Grants talk:Conference/BWUG/Wikipedia+Education Conference 2019 Donostia/Report

WMF Comments

Hi Edagit, Theklan and all the Basque User Group team. Thank you so much for taking the time to write this report. I'm especially appreciative for the thorough and informative financial report. This is a great model for a professional financial documentation and was extremely helpful in understanding the gaps and funds allocations. We highly appreciate your effort in facilitating this very important platform for our community to engage in the movement Education plans. I reviewed your report and have some comments and questions I'll be happy to clarify.

• Could you please share some information and statistics regarding the Gender and Ethnic diversity at the conference?

Of the 120 attendees, 57 were women (47%), so we consider that the gender balance was adequate. In addition, we had attendees from 50 countries from all continents, except Oceania, and with a great variety of ethnicities.

• Also - how many newcomers and/or local participants attended? How many 'education sector' representatives were there?

About 30 local people participated in the congress, most of them from our user group. There were some newcomers but we believe they were less than 5% of the attendees. As far as educators are concerned, we believe that about 20% of the attendees were from this sector.

• I'm glad you identified the the Basque Government partnership and potential future funding as one of your goals. Strengthening local ties and developing financial Independence are some of our main goals as well and I'm really glad you took advantage of that platform to achieve those. As this was a core goal, could you please share some information regarding the outreach component? Like which organizations took part at the event and what was their contribution (if they were involved other than attending)? Do you have any new partnerships planed as a result?

Representatives of the Donostia City Council and the Basque Government took part in the congress and contributed with their respective speeches in the opening session (Friday). They did not participate in any more days of the conference (it was on weekends) but they have been able to know about it thanks to the work of communication and promotion. We consider that the congress has been positive to give a good image of the work that our User Group is doing and to make them more aware of the Wikipedia and Education Movement. Options to continue with the educational project for the next 4 years are being evaluated.

Program

• What kind of inputs and conclusions did you get regarding new contributors?

As an education-oriented Conference, most of our work is on new contributors. How to make students work with use, engage with our projects and understand how Wikimedia works is something that has been explained on a wide range of conference topics, so we can't give a single conclusion.

• Translation - this is an important issue to address and we are indeed looking for ways to be more inclusive for Non-English speakers. I'm interested to know more about the experience you had using simultaneous translation. Do you know how many Non-English speakers were there? How did they managed at the rest of the sessions? Please share any other feedback or recommendations you might have on this.

Non-English speaking attendees were not that many, some more at the opening session but less than 5% at the conference. We considered simultaneous translation as something for both listeners and speakers, since being able to express oneself in one's mother tongue was very important to us.

We wanted Euskera to have its place at the conference, for speakers to be able to use it (for some people expressing themselves in another language is a disadvantage) and for listeners to be able to listen our language (and understand it through a translator), learn more about our culture and feel they were at an international conferente but at the Basque Country.

The management of this service has been costly and labor-intensive, as it required many service contracts, having presentations beforehand to facilitate the work, handling the headphones, volunteers to explain and distribute it, collecting the material, etc. but we think it is worth it.

• Is the Telegram Group still active?

Yes, and it is still used to resolve doubts and provide information.

• It was very good to have had parallel sessions and a great venue to enable that. The venue also allowed a lot of opportunities to engage in 'off program' meetings and gatherings.
• Capacity building - what skills did participants learned? What indication do you have for the impact those sessions or workshops had? Were there any post-event activities? In general, having all kinds of learning and sharing knowledge methods (like presentation along with active workshops, working groups and panels) is a good way to design a program.

We will send the six-months survey soon, so we still don't know about the long-term impact of the workshops. We identified that some of the workshops were full (i.e. about Dashboard) and that there has been some extra activity and questions on the Telegram group regarding this. We will know more details about this soon.

• The poster session was a very nice addition. In the future it might be worthwhile to add more engagement opportunities around it.

Learning Thank you for sharing your thoughts and learning. Those will be very helpful for us moving along, and for future conference organizers. I will add that the logistics was indeed very good and well organized. The pre-conference communication with participants is another thing to highlight as the team was very responsive and informative.

Financial documentation Great financial report! So thorough, clear and transparent. Thank you for that! Just a few comments:

• I see you managed to book the venue free of charge (and maybe some other things as well), so it might be nice to calculate the amount of In-kind donations you received. This is not a requirement, but a good way to reflect the user group's success in creating external partnerships that impact your sustainability and influence. Along with the volunteers team's effort (volunteering hours), I think that's something you would want to highlight in the future.

We estimate that the In-kind donations would be around 10.000€, as the venues for all the conference (University, Town Hall and Tabakalera) were left to us free of charge by the University of the Basque Country, the Donostia City Council and Kutxa Kultur. We also estimate that around 12-15 volunteers covered around 50 volunteering hours.

• Could you please clarify the Wiki Loves Photography exhibition costs? Was that a part of the conference (I might have missed it), or was it presented after the event?

The expenses refer to the exhibition material (526,53€ from Muñagorri's invoice, the invoice is together with other expenses) and the snacks (114,18€ from Gureak's invoice). Total of 640,71€. The venue was left to us free of charge. This exhibition was part of the conference and was announced in the program (Friday at 11:00).

• Promotion (part of the communication cost) - who was targeted? Was it to attract locals/ newcomers, or was it in order to get media coverage?

It was used for both but mostly to get media coverage during and after the event. Video coverage and event decoration was also part of the communication cost.

The grant report really convey the 'feeling' of the event and I appreciate the creative inputs and local perspective. But I'm missing some information and indication related to the goals and objectives you defined. What metrics and indications do you have to reflect the impact the event had on the community? How can you evaluate the program as effective in achieving those goals. Have you had any follow up actions done?

We identified some institutions as partners, specially the Basque Government, but also two Universities (UPV/EHU and Mondragon) and a network of Basque-languages schools (Ikastolen Elkartea). The Conference worked well in order to build better relations with them. Basque Government was delighted and currently we are working on an extension of four more years of their grant. They have expressed their positive feelings about the Conference and our work.

Both universities are now more engaged in our program, and even UPV/EHU has started to fill official certificates for professors working with us after the Conference. Projects like Txikipedia are now better understood and we have good perspectives on them.

Ikastolen Elkartea presented their work here, and they are willing to work on another students-oriented document. At the same time, Berritzegunea, the official pedagogy innovation center in the Basque Country is trying to work tighter with us after the Conference.

The official metrics we are using are the last day conference survey, using Menti. We hope to have deeper results with the six-months survey.

Any information you have to add will be helpful.

Thank you again for the work you have done. We are very excited for this first Wiki-Education conference, and looking forward to supporting this movement effort in the future. Hope to hear back from you soon so we can learn more from your experience in hosting the Wikipedia+Education Conference 2019 and so we can finalize the grant. All the best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 12:55, 21 August 2019 (UTC)

Report accepted

Hi team,

Congratulations on completing your grant!

Your complete grant report has been reviewed and accepted, and documentation of expenses has been received. Thank you for your engagement with the reporting review process, and with your work throughout the grants process. We appreciate the outcomes from your project, and what you learned with WMF and the community.

We also warmly welcome any updates you would like to provide us about your completed project. We thank you for your work for the movement, and offer you our best wishes for your future work.

Thank you! All the best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 23:28, 8 January 2020 (UTC)