Grants talk:PEG/Cascadia Wikimedians/WikiConference USA 2016 + WikiProject Medicine Conference 2016

This grant is currently under review. Comments are welcome on this page. Remember the Friendly space expectations!

GAC members decisions

GAC members who support this request

1. --DerekvG (talk) 20:58, 11 April 2016 (UTC) if you can find a sponsored or free venue, or a partner, it would be very good for your organizational budget, good luck guys , i will certainly submit for a scholarship for WP-MED

Frequently asked questions

Venue cost

The venue cost is marked at 10,000 a day. WikiConference in 2014 and 2015 negotiated a free venue! Is there any way to negotiate a less expensive rate?

The previous two conferences were in New York City and Washington DC, where there is more money, better access to generous sponsors, and a metropolitan area 10x the size of those around other large cities in the United States. The venues from previous years would have cost 60-80,000 to reserve for those 3-day events. Wikimedia organizers got them as an in-kind donation. We cannot expect such generosity in all cases, especially in smaller cities with less money around.

30,000 is a good rate for nonprofit events of this size. When the event is negotiated we may or may not be able to negotiate a lower rate. In any case, this is the posted price. This is what the university routinely offers to other nonprofit organizations.

WMF need not disburse the money immediately but we do need a commitment from the WMF that the venue cost will be paid up to the amount requested if we plan the event. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:40, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Event coordinator

What is an "event coordinator" and why is one needed? Why not just use volunteers?

The event coordinator is the person who manages parts of the event which are typically managed by paid staff and which are almost never crowdsourced even for volunteer events. Duties of the event coordinator include managing accounting, legal contracts, negotiation with vendors, and being a central point of contact and coordination between volunteers and all business relationships associated with the conference.

For a conference of this size it is necessary to have a staff event coordinator. It is not reasonable to expect that a volunteer could be recruited to serve in this role.

The conference venue, University of Washington, offers event coordinators for hire. Wikimedia volunteers provide Wikimedia engagement, and the event coordinator provides event management as an administrative professional.

Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:33, 18 December 2015 (UTC)