Collaboration with the venue

One of our greatest achievements while organizing the conference was the fact that the venue was provided for free due to the collaboration between Wikimedia Armenia and Scholae Mundi Foundation. Besides providing the space, the venue personnel highly supported us before and during the conference.

Volunteer and staff work

Having no experience in organizing international conferences the volunteers of the organizing team worked very effective. In addition, the Wikimedia Armenia staff did voluntary work of about 60 hours (per staff). The well-coordinated work of different organizing teams resulted in the conference success.

Programme Committee and program forming

The Programme Committee did a really great job when planning and forming the conference program. Though the committee members were from different countries and they had no possibility to meet in person, they managed to form an efficient program which fit community needs. The task management and planning inside the committee was appropriately organized.

Having a friendly space for everyone

The organizing team as well as all the conference participants followed the WMF friendly space policy. There were no incidents recorded of violating the policy. The organizing team did its best to support and assist the participants in their needs and worries.

Transportation to/from airport

Armenia has a terrible public transportation system from/to the airport. This was one of our big concerns regarding the conference. We solved that issue by pre-ordering taxis and arranging the transportation with the help of WM AM volunteers.
What didn't work?

Communication with the hotel

Though we tried to book hotels beforehand with low-price and best service the fact that we had no financial means to pay a deposit. That's why as soon as the grant was approved we could not find any other low-price hotel in the city center which could host all the participants. This resulted in the bad service of the Yerevan hotel as well as many other inconveniences regarding the accommodation in Yerevan.

Distance from the venue to the hotel

Though the distance between the Dilijan Resort hotel and UWC Dilijan was 15 min to walk, we did not take into account the fact that there would be participants having difficulties to walk that distance. We could fix the issue by ordering taxis and asking our volunteers with cars to help transporting participants.

Last minute changes in the program

Slow check-out service at the Yerevan hotel resulted in the late arrival to the venue which in its turn brought many inconveniences. The first section of the program (Speed dating) was excluded because of which the first day program and its sections order was changed.

Live streaming

WM AM was negotiating to have a free live streaming of the conference sessions and we had a preliminary agreement. However, one day before the conference the live stream responsible company refused our initial agreement which was the reason we had no live streaming at the conference.

Communication with some CEE communities

There were few communities to whom the communication team of the conference could not reach. The communication team contacted all the communities with almost every possible way via email, social media, talk pages, village pumps but despite our efforts a few of them were unresponsive.
What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

The grant proposal should be written earlier in order to get funds earlier. This would let to book a better and more convenient hotel with better service.
The transportation to the venue must be arranged for those who are having difficulties in walking moderately far distances.
It is desirable to make no changes in the program during the conference otherwise it will cause many inconveniences.
To make the program less intense for example by including the third parallel session.
When planning the timeline take into account that some community members might be unreachable which will take extra time.

Impressions from community members

Media links

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

Provide the original project goal here.

The goals of CEE Meeting 2016 (CEE 2016) are:

Promote, develop, strengthen and maintain collaboration between various Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups, project and other communities in the region,
Support the sharing of experiences, good/bad practices and valuable learnings among CEE wiki communities thus offering a space where wiki-communities can gain new skills, discuss and analyse each other's stories,
Connect Armenian Wikimedians to the CEE community members increasing the level of integration of Armenian Wikimedians in the international wiki-movement.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 short paragraphs.

The Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016, following the success of the previous CEE Meetings gave a platform to the whole CEE community to work together in real life discussions, talks, presentations, and social events. This, in its turn, led to the promotion, development, and maintenance of the collaboration between different Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups, project and other communities in the region. The collaboration is expressed by sharing of experience and good/bad practices, learning new valuable ideas, tools, projects and disseminating that knowledge in their communities in various ways.

The conference had a nice free and friendly atmosphere and also provided a space to the communities to plan and work on new projects concentrating on inter- and inner- communal projects. Inter-communal projects planning and communication strengthened the collaboration between different communities. The conference program was formed on the basis of the community needs and was aimed at the fulfillment of the lack that communities had in different aspects of projects, technical and management tools, as well as other Wikimedia-related skills.

One of the priorities of Wikimedia Armenia when organizing the CEE Meeting was the integration of Armenian wiki-community members to the global one. The engagement of Armenian community gave an opportunity to get involved in the global wiki-movement to learn about the projects and activities run by other affiliates which increased their participation in different international wiki projects. Moreover, offline communication with international community members gives a possibility to Wikimedia Armenia and its volunteers to strengthen their relationship with the CEE communities/affiliates and WMF.

Progress towards targets and goals

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
At least 58 participants from CEE countries	60 participants from CEE countries (29 Armenian participants excluded)
At least 28 countries or languages represented	31 countries/communities/affiliates/languages represented
At least 15 attendees participating actively as speakers or table hosts, sharing their experience	29 attendees participated actively as speakers, 14 attendees - as session facilitators
At least 85% of attendees find the conference useful in the post-conference survey.	Survey participants found the conference 89.16 % useful
At least 75% of attendees confirm having learned new information regarding project management, running chapter projects, or community building.	Survey participants confirm having learned new information regarding project management, running chapter projects, or community building to 91.9 %.
At least 75% of attendees confirm having new ideas and/or better vision for the projects they want to work on.	Survey participants confirm having new ideas and/or better vision for the projects they want to work on to 85,55 %.
At least 30 articles created/improved during the edit-a-thon	No edit-a-thon was organized because of the initial change in the grant, which resulted in program changes.

Global Metrics

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees. In addition to the measures of success for your specific program (in above section), please use the table below to let us know how your project contributed to the Global Metrics. We know that not all projects will have results for each type of metric, so feel free to put "0" where necessary.

Next to each required metric, list the actual outcome achieved through this project.
Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome. For example, if you were funded for an edit-a-thon which resulted in 0 new images, your explanation might be "This project focused solely on participation and articles written/improved, the goal was not to collect images."

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics.

Metric	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1. # of active editors involved	102	All participants of the Meeting are more or less active editors on one or more Wikimedia project
2. # of new editors	0
3. # of individuals involved	112	All participants and other supporters
4a. # of new images/media added to Wikimedia articles/pages	N/A
4b. # of new images/media uploaded to Wikimedia Commons (Optional)	1338	photos & presentations
5. # of articles added or improved on Wikimedia projects	new pages created: 146, edits: 1946	Though it was not an event connected directly to editing, the participants edited on Wikimedia projects
6. Absolute value of bytes added to or deleted from Wikimedia projects	936,807

Learning question: Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?; Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016 motivated both local and international CEE communities which are expressed in participating various contests and edit-a-thons organized by community members. Thus, on October-November Hungarian community organized a contest devoted to the 60 year anniversary of the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. 6 CEE countries participated in the contest. During the conference, Wikimedia Armenia and Wikimedia Austria representatives initially agreed on having a writing article contest on both Wikipedias about Armenian and Austrian history, culture, etc. in 2017. After the conference, both sides confirmed the organization of the contest. For Armenian community, the CEE Meeting was very motivational which led to the high participation of 100wikidays article writing challenge. 26 Armenian editors participate in the challenge. After the conference international community members covered a lot of Armenian related themes which were missing on their Wikipedias.

Impact

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities?

Option A: How did you increase participation in one or more Wikimedia projects?

Option B: How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

Option C: How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?

The initial goal of organizing CEE Meetings was the promotion, support, and development of cross-border collaborations between various Wikimedia chapters, thematic organizations, user groups, projects and other communities in the region. Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2016 was mostly aimed at these strategic priorities of WMF:

Increasing reach
Increasing participation
Encourage innovation

Increasing reach

Wikimedia CEE Meeting as a regional conference increased the reach of Wikimedia projects through the community participants. The participants who were from the Central and Eastern European communities returning back from the conference to their communities shared their learnings, ideas with other community members thus increasing the reach of Wikimedia movement and Wikimedia projects in the region. Evidence of this is participants' post-conference reports, blogposts, impressions about the meeting, their eagerness of sharing conference learnings, media via social media, as well as new project implementations in their own communities.

Increasing participation

Although the Central and Eastern European Wikimedians community has a long history of cooperation but it is still in the process of development and growth. This conference gave an opportunity to get together as many CEE communities as possible which increased the participation and involvement of community members in the general events going on inside the region. On the other hand, as we mentioned above, it was really important to increase the participation of Armenian Wikimedians community in the global movement. There were 35 participants from Armenia (including organizers and volunteers), most of them has never attended any wiki-related international conference or event. Our priority was their participation in the global movement through discussions, in person meetings, making new contacts etc. The survey shows that almost 75% of participants felt more connected to Armenian wiki community after this conference which states the integration of Armenian community.

Encourage innovation

The conference was a place for sharing best/bad practices, projects, ideas considering community needs. This very fact makes the conference a platform for innovations. The post-conference survey shows that the Meeting helped 76% of participants to join or start a project or initiative. The innovation was mainly expressed by new project initiatives, which were inter- and inner- community ones. Intercommunity projects were initiated by making new contacts with different participants, the inner community ones were mainly based on the experience of other Wikimedians, on the learnings and ideas that the very participants got during the conference.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".: Yes

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.

	Item description	Unit	Quantity	Total spent (AMD)	Total spent (USD)	Budgeted (AMD)	Budgeted (USD)	Comments
1.	Travel costs and insurance			10,245,086.00	21,514.68	14,180,762	29,780
1.1.	International travel	participant	40	9,131,786.00	19,176.75	12,704,762	26,680
1.2.	Domestic travel	participant	102	586,000.00	1,230.60	750,000	1,575	Travel costs to/from Yerevan/Dilijan
1.3.	Domestic travel	participant	N/A	327,300.00	687.33	320,000	672	Travel costs from Zvartnots International airport to Yerevan
1.4.	Insurance	participant	30	200,000.00	420.00	406,000	853	Insurance for international participants
2.	Accommodation			5,081,000.00	10,670.10	4,939,619	10,373
2.1.	Hotel in Yerevan	participant	N/A	1,820,000.00	3,822.00	1,972,000	4,141	Stay in Erebuni Hotel, 2 nights, breakfast included
2.2.	Hotel in Dilijan Resort (including supper)	participant	102	3,261,000.00	6,848.10	2,967,619	6,232	Stay in Dilijan Resort hotel, 2 nights, breakfast and supper included
3.	Catering			1,531,900.00	3,216.99	2,637,000	5,537.70
3.1.	Lunch	participant	102	500,000.00	1,050.00	450,000	945	Lunches for 3 days in UWC school
3.2.	Coffee breaks	participant	102	391,200.00	821.52	567,000	1190.7	Coffee breaks during the conference (2 times, 3 days)
3.3.	Supper	participant	102	0.00	0.00	900,000	1,890	Suppers for 2 days in Dilijan Resort Hotel
3.4.	Welcome dinner	participant	N/A	640,700.00	1,345.47	720,000	1,512
4.	Events			35,000.00	73.50	150,000	315
4.1.	Museum tickets	participant	30	35,000.00	73.50	150,000	315	Museum tickets during tours.
5.	Materials			777,200.00	1,632.12	791,905	1,663
5.1.	T-shirts	participant	120	636,000.00	1,335.60	600,000	1,260
5.2.	Banner	banner	2	60,000.00	126.00	90,000	189
5.3.	Nametag, papers and other stuff	participant	120	81,200.00	170.52	101,905	214
6.	Administrative and unforeseen expenses			550,385.00	1,165.81	705,715	1,481.56
6.1.	Bank expenses	estimate	N/A	23,600.00	49.56	23,810	50
6.2.	Unforeseen expenses	project	N/A	526,785.00	1,106.25	681,905	1,432
Total				18,220,571.00	38,263.20	23,405,001.00	49,150.26

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission): 54,233.26 USD (25,825,477 AMD)

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if PEG is your only funding source): 49,150.26 USD (23,405,001.00 AMD)

Total amount spent on this project: 50,335.2 USD (23,969,142 AMD)

Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project: 38,263.20 USD (18,220,571.00 AMD)

Are there additional sources that funded any part of this project? List them here.: 19 participants' costs were covered by their own/chapters/thematic organizations which is estimated 12,072 USD (5,748,571 AMD).

Remaining funds

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of US$10,887.06 were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:APG/Proposals/2015-2016 round 2/Wikimedia Armenia/Proposal form.

Are there any grant funds remaining?: Answer YES or NO.; Yes

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

10,887.06 USD (5,184,430 AMD)

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.

Remaining funds must be reallocated