Grants talk:Conference/Wikimedia Norge/Wikimedia Diversity Conference Europe

WMF comments

Dear @Astrid Carlsen (WMNO):, Thank you for submitting this proposal! We are happy to explore the opportunity to support you in hosting the Wikimedia Diversity Conference Europe.

Your proposal has many strengths to highlight. I especially appreciated the clear proposal and the fact that the community’s voice is well delivered.

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

Community input

• You make a very good point in saying that In-person meetings are valuable to discuss Diversity issues.
• I liked how you linked between the goal, and the action/skills needed to achieve it, on the community priorities table.
• Capacity development - this section includes quite a lot of topics to discuss/work on. Do you think you can cover all of those in 3 days?
• Are you planning any active learning sessions (like workshops; training etc)?

Scholarships

• 10 scholarships out of the 80 expected participants. Who will be the rest? Are those all locals? Or self-funded representatives?
• ‘’The scholarship committee will prioritize scholarships to volunteers and affiliate members who don’t receive funding from Wikimedia Foundation.’’ - I am not very clear on that. WMF will not provide any additional scholarships that are not a part of this proposal. If approved, WMF will provide the overall budget for the event, as a conference grant, and allocating scholarships will be the responsibility of Wikimedia Norge. Do you mean the committee will prioritize representatives from affiliates that do not receive annual funding?

Budget

• The budget indicates 2 Lunches and 2 Dinners, but to my understanding, this will be a 3 days event. Can you please clarify the breakdown for the meals and accommodation? Will meals be provided only for scholarship recipients during the conference?
• Can you please share the breakdown for the Paid event manager costs? For how many months? We definitely encourage outsourcing services that can benefit with the volunteers, but in this case it seems like almost a third of the total budget will be paid for an event manager and I just want to make sure it makes sense with the scope of the event and your needs.
• The total amount of the budget table does not add up. The total amount is 74,205, and not 72,064. I suggest you review the numbers and revise.

Generally, the proposal is clear and concise. And the message is well delivered (which is a great job, and exactly what you need when writing a grant proposal). The community needs and priorities are understood and worthy, but I am not very sure how you will translate those into action items. The conference seems to be very ‘discussion oriented’ and with not a lot of hands-on work. So I would ask you to spend some time identifying the key deliverables that will indicate your are on the right path in achieving your goals. What are your objectives? What will success look like? Moving the needle on diversity issues, requires actions and hard decisions. I am confident you have a lot of will and motivation to do so, but it is essential to clearly draft the way and to translate the strategy into programmatic work. I’ll be happy to hear your thoughts around it.

When you're able, please respond to the questions above and revise the proposal as needed. These revisions will be due by 28 February 2020, after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal.

Thank you again for your significant role in supporting your community! Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 01:21, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Answers from the conference team

Dear @CAlmog (WMF):, Thank you for your support, questions and comments on our conference application! I will answer some of your questions here and I have also updated the proposal page with more information about what we want to achive by organizing this conference. Please reach out to me if I can help with further information.

Community input

• Capacity development: No, we can not cover all these topics in three days. All responses from the community survey were summarized in the table. The conference team will have to further prioritize which topics the conference can cover. This work has not started yet, but in this application we wanted to include all responses.
• Yes, some members of the conference team have already discussed workshops about conflict resolution and anti harassment. We have also discussed having one full day with workshops, and one full day of presentations/panels and discussions + the preconference day with partners. In the community survey these topics were suggested for workshops: ally skills, gender sensitisation, conflict resolution, how to work with marginalized groups and how to ensure diversity in governance. Again, we can not cover all these topic and the whole conference team will have to prioritize which topics to focus on and jointly design a conference program.

Scholarships

• 70 of the 80 expected participants will be a mix of locals; 20 (volunteers and people from partner institutions), and 50 self-funded representatives from other European chapters.
• Yes, I meant the committee will prioritize representatives from affiliates that do not receive annual funding.

Budget

• We are planning a 2 day conference at the venue with lunch and dinner provided for for every participant of the conference. We are also looking into and discussing a pre-conference day with partner institutions and possible other Wikimedia organizations involved. Meals for this day are not included in the budget because we expect these to be covered by in-kind donations. For scholarship recipients accommodation and breakfast will be covered.
• This is the breakdown of the Paid event manager per month: April: 20 % FTP, May: 10 % FTP, August 20 % FTP, September 50 % FTP, October 100 % FTP, November 100 % FTP, December 10 %. Oslo is a small town, so the reservation and negotiations for venues and hotel must be done as soon as possible. We also want the Event manager to stay on for a short while after the conference to make sure we have time to evaluate and document how the conference went. If Wikimedia Norge hosts other conferences in the future this analysis will provide useful lessons. The breakdown of the cost for the Event manager is: PC, office space, salary. Most of the cost will be for salary. Salary levels, but also tax payments, are high in Norway. The salary for the Event manager is based on the average salary level in Norway.
• I have revised the number in the budget, thanks. It should add up now.

Key objectives of the conference are now included in the Event overview section of the proposal page and also some further context of the conference.

I hope this answers your questions. Thanks! Best, --Astrid Carlsen (WMNO) (talk) 15:31, 28 February 2020 (UTC)