Grants talk:PEG/Open Labs and Youth Center Borderless/OSCAL

A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members who support this request

1. I have some questions but I think this is a good project to set up in Albania. Success! vote by MADe
2. given the objectives/plan versus the requested funds, success to our Albania friends--DerekvG (talk) 11:17, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

Hi, I have not understood if the other funds are already assigned. For instance it looks strange that Raiffeisen Bank can found a project in Albania. I consider this answer a little bit crucial because you are requesting here more or less 5% of the overall budget. It could be interesting to know how much percentage you are sure to be funded by other sponsors. --Ilario (talk) 15:26, 18 May 2015 (UTC)

Raiffeisen Bank is based in Albania for many years and have supported tech related initiatives for some time now as part of their marketing strategy. They supported in 2014 and in 2015 the Albanian ICT awards (http://ictawards.org/2014/partneret/) and Startup Live Tirana (http://www.startuplive.org/events/tirana-3/) and being a sponsor at an international tech conference such as OSCAL does not come as a surprise.

The contract with the bank is signed already and we are waiting any day now to receive the payment. The total cost of the sponsorships we have requested is 14,794.52 EUR and from Wikimedia foundatioin we are asking 4.7% of the total sponsorships we are receiving from local and international companies and organizations. --ViolaCiv (talk) 08:53, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Isn't it rather application for just participation in the conference for Azizi + some promo materials for advertising Wikimedia? I mean it should probably be moved to IEG ? Polimerek (talk) 00:13, 31 May

2015 (UTC)

Hi Polimerek . Good question. In hindsight, this grant request could have been a better fit within our Travel and Participation Support (TPS) grants program, which funds individuals to attend non-Wikimedia events and some amount of merchandise. Azizi would have had to apply as an individual to that program before the event. We do want to support the growing community in Albania and realize there has been some challenges with timing issues and understanding fully our sometimes complicated grants process. ViolaCiv -- please know this is an option for community members in the future. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 17:32, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Thank you for this grant request. I hope the conference was a success! The agenda looked like a great mix of topics and it sounds like you had participants from a diversity of countries and backgrounds. As we discussed over email, we typically don't support retrospective grant proposals. However, you did communicate that it was understood that approval was not guaranteed and you would need to find other sources of funding to cover these costs if needed. In the future, for a similar event and proposal size we would like to have the request submitted at least 4 weeks in advance. Please see our questions on the request below -- we look forward to your responses:

1. Can you give more details about the results of the Wikipedia editathon? How many people participated? Were they new editors or experienced? What type of content/how much? Has the group done any specific follow-up with the participants to encourage them to continue editing?

Organizing a conference of this size in Albania is a challenge with strict deadlines that are managed from a team of volunteers that is working on very hard conditions due to the fact that 3rd party partners don't always deliver. Unfortunately this leads to delays on some processes such as applying for a grant from Wikimedia. Starting from next year we will definitely apply at least 4 weeks in advance to be sure that this does not create issues from our side.

At the Wikipedia Editathon we had 5 participants, 3 new and 2 experienced editors. The editathon consisted on the improvement of existing articles in the Albanian language, as well as creating new ones. The participants were requested to focus on articles related to free libre open source software and hardware. The winner was Elona Canaj, who edited the article related to the non-for profit organization: Mozilla. The jury for this editathon was Ismet Azizi Wikipedia Albania administrator and Kiril Simeonovski a representative from Shared Knowledge Macedonia. During OSCAL 2015 we also had talks with participants from Kosova and Macedonia in order to collaborate better in the near future with the goal of growing our communities together through synergies.

One week later we did the post OSCAL meeting and we invited all the winners of the competitions and the other editors. We discussed with them about the possibilities of being involved in the community of wikipedians and our plans of becoming a user group. Part of the discussion was also the organization of Wikipedia Weekend II that Open Labs is planning to hold this November. We plan to include all the wikipedians of OSCAL2015 in the group of volunteers and the organizational team of Wikipedia Weekend and we already have started planning the event here https://www.facebook.com/events/1583251521950940/ and at our mailing list: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/open-labs-albania/nVcB78hEbwA

1. It's great to see there was a focus on supporting women in the open source community on the agenda. You also mention sessions related to the education program and GLAM-wiki. Did these sessions happen (I could not tell from this agenda)? If yes, can you provide more information about them?

During the second day of the conference we hosted a panel with the Mrs Milena Harito, Minister of Innovation of the Republic of Albania, where four participants had an open debate about the involvement of the government in such programs. Member of the panel was Kiril Simeonovski, who talked about GLAM projects in Macedonia with a focus on usage of QR Codes in the Zoo.

Viola also held a workshop/discussion about GLAMs on Wikipedia (http://oscal.openlabs.cc/events/viola-civici/) where she presented the GLAM initiative, its possibilities and discussed about the situation in Albania and how we can change it.

Also Greta and Viola leaded the open discussion about Wiki Loves Monuments in another open panel during the second day.

1. Were the promotional materials for Wikimedia merchandise specifically or for the conference more broadly?

We had an infobooth about Wikipedia both days, unfortunately we didn't have enough materials (sticker, tshirts, posters) but we used stickers and posters that we had from Wikipedia conferences where some of us were present (Viola at GLAM-wiki, Greta at CEE ,meeting). E.G for the Wikipedia editathon we gave as a price a Firefox OS smart-phone, due to the absence of Wikipedia related swag.

Thanks --ViolaCiv (talk) 08:55, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:31, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Hi ViolaCiv. Thank you for all the responses. We can move forward with this request. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 01:58, 3 June 2015 (UTC)