Grants talk:Conference/WMID/ESEAP Conference 2018

Conference Grant Committee Comments

Hello @06Ivonne:; This is Mervat Salman from the Conference Grant Committee. I have the following questions for you please:

1. Why did you choose Bali? is it cheaper than Jakarta? Also, is it's airport international or will guests have to be transported from another airport.
2. Since this is the first conference to be held for ESEAP, wouldn't it be better to start smaller? I mean less participants than 50. May be 30 should do?
3. The criteria based on which participants will be selected is not really clear to me. You are involving many countries, so will the local communities help in nominating participants from each country?
4. Since the involved communities are of different cultures and languages, will there be any barriers that you have to take care of?

Thank you, --Mervat Salman (talk) 20:46, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Hello @Mervat Salman:,

Thank for your question. I'm Beeyan, one of the committees for this conference.

1. Bali has better MICE facilities than Jakarta not so much traffic jam than Jakarta. Bali airport is international airport and the connectivity is good, see en:Ngurah Rai International Airport.
2. We've been discussed this plan with ESEAP communities during WMCON and Wikimania, we propose 50 instead of 30 because we see a lot of potential candidate within regions. We also try to involve people from various language and background in this conference.
3. We've been discussed this part to with the communities and they will be involved to nominate the participants within their communities, after that the scholarship committee will try the best to find the best candidate among them. I'm happy if you can suggest us the best example of previous conference experiences to choose the best candidates.
4. Languages. A lot of ESEAP communities especially minorities would have problem in language barrier. If there's a good candidate that can't speak at least of main language in our region, we'll try to encourage more people within their communities to nominate the one can speak one of main language. For example Indonesian (main languages for 714 ethnic groups in Indonesia, and can be mutually understand by people from Brunei and Malay), Mandarin (main languages in China, Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Singapore), English, etc.

Thank you Beeyan (talk) 04:21, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

• Just on question 2 its worth noting that at the WMCONF 17 there were over 20 attendees from the ESEAP region. The leap from that to 30 is negligible and would have zero impact, realistically even at 50 thats only 5-6 people from each of the affiliates who were represented at Berlin, if you consider there are 22 affiliates who identify as a group solely in the region that brings the opportunity down to 2 from each at 50, 1 from each if it was at 30. For the first time 50 is a manageable number of participants though realistically they could reasonably aim for and achieve a significantly higher participation rate. Gnangarra (talk) 06:51, 15 November 2017 (UTC)

Conference grant committee input

The conference grant committee would like to support the ESEAP community to have a regional meeting, but they have some concerns about the size and scope of the first event. They recommend that the first regional conference focus on a smaller region or include fewer communities. After the first event, they would consider increasing the size or scope based on the evaluation and outcomes of the first conference. The sections below contain more specific feedback, questions and suggestions for the event organizers.

Community engagement

• 13 responses to the engagement survey seems low for the total number of people/communities that you would like to include in this event. It would be nice to see more responses to the needs assessment. Perhaps have it as a rolling survey that keeps accepting responses until it is no longer feasible to do so.

Yes, it's very low, we've been posted this survey via social media and also village pump in Wikipedia that the languges are from within the region. We still open the survey but we plan to add translation and modify the survey, as some people mentions the questions are a little bit complex, reluctant to answer in English and they like to answer the question directly via chat or online meeting in language that they're more familiar to speak. --Beeyan (talk) 04:20, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

• How many people/communities have been involved with planning discussions outside of the survey?

We've Telegram group with 21 participants from 8 countries to discuss the plan and the committee also engage more people via offline meeting and online chat, e.g Wikimedia Indonesia hold several offline meetings to discuss with the plan AND we've also set up WhatsApp group with Indonesian communities; Wikimedia Taiwan hold offline meetings too; the committees are coming from various UG, chapter and countries and we have several online meeting too. --Beeyan (talk) 04:20, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

• It would be good to know if there is enough interest from each relevant country. Do you have information about where the survey responses have come from?

We didn't add the countries in the survey but from the survey we can identify that there're answers from Taiwan, Indonesia, China, Thailand, and Australia.--Beeyan (talk) 04:20, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Goals

The goals seem reasonable in number, clearly defined and well interconnected. It is good to see that there is a strong focus for the event.

Thank you! We've discussed the goals intensely with our communities to meet with out future plan too. --Beeyan (talk) 07:05, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Participation

• There is some concern about communication at the event since there are so many different language communities involved, and several proposed sessions are interactive. Do you have a sense of whether there are one, two or three languages that most participants would be able to understand and interact in?

Yes, the main language for our communities would be Indonesian/Malay (Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, and Brunei); Mandarin (Taiwan, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Singapore, Malaysia); and English. If there's a good candidate that can't speak at least of main language in our region, we'll try to encourage more people within their communities to nominate the one can speak one of main languages. --Beeyan (talk) 07:27, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

• One committee member suggests setting up virtual meetings (on chat or video calls) to take place in the months before the conference so that community members get familiar with each other, and start discussing common issues or projects they would like to work on together at the conference. US Wikimedians have done this in the past and found it helpful.

We've done this one before we've proposed the conference grants. It's so helpful to know the nees and engage more people into this conference. It's effective since we can't meet in person. We have group in Facebook and Telegram to discuss with the communities. --Beeyan (talk) 07:27, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

• Have the organizers considered decreasing the number of participants or focusing on a limited number of communities? Because this is the first regional meeting, the committee recommends starting with a smaller event,and later evaluating if the event is really useful for the entire region. After this event, the community can decide whether to invite more participants to the next conference, or organize different kinds of regional meetings. --Beeyan (talk) 07:27, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

We have discussed this number too and concluding that 50 will have more impacts than lowering number of participants since Wikimedia communities are based on language, and we have a lot of communities in the region. In Stats Wikimedia, there're 47 Wikipedia edition (36 in ESEA; 11 in Pacific) within more than 20 countries. That's why 50 is reasonable as before WMID also have managed the international conference within region. --Beeyan (talk) 07:27, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Follow-up

The committee would like to see a systematic way of getting feedback from event participants after the event, and for participants to share what they learned at the conference with the broad community. It has been suggested that either participants complete a report that they post online, or for participants to answer a few questions at the end of the conference. Have the organizers or community members discussed other ways that they would like to keep participants engaged after the event?

Yes, we've discussed several things about this one in our online meeting and also survey result. We'll do a lot of practicals thing and lesson learned from previous experiences session in this conferences. We would like to encourage the participants to apply their own grants and plan their own projects to do more Wikimedia events, such as editathon, meetup, etc by using mentor programing. --Beeyan (talk) 07:37, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

Other questions

• Why was Bali selected as the venue? Is this location cheaper or more accessible than the capital city?

Copying the answer for @Mervat Salman: Bali has better MICE facilities than Jakarta not so much traffic jam than Jakarta. Bali airport is international airport and the connectivity is good, see en:Ngurah Rai International Airport. --Beeyan (talk) 07:42, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

• Some people in the endorsement section asked if the event could be moved so that it does not happen during Ramadan. Is this something that the organizers have considered?

Yes, we plan to change the schedule but we need to follow the conference grants procedure first and the our team will discuss again about the time changing. --Beeyan (talk) 07:42, 17 November 2017 (UTC)