Grants:Project/Rapid/WikiGoesACCT/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2018-19 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/WikiGoesACCT.
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 rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

This report has been edited: Updated numbers according to receipts (section Finances)

Goals

In my opinion, the project as a whole was a success. I met my goal to give an introduction to the behind the scenes of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects, but was also able to achieve further both measurable and non-measurable results, including ones I had not thought of before. That what I kicked off during the conference time now continues in a collaboration between the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda and in college intern workshops and meetings makes me especially happy.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
40+ participants	49 participants	Almost all the people that signed the pre-conference survey came. The number of participants was not completely constant during the three conference days, that is why it is hard to have an exact number of participants. We decided to count people that are able to edit the conference signup list as participants.
10+ articles created or improved	7	We focused on the creation of articles that have something to do with Kabale, the town where the college is located. Due to a lack of information participants were not able to write about every topic from a collection of potential articles. So far, African College of Commerce and Technology can be found in main namespace of the English language Wikipedia, whereas six more articles are in mostly good state, but still in the Draft namespace.
50+ photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons	55 (relevant in encyclopaedic terms, not pictures of the event)
10-20 photos used in Wikipedia articles	8	Still ongoing, as articles are getting improved and pictures are added.

Edit (2020/03/13): Conference pictures can be found under Commons: WikiGoesACCT (280 uploaded pictures to Wikimedia Commons; 55 excluding conference pictures by organizators). Created articles that were kept in the English language Wikipedia article namespace include African College of Commerce and Technology and Kyamakanda Secondary School. System administrator and Kabale have been improved. For other facts and numbers see the Outreach Dashboard.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well:
- Day 1 of the conference was only introductory content about the conference, Wikimedia projects focusing on Wikipedia and Commons, WMF, chapters and just general information around the movement. That means on day one there were not many hard results, but a lot of soft, non-measurable results were achieved. Having done one-day events, I felt like participants were able to go into further advanced How to edit Wikipedia and similar lectures with much better background knowledge about for example how an article on Wikipedia fits into the idea of the movement (free knowledge, ...). During the following activities, participants surprised me, being able to quickly take up information and relate it to what they had learned about the movement in general. I liked that a lot and it shows me my approach of going slow with new editors is the way to go instead of constantly and forcefully pushing for more edits, more articles and more hard results in form of numbers. This is speculative, but maybe this also resulted in a few editors actually staying active on a regular basis.
- As an unexperienced organizer, working with Wikimedians from different countries was an amazing experience when conducting WikiGoesACCT. Being a result of Wikimania 2018, my collaboration with Isaac and the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda was what led to a successful event. This was due to the diversity of experiences, knowledge and backgrounds. I am happy to say that there was mutual learning across all presenters. To name some examples, Erina introduced the Programs & Events Dashboard to me and I introduced a few Commons utilities like Cat-a-lot and VicuñaUploader to the others. Additionally, I did not think of activities to re-focus participants (clapping games, short breaks in between, ...), which Erina fortunately established throughout the conference.
- Break tea and lunch was really, really good. It may seem odd, but I definitely think it is what kept a lot of people going throughout the long days.
- Having two different locations. General introductions were held in the main hall, separated from the hands-on workshops in the computer labs, which prevented people from playing around with their PCs or talking when important general stuff was explained.
- Creating a direct connection to the local community of Wikimedians by inviting core people from the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda. At the end of the conference, the people from the Uganda UG selected six conference participants to continue the collaboration between the college and the User Group and invited them to a training in Mbarara. I'm not personally involved in this, but seeing this as a result from the activities we started at the college, I am very happy this happened. These and other participants also continue to do Wikimedia project related activities at the college; I recently heard about another workshop they organized themselves to teach more people.
- The fight for the present in form of a Wikipedia T-Shirt at the closing ceremony motivated participants (unfortunately we only had one).
What did not work so well:
- Finding articles that can be created / improved. We asked participants to name persons / things to write about that are somehow connected to Kabale. This basically worked, but as we did not know about the things they are writing about (apart from the college article), it was hard for us presenters to evaluate the sources the articles were based on, potential copyvios, the quality of the articles and so on.
- We had close to no merch (pens, tags, stickers, T-Shirts, ...), this disappointed some people as they wanted to be able to identify themselves as Wikimedians / Wikipedians after the conference.
What would you do differently next time:
- Switch day two (uploading pictures to Commons) and three (creation of articles), because pictures can be added easily afterwards, whereas creating an article with unexperienced editors takes time (more than I had thought).
- I would prepare topics to write about with enough sources I trust and maybe even a very short draft (can be an example or as a starting point) as backup if things go wrong during article creation.
- Have more preparation time. Although I do not feel like the quality of the conference was affected by our quite short preparation time, our (at least my) stress level was. Also, things always take more time than you think.
- Apply for merch beforehand to offer that to conference participants.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

Due to the different currencies (USD / UGX / RWF) with varying exchange rates, varying prices on street markets (esp. for food) and elsewhere, working with money was very hard for me. I gathered receipts where ever possible and am now able to present the following calculations. Expenses varying from the approved amount are marked by a reference explaining why there was more / less money spent.

Spent on?	Amount (Local currency)	Amount (USD)	Amount (EUR)
Accomodation	UGX 310,000^[1]	96.60	83.57
Accomodation	RWF 10,000^[2]	96.60	83.57
Drinks and food (outside conference)	UGX 148,500^[3]	40.79	35.29
Drinks and food (during conference)	UGX 2,338,101	642.30	555.66
Transport	UGX 236,000^[4]	82.58	71.44
Transport	RWF 15,500^[5]	82.58	71.44
Visa	USD 100.00	100.00	86.51
Flights	USD 299.58^[6]	299.58	259.17
Data	UGX 75,000^[7]	20.60	17.82
Bank fees	UGX 11000^[8]	8.26	7.15
Bank fees	EUR 4.54	8.26	7.15
Total		1290.71	1116.61

↑ Three instead of two people from the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda were present. Because the guest house was short of the least expensive rooms, room prices varied from UGX 30,000 to UGX 50,000. For accommodating four people for three days, this is an average of UGX 38,750 per person per day.
↑ Isaac (User:Icem4k) had to stay overnight in Kigali as his flight arrived very late.
↑ I had not accounted for this when listing my expenses. Presenters also had dinner and breakfast (of course).
↑ I had not accounted for anything else than bus rides; there is also transport from the guest house to the college and vice versa as well as to the bus stations, etc.
↑ Taxi ride to / from airport, did not account for this.
↑ Price went down by USD 2.42.
↑ I figured we would not need that much data, so I bought a less expensive bundle. At the end, this was the exactly right amount (20 GB) with about 500 MB left.
↑ Also something I had not accounted for. There were some fees when buying the flights and some when withdrawing money in UGX.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Funds spent: EUR 1116.61
Funds received (as of September 5^th): EUR 1,020.00

Taking the approved additional funds for unforeseen expenses into consideration, the money situation is as follows:

Funds approved: USD 1388.28 (EUR 1201.02)
Funds spent: EUR 1116.61
Funds left over: EUR 84.41

As the additional funds for unforeseen expenses have not been transferred to my bank account yet, I am remaining with EUR 96.61 to be transferred onto my bank account.

Edit (2020/03/13): I have received the remaining amount and there are no remaining funds.

Exchange rates

I used the exchange rates from my bank account at the moment of buying the foreign currency. They are as follows:

EUR 1 ≙ USD 1.155921
EUR 1 ≙ UGX 4207.8
EUR 1 ≙ RWF 1009.85

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

I am so happy to see that some conference participants are continuing to edit, create and improve articles! A few of them also got involved in the activities of the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda in form of a training in Mbarara. My contribution to the Wikimedia projects results from an introduction day similar to WikiGoesACCT, so from a personal standpoint I am happy to see what has been done to me can be done to others.
We invited press to the event, they took pictures and I talked to the journalists about what we are doing, but none of them published something yet. I am still trying to contact them.
To have a look at our Outcomes page with pictures and more facts about the conference.

[1] Three instead of two people from the Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda were present. Because the guest house was short of the least expensive rooms, room prices varied from UGX 30,000 to UGX 50,000. For accommodating four people for three days, this is an average of UGX 38,750 per person per day.

[2] Isaac (User:Icem4k) had to stay overnight in Kigali as his flight arrived very late.

[3] I had not accounted for this when listing my expenses. Presenters also had dinner and breakfast (of course).

[4] I had not accounted for anything else than bus rides; there is also transport from the guest house to the college and vice versa as well as to the bus stations, etc.

[5] Taxi ride to / from airport, did not account for this.

[6] Price went down by USD 2.42.

[7] I figured we would not need that much data, so I bought a less expensive bundle. At the end, this was the exactly right amount (20 GB) with about 500 MB left.

[8] Also something I had not accounted for. There were some fees when buying the flights and some when withdrawing money in UGX.

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