Grants talk:Conference/Wikimedia Serbia/CEE Meeting 2019

Community Engagement Survey needed

Hello Dungodung, Thank you and the Wikimedia Serbia team, for the time and effort spend in writing this proposal. Unfortunately, at this point you are not eligible for this proposal funding, because as the application guide indicates, conducting a Community Engagement Survey is a core requirement for a conference grant proposal. We will not be able to approve this proposal without you fully completing the survey + community input section of the proposal.

Yet, I would still want to comment on your explanation.

• I understand you wanting to highlight the goal of exchanging knowledge, but this goal can easily be implemented in the program and it does not contradict the need for a community survey. For example, the survey can give you an idea of what kind of knowledge and issues, the community would want to discuss in the first place. I don't see an added value in postponing the survey to the time of registration.
• Although we fully acknowledge the importance of the CEEM, in order to support the conference, we need to be sure there is a will to have it. The survey is one of our ways to insure that, and also, a very important part of the goals and impact assessment.
• Ideally, participants should register after receiving some of the program information, so they will know what to expect and if it's relevant to their needs. This rough list of issues and skills should be included in the Community Input table.

I hope you can understand and share our perspective regarding this. Please amend the proposal as soon as possible, and don't hesitate to reach out if any other clarifications are needed. I'll be happy to help. Best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 15 February 2019 (UTC)

@CAlmog (WMF): Thank you for your advice. We didn't know that the survey is obligatory. We conducted it and now you can see the results in the Community Input table. Please take a look at it. --IvanaMadzarevic (talk) 15:47, 7 March 2019 (UTC)

Grants Review Committee Comments

Hello @Dungodung: and team. I must admit that this is one of the best proposals I have ever reviewed, I most like how you explained the objectives, and that you have a track for the strategy. I only have one question: as your participants are joining from different countries of different languages, are there any considerations for translation and interpreting, any cost to be allocated for that? Regards and best wishes. --Mervat (talk) 14:31, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

Hi Mervat. Thanks for the kind words. We did discuss this briefly, but decided that the cost would be prohibitive, with the final budget it mind. We also discussed this a while ago as a CEE community, but I believe that no consensus has been reached regarding translations at CEE meetings. --FiliP ██ 15:24, 10 March 2019 (UTC)

WMF Comments

Hi Dungodung, IvanaMadzarevic and FiliP.

Thank you for repaying quickly and conducting the community survey. I enjoyed reading your Grant proposal and are confidante in the importance of this conference. However, I do have some comments and questions:

• You indeed defined clear and worthy goals. Also, it seems like there's a really good list of topics and challenges to be addressed during the conference (I especially appreciate you prioritizing Community Capacity development skills and I think you mentioned some really important ones). Although, it might be too long of a list and I believe you will have to significantly prioritize. Please keep that in mind while designing the program.
  • Yes, this is a long list, but during the programme development we’ll definitely prioritize the most important ones. This week Programme Committee is formed and they’re planning an online meeting where plan and timeline will be defined. So we’ll forward them these comments.

• 18 responses to the Community survey is not much if you take into consideration the expected amount of participants. But due to the fact that it was during the proposal reviewing period, I would ask you to later on, try to reach out to more community members inputs, and specifically advise people who participated in previous CEE conferences.
  • We agree on this with you. We’re truly disappointed with such a small number of responses. The invite was sent via mailing list and Facebook group (and reminders as well). Also we’ve sent individual calls for around 70 CEE community members. Maybe they think it’s too early for this kind of feedback or they’ve overseen the invites. Anyhow, we’ll try to reach them out in order to get more feedback.

• It's really good to have a diverse discussion plan (including round tables and panel discussions as you suggested), but do you plan on also having Workshop sessions? And if so, what kind of workshops were you thinking of?
  • We’ll try to have as diverse programme as we can in terms of workshops and interactive sessions. At this point we can’t say what kind of workshop sessions we’ll have, but as I stated in the comment above, Programme Committee is formed this week and they will be in charge of programme development and shaping CEE Meeting 2019 in general. Our role as organizers will be to coordinate them and help them with programme schedule, but they will be the ones who define programme focus, structure and content. It’s good to mention that we have three Programme Committee members from Serbia, so we expect good communication.

• Will you have specific technical skills required to participate (apart from editing Wikipedia)?
  • Technical skills are not generally required. We would like to have as more volunteers as we can who are involved in the movement in general.

• Regarding risks - if you lack a financial management experience, we can definitely help with guidance, but you might consider allocating some budget for financial support or a finance management service.
  • Thank you for offering to help, but we do have an experienced person in financial field, so financial support won’t be needed. The risks we mentioned are some things that can happen, but they are not crucial and not something we can’t handle.

• Thank you for keeping in mind the importance of inclusion while making an active effort to reach out to participants from more communities.

• Video records - is this item for the live streaming? Is there anything else you intend to do with the records?
  • Yes, this is for live streaming. So, we’ll have live streaming and we’ll upload records on Commons and Youtube channel.

• Regarding the Promo packet, please bare in mind that we try to be environmentally mindful and that is why we strongly ask to limit all swag to low cost items like stickers. Same point goes to 'Working material' item - printed banners and signs should be general enough that they can be reused for later events (like the next CEE meeting or local Wikimedia Serbia events).
  • Of course. This is also something we thought about. We've even downgraded the original budget for the promo package, so it's minimized. Thank you for the suggestion. We’ll try to make a balance between banners and signs specifically planned for CEE Meeting 2019 and other materials that can be reused for Wikimedia events in the future.

• We appreciate you reaching out to the hotel for In-kind donation. We think this is an important component in creating financial stability.
  • Thank you for recognizing our effort. This is something we do with all the WMRS events and something that is very good in terms of financial resources and stability. --IvanaMadzarevic (talk) 12:26, 22 March 2019 (UTC)

Thank you again for your significant role in supporting the CEE community. Looking forward to your response. Best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 16:21, 21 March 2019 (UTC)