Grants talk:Conference/WCUG Wikisource/Wikisource Conference 2020

WMF Feedback

Dear @Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL): and the team, Thank you for submitting this informative proposal! I really enjoyed reading it. We are happy to explore the opportunity to support you in hosting the Wikisource Conference 2020.

Your proposal has many strengths to highlight. I especially appreciate the cross affiliate efforts, and your vision in reviving knowledge markets. And also the acknowledgment of the community’s growth and global impact, and adjusting the focus accordingly.

I reviewed your proposal, and have some follow up questions and comments to offer as a part of staff review:

• The efforts for third party partnerships are really appreciated and align with the movement goals to collaborate and engage with non-wiki visionary allies. Will you also invite non-wiki participants?

Community input

• The strategic section is very ambitious, but I’m afraid it’s also a bit too much. Try to review again and prioritize according to your capacity and interest.
  • This section was purely based on Community Survey. It was indeed very wide and we are not able to meet all community expectations. Some points were overlapping, they are merged now. We have also dropped few points that are of lower community interest. Ankry (talk) 20:13, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
• The ‘capacity’ section is very Tech oriented, which is fine, but will you have any threshold for tech skills when considering applicants? Will you welcome newcomers?
  • Newcomers are not the target of this conference (see the Participation section). We expect participants to have some experience in Wikisource and who are open to learn new things or advanced Wikisource users who can teach others. Most Wikisource communities are small and they lack technically skilled users. So many participants may be their community "representatives" who can learn new things and later share what they have learned among their communities. Ankry (talk) 20:29, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
• Community building - this part is also very wide and might need some re-thinking and prioritizing, but it seems to have a very clear perspective for building community skills, and not only individual ones.
  • As this is priority № 1 in our Community Engagement Survey, we cannot remove topics from this section. Although, we managed to merge few of them, making this section more compact. We see that there are a lot of needs in this area and the survey does not indicate how they can be prioritized. After a conversation within the Organizing Committee we decided that we would try to provide as much as possible in the conference program (with the support of the Program Committee) focusing on topics that strengthen the community. If this is not possible, we plan to start a discussion on how to meet these community needs during the conference. Ankry (talk) 21:30, 25 February 2020 (UTC)
• As the goals of exchanging social and technical experience are clear, I am not clear on how you will measure those? What are your objectives? What will success look like? Try to use Metrics or identify action items that will indicate you achieved those goals.
  • That is a great question - thank you! We want to see changes in three areas:
    1. one of the things we want to achieve is to reduce the gap between the growing and the well established Wikisource communities. The change we want to see are good practices, solutions and tools adapted from one Wikisource project to another or/and practices, solutions and tools developed or honed during the event and adapted in different communities. We plan to measure that by surveys: one directly after the conference asking about plans and inspirations and another one 3 months later to track what really happened. And we will be of course tracking the usage of ideas solutions that will be created during the conference.
    2. projects or cooperations held together by different communities would be a clear sign of networking and strong connections built during the conference - we will track those
    3. we want to connect community members and we will use surveys to get the information whether new contacts, networking, knowledge exchange happened between the participants. As above we will check this directly after the conference and then after some time. Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL) (talk) 20:06, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

Plan

• I understand there will be 60-70 participants, but 35 scholarships. What about the rest? Are those locals? I also see 25 shared rooms on the budget so maybe I’m missing something. Can you please clarify?
  • 35 scholarships will be covered by the grant but we are reaching out to other chapters to fund additional ones. Wikimedia France and Wikimedia Deutschland have already offered scholarships for their community members. WMDE declared three, WMFR will decide based on community needs. And we expect other chapters to join. We are also counting in WMF representatives and local Polish community. Some rooms will be occupied by local organizing team and volunteers. Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL) (talk) 22:40, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
• Online training to speakers - this is something that we are very interested in. Do you have any more information or a link to share? This might have a major impact on the relevance and quality of presentations. With this said, there is a great value for active learning sessions like workshops and training, which I guess you intend to have. The program should be designed in a way that will allow a balance between oral presentations for sharing knowledge and best (and worst) practices, but also to have sufficient opportunities for active training to gain new skills.
  • We agree strongly on having sufficient active trainings in the program and we will make sure that this is the case. As for trainings for speakers: in WMPL we have observed (also from our postconference surveys) that not all the speakers have the know-how and skills to present their knowledge (which is natural in the volunteer communtiy) and because of that many presentations don't make the impact they could have make. We also found out that our volunteer facilitators and moderators feel that they don't always have the skills to help the audience and the speakers make the best out of their shared time and fuel the learning and the shakred work. So starting in 2020 WMPL is offering online trainings to both groups: our moderators and our speakers. We started at our Winter Conference in the end of January so it is still a new thing. The trainer is Łukasz Garczewski, our COO, who is also a professional communicator and trainer. We don't have any videos or pages but if you are interested I can ask Łukasz to provide some details. We are very excited about those trainings and we hope to give community members tools to help them share knowledge efficiently. Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL) (talk) 22:40, 24 February 2020 (UTC)

Budget

• As for the health insurance, International SOS, which is our Medical and Security risk services company, covers all volunteers for medical coverage outside their home country. If needed, the participants can ask for a Confirmation of Coverage letter (mostly needed for visa purposes). This process is something we do along the way, but I can confirm that all event participants that the WMF are financially supporting, are covered, provided they are outside of their home country.
  • Thank you for the info, we've adapted the budget accordingly, taking away 480 Euro we planned for insurance. Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL) (talk) 19:39, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

When it comes to swag, we ask to be environmentally mindful and to try and limit swag to low cost items like stickers.

• Agreed, especially that Wikimedia Polska has lately passed a Sustainability Resolution in which we as an organization commit do take enviromental impact into account in all our projects and actions. We are especially mindful when organizing events, chosing suppliers, arranging travels and deciding on conference swag. And this conference will not be an exception - we will use the resources with care. Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL) (talk) 19:39, 25 February 2020 (UTC)

When you're able, please respond to the questions above and revise the proposal as needed. These revisions will be due by 25 February 2020, after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal.

Thank you again for your significant role in supporting the Wikisource project and community. And for this very thorough proposal! Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 14:05, 18 February 2020 (UTC)