Grants talk:Conference/Algeria Wikimedians User Group/WikiArabia 2021 Remote Conference

WMF comments

Dear Bachounda and the Wikimedia Algeria team,

Thank you for submitting this proposal! Especially in these times, we are very happy and grateful to see communities taking on the challenge of organizing a remote event. We are an online community, but in-person events still have great impact on our work and collaboration, and it's not obvious to shift to that form of convening. I reviewed your proposal, and have some follow up questions and comments to share.

Event overview

• What is the proposed event date? Will it be before the end of 2021? We do need to have a date in order to approve this grant. Please add it to the proposal.
• I am still not clear what were the top goals you identified in the survey. Improve skills, and what else?

Also I would like to know more about your overall objectives. What will indicate for you that you achieved your goals? Try to be specific and envision the change and impact you would want to see.

• It's great to see all the new User Groups and efforts! This is definitely an important momentum to leverage. I suggest you will spend time thinking about how to build the program around those efforts to engage new contributors and to create the framework for mutual collaborations.

Budget

• Could you please clarify the travel; accommodation and conference office costs? Given the event is fully remote. If it's for the organizing/ technical team - how many people will be there?
• Translation - to which languages you want to translate?
• Can you please share more details as for the logo and graphic design? What else will it include?

Thank you again for this thought-out proposal and for allowing this important and much needed platform for engagement. Overall, the proposal makes sense to me and we will be happy to support this event.

Please let me know if you have any questions. BestCAlmog (WMF) (talk) 09:20, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

We would like to thank you for the time and energy you dedicated to processing our conference proposal; All of us as the WikiDZ team took up the challenge to offer the Arabic speaking community was not only this community, we want to impact other communities and be impacted by other speakers by offering interpretation during the conference. We deeply regret that these circumstances are pushing us to offer an remote conference,

Event overview

1 - Concerning the date:

If we refer to the answers of the survey that we distributed to the community of these two months we have thought well and the proposals of the survey, since it is going to be a weekend Friday - Saturday - Sunday, I think that the dates will be flexible for all, we just want to give us a step back of at least 6 months, to prepare well

- There is the choice of the first Friday of November which is retained 5 November 2021

2 - Our main objectives

During the survey, the participants were asked to evaluate these 10 objectives from bottom to top. All the objectives had a high value with a great preference for the development of skills in the first place.

• 1.General discussion on projects and movement (55/124)
• 2.Development of editorial skills on the wiki(60/124)
• 3.Developing technical skills for wiki (74/124)
• 4.Learn about the Arab and international community(68/124)
• 5.Community expansion(70/124)
• 6.Internal knowledge development (57/124)
• 7.Future aspirations of the movement(52/124)
• 8.Social communication with the community(72/124)
• 9.Virtual tourism(64/124)

3 - How will we know if we have achieved our goals?

There will be three measures for the community spread out during the time

1- during the conference

2- right after the conference

3- a document will be distributed accordingly that allows to measure the impact several months after the conference, this measurement becomes complex if :no structure takes care of it because the conference once finished the organization team will have to delegate this task to another permanent team, the :WikiDZ will do it willingly.

Budget

1 - Precision on the organization team that will meet for the event.

The organization team will be composed of at least 5 people present in one place.

The conference will be managed from the city of Mostaganem in Algeria because it represents the heart of WikiDZ they will not need accommodation - we will guarantee accommodation for the rest of the team who lives away from this city, Algeria is a large country, our members are situated sometimes 1000 km away and will need to cover the cost of transportation.

2- Which languages we want to translate (we will need interpreters)

Our availability will allow us to write a translation from and to Arabic, English and French.

3- What will be the graphic design for us (logo etc)

We intend to have a graphic identity for the conference that we will hire specialists in the domain, since it will be an online conference and to go further to improve the design and to offer an attractive place that makes participants want to participate and stay there - this design will allow us to use the work to offer gifts dedicated to the conference for the participants by using the work made with this part of the budget

Thank you --Bachounda (talk) 08:15, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

Additional Need

Hi @DSaroyan (WMF):, I would like to report that all the organization team is very motivated for the launch of the first remote conference, a huge challenge for a team that didn't exist 8 months ago, never used to such kind of organization and work, but thanks to your support, the foundation's support, many local organizations that believed in the project offered us their logistic, technological and moral support.

The members of our team have taken the deal to shake up all their habits to work online, (pandemic obliges) something that has become normal elsewhere ... all new to us.

We managed to minimize expenses to the maximum, however some last minute constraints forced us to come back to you to see if it is possible to have your agreement to cover an urgent purchase of conference equipment, namely

• Camera tripod
• Webcam
• Omnidirectional microphone
• TRANSLATOR HEADSET
• Simple headset for animator
• LIGHTING PERSON
• BACKGROUND LIGHTING
• GREEN BACKGROUND
• CABLES, ELECTRICITY AND CONNECTION

In addition to the extraordinary translation support of Anass and Réda from Morocco

This is all I have for the moment plus additional expenses regarding the acquisition of a dedicated server and the big blue button solution.

According to the calculations of the logistic team, I don't think it will exceed 20% of the total budget allocated by the foundation for this conference.

It is very important for us to have your prior agreement, our wish and to put all the means in place to succeed this meeting with a great community as wikiarabia.

Thank you --Bachounda (talk) 07:21, 16 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi Bachounda, thanks for your response. I think you have missed some of my initial questions; please response to them too. We also have one additional question:

• How do you plan to maintain and share them after the conference?
• How did you select the translators? Given that Anass and Réda are members of the conference organizing team and active community members, how did you make sure that there was not conflict of interest when selecting them as translators? Also, could you confirm that you have discussed with them and in the team possible capacity issues. Because as I mentioned, Anass and Réda are also a part of the conference organizing team and they can be overloaded if they also do translation work during the conference.
• Could you provide a detailed budget breakdown with projected amounts for these new expenses and the exact amount requested from Wikimedia Foundation?

Looking forward to hearing from you. Best regards, DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 13:23, 20 October 2021 (UTC)

Hi DSaroyan (WMF),

Sorry for this late response as you know, the whole team needed a little break after such a challenging and stressful event and actually gave the wikiarabia budget team time to do their accounting on expenses, to determine what exactly we spent over budget,

Because we were forced to raise additional funds to meet the emergency needs of the conference, as I explained in our last post.

As you know, professional interpreters require a fee that we could not cover in the budget allocated to us, at the request of the grant, we opted for local interpreters from the university milieu, students with a symbolic fee while offering them accommodation, food and small gifts during the conference.

But this was not enough, we were very concerned about the quality of the translation of some sessions, especially during the session of the new WMF CEO. So we contacted the only English-Arabic interpreters we had from the community known for their excellent work during the strategic meetings. In addition, when we saw that Anass had also been asked to facilitate the Mariana session, it was natural to ask him to help us translate other sessions. It was a last-minute decision and we didn't have time to call in the community, but in the end, it was a good choice.

We entrusted all the pre-recorded English sessions to local interpreters and the complex and technical and important live streamed sessions to Anass Sedratti and Reda Benkhadra.

I would like to specify that the interpreters, Anass and Benkhadra are not members of the wikiarabia 2021 team and there is no conflict of interest. As you can see the team list on this page: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiArabia/2021/Team

And from the first preliminary feedback after the conference, the participants were generally satisfied with the quality of the translation.

As for the material acquired during the conference; It will, of course, be useful for our community, and we will create a special page : https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Algeria/Management/WikiArabia_Material about the material acquired during wikiarabia.

And any member of the user group can borrow, by a simple request if necessary, because we don't have a fixed headquarters, all the material will be hosted by our members.

We estimate to use this material several times as necessary, until the end of the life of the material, it can be declared withdrawn and removed from the page after the expertise of a specialist.

The exploitation of material will be dedicated to wiki activities, during online conferences or different meetings we organize.

We introduced animators between and during the sessions as well as to animate the opening and closing ceremonies which gave another lively dimension to the conference and was a necessary choice to ensure the retention of participants during the conference and to moderate.

We had to acquire a domain name wikiarabia2021.com as well as the installation of an Odoo platform

Below detailed request for supplementary budget of additional expenses we have made:

Designation	Qtt other	Unit Price	Amount Total DZD
Tripod Camera 1M	3,00	3 500,00	10 500,00
Logitech C920 Webcam	3,00	33 900,00	101 700,00
Omnidirectional microphone	5,00	3 500,00	17 500,00
TRANSLATOR HEADSET	2,00	4 500,00	9 000,00
Simple headset animator	3,00	700,00	2 100,00
PERSON LIGHTING	6,00	1 800,00	10 800,00
BACKGROUND LIGHTING	6,00	2 000,00	12 000,00
GREEN BACKGROUND	3,00	2 100,00	6 300,00
CABLES, ELECTRICITY AND CONNECTION	1,00	2 000,00	2 000,00
Interpreter Anass Sedrati	4h x 30usd/h	4,00	15 947,52
Interpreter Reda benkhadra	2h x 30usd/h	2,00	7 973,76
Remuneration animator Manel	3 days		12 000,00
Remuneration animator Djawad	3 days		15 000,00
Remuneration animator Sellai	3 days		18 000,00
Odoo platform + Maintenance & Development			117 465,00
		Grand Total DZD	358 286,28

The sum in USD with the current exchange rate ONDA of October 29, 2021 at DZD to USD at 0.00727 we get the sum of 2604.74 in USD

We are very honored by the trust you have put in us and in all the Algerian team, and we hope that through this Wikiarabia event we have reached our goals. Without your support this would not have been possible.

And it's not over yet, we will resume from next Saturday our activities to deliver a final report on the conference as planned.

All the bests, --Bachounda (talk) 04:36, 29 October 2021 (UTC)

Amendment approved

Hello Reda Kerbouche, we have reviewed and formally approved this extension request for 2,239.66 EUR (2,604.74 USD, 358 ,286,28 DZD). Thanks again for your work on the WikiArabia 2021 Remote Conference! --DSaroyan (WMF) (talk) 06:56, 3 November 2021 (UTC)

hello DSaroyan (WMF) thank you very much. --Reda Kerbouche (talk) 09:19, 3 November 2021 (UTC)