Grants:PEG/WM CZ/Mediagrant/Report/2012/04

This is the 4th report on Mediagrant, which aims to summarize our progress during the first three months of 2012. Members of the current Mediagrant 'eye' are Chmee2, Packa and Vojtech.dostal.

Overview of MG media collection topics

Current long-term topics (as of 30 March 2012)

Name	Description	Journeys ("tickets")	Objects	Photographs	Expenditures CZK	Paid out CZK
Foto českých obcí	Documentation of Czech Municipalities including the smallest ones	38	357	3057	8 418 ($450)	5 956
Lidová architektura	Vernacular architecture	1	1	31	728 ($40)	0
Lidové kroje a zvyky	Czech Vernacular Clothes and Customs	2	2	301	2 100 ($120)	2 000
Obrazová dokumentace chráněných území a památných stromů v ČR	Documentation of protected Natural Areas and Memorable Trees in the Czech Republic	29	125	1860	4 336 ($150)	2 713
Odborná fotografie	Scientific Photography	1	1	62	120 ($10)	120
Události	Documentation of important events in the Czech Republic	2	2	93	132 ($10)	97
Vodstvo	Water bodies of the Czech Republic	0	0	0	0	0
Židovské památky	Documentation of Jewish monuments in the Czech Republic	6	61	613	1 885 ($70)	1 150
Summary		79	549	5 963	17 719 ($940)	12 036

There were no one-time requests during last 5 weeks (22 February 2012 – 30 March 2012)

Remarks

• The difference between “Expenditures” and “Paid out” is caused by a fact that people wrote their expenditures into tracker, but some of these expenditures have not been supported by documents and approved yet. The second reason is that a few expenditures have not been approved in full extent.
• The amounts in USD was rounded.

Summary

Total amount of all Mediagrant expenditures: 83 934,35 CZK (approx. 4420 USD)

• one-time requests: 66 216,25 CZK (3490 USD)
• long-term topics: 17 718,10 CZK (930 USD)

There has not been much paid out money in the recent months. As Che (who is in charge of it) explained, this is caused by several reasons, mainly because some receipts have not been collected yet and also because there are some larger sums of money for some of the participants that are to be sent to people as a whole when the receipts are collected.

Outreach

Currently, a reach to a wider community seems as a highly demanding target; new participants are extremely difficult to attract. Mediagrant activities are time consuming and not enjoyable for all. Indeed, the "Protected Areas" topic is a success, thanks to a Facebook page that gained popularity and gathered a considerable community of people willing to contribute with their pictures from the Czech landscape. This is probably thanks to an attractive "in" topic and daily PR work in the social network. A second success seems to be a prepared Photoworkshop (5th in a row) that has already attracted many new applicants who could create a new generation of Mediagrant participants. A similar one-day event prepared by Protected Areas WikiProject hopes to attract people already active on our Facebook pages and involve them more to the Wiki movement (report available).

Clerical work in MG

As time goes by, it is becoming clearer and clearer that the least enjoyable thing about being a member of Mediagrant 'eye' is all the clerical 'accountancy' work. As the foundation expressed a wish to obtain all the receipts, we are currently reviewing a possibility to hire a person (a so-called barrel) who would do this kind of work instead of us, for a reasonable sum of money.

Barrel would take care or this tedious work for both Czech grants, Mediagrant and its sister Presentation&Outreach. He/she would collect all the receipts (and urge people to hand them over), check them and document them in the Tracker and check that all tickets are properly approved by the garants. A very important part of his duty would be to scan all the receipts - which is, as we were recently told, a new policy of Wikimedia Foundation.