Grants talk:PEG/WM UA/Wiki Loves Earth 2015

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

GAC members who support this request

1. It's not the first time, WM UA demostrated to be able to organize it. Low risk in my opinion in relation to a huge increase of material. --Ilario (talk) 13:00, 6 February 2015 (UTC)
2.  Support: seems reasonable, achievable and with good impact rubin16 (talk) 18:58, 9 February 2015 (UTC)
3.  Support: any questions I would have had around budget, expected outcomes and the calendars and other souvenirs have been answered. Islahaddow (talk) 12:51, 23 February 2015 (UTC)
4. MADe (talk) 20:51, 3 March 2015 (UTC) kudos to WM UA, the first organisation to send in their WLM 2015 grant request!
5. --DerekvG (talk) 13:36, 10 March 2015 (UTC) as Rubin said, reasonable, achievable, acceptable impact.

GAC members who abstain from voting/comment

1. As it seems Wikimedia Polska will be involved in the project, I have now conflict of interest. Polimerek (talk) 11:33, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

budget

First of all, I fully support the idea, which was proved to be successful last year, but have some concerns regarding the budget:

• Why post expenses are so high? The costs of prizes and suvenirs itself - are estimated 1300 USD - but cost of shipping them - 3000 USD !!! Can you explain why the costs of shipping are so high in Ukraine? Maybe it could be cheaper to organize shipping from the other country? For example you could produce suvenires and send them in one go to a chapter in EU to resend this for EU countires - then one big pack to US, etc? For EU - we can assist you. (Wikimedia Polska). FOr more value prizes (I guess cameras etc...) - maybe it could be cheaper to buy them on-line in a internet shops in winner countres - and let them ship by shops directly to the winners.
• In position 1.7 you placed printing 5000 Calendars and postards - does it mean you are about to print 500 postcards and 500 calendars and they both are 5 USD per item? I guess prinitng postcards is far more cheaper - so it is rather price for calendars - anyway - it should be clarify. Regarding calendars - when do you expect to have them ready ?

Cheers, and good luck. Polimerek (talk) 09:20, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Polimerek and thank you for your comments!

• Concerning prizes, we do plan to propose winners to buy prizes in internet shops in winner countries (so we did this year), and this helps us avoid dealing with import taxes of different countries.
• Concerning postage costs, it is true that sending packages from Ukraine abroad is expensive (there are cheaper options on the "black market" but they are not reliable). We based our calculations on the following:
  • From our experience this year, we may expect to send to some 40-50 different destinations, depending on number of participating countries (ca. 15-20 participating countries, ca. 10-15 interested countries, ca. 5 jury members — some might prefer having their souvenirs send to local organisers, and ca. 5-10 international winners — out of 15, as some might prefer to have their prizes sent to local organisers). We would prefer to send everything to one person per country and let this person cover their local winners, their international winners and their international jury members, but only large chapters are usually able to handle this correctly.
  • An average weight is estimaged as 0.5 kg, corresponding roughly to a pack of 10 calendars, with a size of roughly 30 * 20 * 10. Some organisers requested more (e.g. 50 calendars would be over 1.0 kg), some will receive less (e.g. international jury members will receive smaller packs).
  • Destinations are extremely various, this year received requests from Uruguay to Nepal, thus we cannot limit ourseleves to shipping inside EU
  • Postage fare in Ukraine for sending abroad is ca. 800-1500 UAH per pack, depending on the destination country (TNT, UPS, DHL), we take the average and get some 60-70 USD with exchange rate of 1 USD = 16.157817 UAH (as of 30 January). Exchange rates are moving at the moment, but it is very likely that prices will change as well (with the exchange rate of 1 USD = 7.99 UAH last year prices were almost twice as cheap in UAH).
  • This gives us an approximate total price of 3000 USD (ca. 60-70 USD * 40-50 destinations).
• We would be glad if either Wikimedia Foundation in the US or a big chapter in EU would be able to handle this for us as it might be cheaper for the movement. We appreciate your offer to help us, so could you please roughly estimate the costs you will need for similar postage expenses from Poland? We will then check with Alex how we can arrange to share the costs.
• Concerning calendars / postcards, 4 USD is a price for calendar plus postcards, not for postcards only (we ordered them from the same company last year). We plan to order 500 copies, not 5000 copies. For WLE 2014 we had a trouble with printing (the publishing house had a failure and all calendars from the first series were printed in a really poor quality), so we had to reprint them, hence the delay. We expect to ship them within the next few days for WLE 2014. For WLE 2015, we expect to have them ready and sent by September, as we will invite local juries to determine their winners in a more organised way — NickK (talk) 10:44, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for fast reply. In Poland - for economic packs up to 1 kg -the prices are from 32 to 70 PLN (with average around 56) - which is around 15 USD + cost of boxes - around 1 USD = 16 USD. [1]. For "priority packs" - prices are around 25% higher, and for "express" ones another 25%. Polimerek (talk) 20:27, 7 February 2015 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for the price quotes, we will see what we can do with it — NickK (talk) 00:11, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

• Hi, guys! :) So sad, that our Wikimedia RU wasn't able to find active volunteers to become participants of your contest yet... Can you please clarify some more points of the budget? It seems that amount for technical support is a contingent one and will be eliminated if you find enough volunteers, isn't it? You budgeted 5 ths USD for prizes - how many prizes have you budgeted? Or is the scholarship to Wikimania the only prize? It seems quite a significant amount of 5 ths USD for one scholarship... rubin16 (talk) 19:27, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

  Hi rubin16 and thanks for your feedback. We expect that at least 85% of technical support will be done by volunteers, and that we might need to have a paid contractor do the work only for the remaining part which may need some specific skills we will not find among volunteers. Concerning prizes, we are planning a Wikimania scholarship worth up to 2 thousand USD (may vary a lot depending on the location of the winner), and the remaining amount will cover prizes for the places from 2 to 15. Last year we had 15 prizes, and we plan to have the same number this year. We are also sad WMRU will not join the contest even this year, but we hope to see you in 2016 — NickK (talk) 20:07, 8 February 2015 (UTC)

Regarding - "some organisers requested more (e.g. 50 calendars would be over 1.0 kg)". To be more exact - 40 calendars are about 12 kg. It costed about 215$ (with Valentine's day discount) to send them. Now Brazil Customs wants 70$ more. I also spend several hours sending them (just packages to two countries). Honestly I doubt very much it is worth it. --Ilya (talk) 16:02, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Post expenses

At first I want to say that the role of this project in wiki-movement is specific, because projects like WLM and WLE show that wikipedians not only those who are sitting at home/office and writing articles. But I have the question concerning post expenses. As I know, in Ukraine you have Ukrainian State Enterprise of Posts - UkrPoshta and their tariffs cheaper than TNT, DHL and etc.--Wertuose (talk) 16:43, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Here you can check tariffs of UkrPoshta: SECTION ІІІ - TRANSMISSION OF POSTAL ITEMS TO FOREIGN COUNTRIES. As it's stated there, shipping costs less than 20 USD per each parcel by air transport to any country in the list. But maybe you think that UkrPoshta is not trusty postal service.--Wertuose (talk) 17:01, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Wertuose and thanks for your comment. First of all, the prices you are citing are not up to date, they currently have a new calculator here, it gives something closer to 30-40 USD depending on the country. Actually the three main problems of Ukrposhta are:

1. No adequate tracking service. We have already tried sending parcels by Ukrposhta, and tracking stops at the sorting center for international mail in Kyiv, which means we have no idea whether it is delivered or not. Universal Postal Union are unable to track parcels sent by Ukrposhta either
2. No terms for sending parcels outside Ukraine. Ukrposhta website has terms for sending (Ukrainian only) parcels only to CIS countries, with Armenia having the fastest delivery (4 days) and Georgia (13 days) and Russia (14 days) being the slowest. It is quite unclear how parcels can take three times longer to be delivered by air mail to Georgia than to Armenia, but the main problem is lack of information about delivery to non-CIS countries. There is some information about incoming parcels, far from complete but some results are very unsatisfactory, e.g. Norway (19 days by air mail) or Yemen (35 days by air mail) together with neighbouring Sweden (6 days) or UAE (14 days). This means there is no guarantee when such parcels will be delivered, as it can take anything between 4 and 35 days
3. Ukrposhta has no responsibility in case parcels are lost, especially if they are lost outside Ukraine (e.g. somewhere on the way from Ukraine to Nepal)

Thus we thought of opting in for a more expensive service but with better chances of parcels being delivered within reasonable time, as both DHL and TNT deliver within a few days and bear responsibility for delivery. Ukrposhta may be a reasonable service for sending something to CIS countries where they have historic partners (we had only 2 out of 15 last year, Armenia and Azerbaijan) but we are not really sure about them sending parcels abroad — NickK (talk) 18:59, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi Antanana, NickK, and Ilya. Thank you for this grant submission and for continuing to support Wiki Loves Earth! We really appreciate the effort you've put in over the years to make this contest a success. Please see our questions/comments below:

1. We understand your 2014 grant report is not yet due, but it would be helpful to have a rough accounting for WLE 2014 since the budget is fairly similar. Were you on target for most of the line items?
2. Based on the jury report and Glamorous tool, these are the metrics we pulled together for 2014:
   • 15 participating countries
   • 70,000 photos
   • 3,000 participants
   • 6,486 total images used on wiki projects; 4,938 distinct images used = 7% of all photos

   The proposed metrics for 2015 are lower in each category, except images used. Is this because you expect fewer countries to participate? Are you actively trying to recruit more countries? There are no participants yet from Asia or Africa and few others from outside Europe.

3. Did you end up doing presentations in other countries last year? If yes, how did you evaluate the value/impact of those presentations? It seems like Wikimania would be the best place to showcase WLE and conduct more outreach, rather than having to travel to multiple destinations. The current budget for this would not cover WikiArabia and an Asian conference.
4. What is the rationale behind the souvenirs, in addition to postcards and calendars? Who were these given to last year and how were they received?
5. Do you have any ideas for who could serve as a fiscal sponsor for expenses paid outside of Ukraine?

Looking forward to hearing from you, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 00:39, 13 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Alex and thank you for your questions!

1. We were on budget on most of the line items. We underspent on presentations in other countries (we were roughly on budget in general, but we underspent WMF funds as some expences were covered by volunteers who made presentations, e.g. they were already travelling to the country or arranged accommodation themselves) and we overspent on international prizes (roughly on budget in general, but we overspent WMF funds as we did not find sponsors who would provide suitable prizes for international winners).
2. Last year three countries (Germany, Macedonia and Ukraine) generated 40,000 out of the total 70,000 photos, and two countries (Brazil and Germany) brought 1600 uploaders out of 3000. This means that we have a mean of 4743 photos per country, but a median of only 2183 photos, which makes a huge inequality between the countries (and same with uploaders). If we add 70,000 photos and 3,000 participants as measures of success, we would have a risk of not meeting the target just because of problems in a single country (e.g. some more popular campaign being held in Germany in parallel). Thus we added relatively conservative measures (50,000 photos and 2500 participants) and we consider that meeting them would be a success (and beating last year would be a great result).
   • We expect to participate at least as much countries as last year, but list of countries may change. For example, we know that WMNL would like to focus on WLM this year instead of organising WLE, and Spanish organisation will be taken by WMES instead of Amical (thus we are not sure if Andorra will be there), but we have some newcomers, like WMPL and WMTH who are already interested. Also we would like to set higher standards for participation this year, as in 2014 we unfortunately had to deal with cases when the contest was live but we could not find the local team.
   • Speaking of continents, we already have confirmations from Algeria in Africa and Thailand in Asia, and Tunisia in Africa as well as Syria in Asia also want to join. Of course we are looking forward to having more non-European countries, and that's why we intend to make presentations at local events (and especially help local teams better organise it).
3. Last year we had presentations in Armenia, Catalonia and Greece, as well as during Wikimedia Conference. Our main measure of success was a good organisation of the event in the country, and we can say that this was the case of Armenia and Catalonia, but unfortunately it did not work in Greece (they were very motivated but did not manage to do it). In terms of impact, we think that a presentation at a regional conference would make greater impact as it would reach more people from different countries, thus we decided to discontinue presentations in specific countries this year
   • Making a presentation at Wikimania 2015 would be great, but Wikimania 2015 is in July while WLE is in May, which means that we will see the impact only in 2016. We have made a Wiki Loves Earth submission at Wikimania 2014, but unfortunately it was rejected. Thus we have to focus on regional events, and after a presentation at Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2014 we would like to promote WLE at two events taking place in April (and probably Wikimedia Conference, although mid-May is not a perfect timing for presenting a May event).
   • We would fit to the budget either by sending Wikipedians who are living in the region where event is taking place (e.g. we might send a Nepalese to ESEA Meetup) or by arranging at least partial scholarships (for example covering accommodation) with local organisers
4. Those are small souvenirs that we can distribute before the winners are announced (as calendars will be ready only in September). For example, last year we brought to Wikimania a few (too few, as they went away within hours) pens made of recycled materials (local souvenirs from Ukrainian WLE) that had a huge success, and we would like to do something like that this year. Calendars and postcards are great, but we would like to distribute them mostly to local volunteers, local winners, local jury members and local partners as well as some most important prosperous partners (this way we have already distributed some 300 out of 500 this year), but we want to have something to distibute to those who are just curious about WLE that would be smaller than a calendar. We can also make some souvenirs for the jury (e.g. T-shirts) to thank them for their hard work with something bigger than just a calendar
5. We are still negotiating with some chapters who could be our fiscal sponsors, we are sure that it would be a Wikimedia chapter outside Ukraine, but we do not want to give a name before receiving an official confirmation from them

Thank you for your questions and do not hesitate to ask me if you need further details — NickK (talk) 00:56, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi NickK . Thank you for the detailed responses.

1. We understand the rationale for doing presentations in regional conferences. However, we don't think it is necessary to provide additional funds for travel to these conferences. Algeria participated in WLE 2014 and will be attending WikiArabia. The user group should be able to provide the attendee with enough information to do some outreach. Similarly, if an East/South Asia conference happens, the participant from Nepal can also do outreach, as you suggested. Please remove this line item from the budget.
2. As you can see from the discussion around calendars on the WLM International grant request, we are not convinced that calendars are worth the relatively high cost. We would suggest you consider creating a PDF calendar and using some of the extra funds for a writing contest (see below) or printing posters for outreach at Wikimania. If you need a small print run of calendars for key partnerships, that is fine.
3. We also wanted to check in regarding the lessons learned from last year. The team mentioned that transparency around decision-making was an issue. How will this be addressed this year? You also had the idea to integrate a writing contest. Are you still interested in this? WM Espana and Portugal will be organizing a writing contest for their local contest, which is great!

Hi Alex and thanks for your feedback

1. We want to make sure that each of these events will have a speaker who can share with local volunteers how to organise the contest in a right way, as we had issues both in Asia and Africa last year. We need to make sure that local organisers will guarantee scholarships to people experienced in WLE (as we know opposite examples, for example, none of Nepalese at Wikimania 2014 were involved in WLE) and that we will not need to present WLE at any other event (e.g. there will be no WikiIndaba 2015). We really want to avoid situations when we remove funding from our budget and local organisers do not add it to theirs.
2. Concerning calendars, I see from the discussion that the main issue was that calendars were shipped too late. We are aware of this, and although 2014 calendars are currently on their way (which means they will arrive in February), we intend to do better next year and ship them in September, when 2016 calendars will be more than appropriate.
   • If we do not want to have calendars printed centrally, we need to ask each country to include printing fees in their budget (and 20-25 countries printing 30-50 copies will cost more than 500 copies printed together). The issue with calendars is that printing them needs special equipment neither volunteers nor chapters own, thus we need to ask local teams to put this line on their budget (for WMUA we will need to include it in our grant for July-December 2015, we have not asked other local teams about it)
   • If we distribute centrally something else, could you please suggest what can it be? We know that many local teams do not make anything to distribute on their own (as some of them organise the contest with zero budget), thus we need to provide something they can distribute locally. Thanking a jury member with a postcard or a pen is not enough in our view, do you have an idea what can we distribute instead? The discussion suggests albums (likely even more expensive) or T-shirts (more complicated as we need sizes in advance), is that what we should distribute instead?
   • Concerning posters for outreach at Wikimania, that's a good idea to consider. We are now thinking about reducing number of calendars or post cards and printing some posters (or leaflets) for Wikimania instead
3. Speaking of transparency, we have prepared a jury report with full information about decision-making. We are not aware of any concerns raised after publishing this report, so please cite them, otherwise we cannot answer them.
   • In our view, writing contests should be organised by local teams. International team is neither able to provide good sources for the contest, nor able to evaluate articles in multiple languages - for example, we are not sure we will be able to check if an article about a Spanish national park in Basque is meaningful or if it is a machine translation from a copyrighted source. Thus we would encourage local teams to organise such contests (and we also plan one in Ukraine) and we are ready to provide calendars/postcards/other souvenirs for winners and active participants of such contests as well, but we think that local teams will be in better position to organise them, as evaluating articles in multiple languages about different subjects is too complicated — NickK (talk) 22:47, 14 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi NickK. Thank you for the responses.

1. We still believe there are more cost-effective and equally impactful ways to do outreach around WLE. Creating an effective presentation for conference participants to use in addition to a pre-conference call should prepare them adequately. Presenting virtually could also be an option. Hopefully, you are able to do a presentation at Wikimania 2015 and reach an even larger audience. Please remove the line item for presentation travel from the budget.
2. The other main concern around calendars is their impact. We agree that they can be useful as rewards for the jury members and any partners that have supported WMUA with the contest, but we are very wary of publishing so many materials. We would support a very small print run for this group of people. Otherwise, a pdf of the calendar is sufficient.

Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 02:30, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Alex and thanks for your feedback.

1. Concerning your idea to focus on Wikimania, we agree that it will bring more benefits in longer-term (i.e. 2016), although it might be less efficient in shorter-term (2015). Our motivation to focus on regional events was the following:
   1. Last year we had a rather low level of countries successfully meeting deadlines: only 67%, with 2 narrowly missing it, 2 missing it by one month and 1 failing to determine winners and asking the international team for assistance. 3 countries with most unsatisfactory results where from Global South, thus we wanted to improve performance this year by giving best practices to local organisers. Making online preparation turned out to be hard last year as in some countries (not necessarily the same as those who failed to comply with deadlines) organising teams did not respond quickly.
      • We agree that we can remove presentations at regional conferences and replace them with a Wikimania presentation and publish it online in advance, but we are not sure we will obtain the necessary impact this year (although we are sure we will get better impact in 2016). In particular, we are not sure we will guarantee the level of 90% of countries submitting winners on time, and we may have to shift it down to 80% if we will be unable to make presentation at local conferences (although it will be still higher than 67% in 2014).
   2. Last year our Wiki Loves Earth submission was rejected by the Programme Committee with Ed recommending us to make project leaflets instead. While 2013 Wikimania presentation quickly generated interest (5 countries registered 1 week after Wikimania), leaflets did not have significant impact (especially because they had only a few lines of text), and wm2014:Wiki Loves meetup we organised instead attracted only two new countries (Thailand and France, both attended meetup due to their interest in WLM).
      • We would be glad to focus on Wikimania instead of regional events this year, but it will cost a lot: the cost of attending Wikimania will be equivalent to the three regional events due to the distance (no team members in North or Central America, and average air ticket will cost ca. 1300 USD). We do not want to invest this sum of money without guarantee that our submission will be accepted, thus is it possible to get a commitment to include WLE submission in the conference programme? We are ready to work with the Programme Committe to make it the most adapted to the conference, but we do not want to fail second year in a row. If we can get such commitment, we remove 3 regional conferences and reallocate these funds to a Wikimania scolarship for the speaker
2. Concerning calendars, we would like to note that these calendars are not just for WMUA partners, but they are distributed to different countries, with impact mostly made at local level. Our supposed distribution of 500 calendars is the following:
   • Local organisers: 400-450 calendars (15 countries, 25-30 calendars each). As of 2014, over 300 calendars are distributed to local teams (sorry but we don't have the exact figure at the moment)
     • 10 local winners (expected impact: higher motivation to participate next year)
     • 3-5 local jury members (expected impact: thanking for time-consuming work, higher motivation to engage in further Wikimedia-related activities)
     • 3-5 local volunteers (expected impact: volunteer retention & higher motivation)
     • 5 local partners (expected impact: thanking main partners for their commitment)
     • 3-5 prosperous partners (expected impact: outreach, developing new partnerships)
   • New joiners: ca. 25 calendars (5 countries, 5 calendars per each for outreach and developing new partnerships)
   • International jury: 10-15 calendars (1-2 calendars per each jury member, expected impact: thanking for time-consuming work, higher motivation to engage in further Wikimedia-related activities)
   • Partners on the international level: 5-10 calendars
   • Prosperous international partners: 10-15 calendars
   • The remaining calendars (if anything remains) will be used during WLE presentations, e.g. at Wikimedia Conference or Wikimania

   In the end only about 30 calendars will be distributed for WMUA, and some further 30 calendars will be used by the international team, while the remaining calendars will be distributed all around the world.

   Please also note that 4 USD is a cost per sets of calendars and postcards (with a calendar alone worth about 3.2 USD and postcards worth the remaining). As we have stated above we are considering to replace postcards with leaflets (roughly the same price) that we will be able to distribute at Wikimania and other events

   In any case we do not consider that a PDF version of a calendar (a 26 page document) is of any value, as no one can realistically use it (and local organisers need funding for producing calendars on their own)

   If you do think that calendars should be replaced with something more impactful and/or cost-efficient, could you please suggest what we should donate to local organisers instead (given that most calendars go there)? Unfortunately we do not have an idea of another gift that would be culturally neutral and universally acceptable.

Thank you very much on your input on these two points, and we are looking forward to getting your feedback — NickK (talk) 23:58, 17 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi NickK. Thank you for the detailed responses.

1. We are confident that with adequate preparation, integration of lessons learned from last year, and improved training/support, you'll be able to improve the percentage of countries submitting on time (even if you don't reach the original 90% goal). We do think that in terms of outreach, Wikimania would have a longer-term benefit. We are open to funding one team member to attend Wikimania to conduct outreach and present Wiki Loves Earth. However, we cannot guarantee that your presentation will be accepted since we do not have control over the program committee. I would suggest keeping a Wikimania scholarship in the budget and returning the funds if they are not used. We would be happy to review a presentation proposal and support you with making as strong a case as possible.
2. Regarding the calendars, we realize that they are not meant for just international jury members/volunteers. However, the numbers are still too high. We will support 20 calendars per participating country, plus 1 for each of the international jury members and international partners (an additional ~20). As mentioned above, it does not make sense to print and ship from Ukraine given the high costs. It would be great if Wikimedia Polska could help with the printing/shipping. Polimerek -- is it possible to come up a price quote for printing and shipping? If Wikimedia Polska doesn't have the capacity to do this, is there another affiliate that would be able to?

We are working directly with Wikimedia Ukraine to assist with shipping and printing and also some other budget points. We are ready to print some stuff + make most of shipping which seems to be much cheaper from Poland than form Ukraine. I guess NickK will soon submit update of the budget, which was consulted and accepted by us. I abstained from evaluating the grant, as it seems Wikimedia Polska is about to participate in the grant. Polimerek (talk) 11:47, 7 March 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 04:23, 18 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Alex,

1. We will try to do our best to reach the target of 90%, but we can just say that the risk of not reaching it this year would be much higher than we anticipated. Concerning Wikimania, could you please suggest who we can contact to discuss on what should we add to the submission for more impact? I understand that you cannot guarantee approval, but at least we would like to work with WMF people (perhaps Learning and Evaluation team?) on making more impact with our submission and we would like to ask you to endorse our proposal
2. We will check what can be done in Poland or in other countries. We would like to notice that the price quote might be slightly higher than market average as we have opted for eco-friendly printing (recycled paper), and we would like to keep it as it important for the idea of the contest. Additional cost increase in Ukraine is due to exchange rate volatility (as most paper and ink are often imported). Please note that if calendars are transferred to another country, for logistical reasons it would be easier to manage all prizes and souvenirs from the same country — NickK (talk) 00:20, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi NickK. Here is the list of folks on the Program Committee for Wikimania if you want to reach out to any of them. I'd be happy to look at a draft submission. Submissions are due February 28th and I will be at a team retreat next Monday/Tuesday. So please send it by Wednesday for review. Please update the proposal page/budget if you plan on making this change. Once you've confirmed regarding the prizes/printing and updated the budget accordingly, we can move forward with approving the proposal. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 20 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Alex,

We have agreed with Wikimedia Polska (as Polimerek has confirmed here) to work on this grant together. We have updated the proposal accordingly, taking into account your feedback. Please confirm if you agree with these changes or anything else is needed to proceed. Best regards, — NickK (talk) 22:08, 10 March 2015 (UTC)

Technical support

There was a hired person working on WLE 2014—is there a detailed report concerning exactly what work was she doing? --Base (talk) 03:36, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Hi Base and thanks for your question.

There was no technical support worker on WLE 2014: there was no need for hiring a technical support person as we managed to find volunteers to cover everything we needed. However, it might happen that we will need to hire a technical support person this year in case we have an urgent need and no volunteers to cover it — NickK (talk) 12:15, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, the person who was hired's title was not Technical support worker but WLE coordinator—that's who I'm about. I just mentioned "Technical support" in header so that people understand I'm about a hired person. --Base (talk) 15:07, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

There are two different lines: one for Technical support and one for International contest support. We might need to hire a contractor working on technical support this year if we need, but we managed to cover all our needs with volunteers last year. We did hire a part-time International contest coordinator whose main responsibilities were coordinating international teams (continuous support to local organisers, including online assistance), international media support (managing blog, social media and press releases for the international contest), research of partners and sponsors on the international level (pretty self-explanatory I guess) and contacting international jurors (stopped at 5 jurors out of 7, as her contract terminated when only 67% of local teams submitted their winners, thus we were unable to proceed). We intend to hire a part-time International contest coordinator this year as well with similar responsibilities — NickK (talk) 16:08, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

Extension request

Hi Kacie,

We would like to request further extension of this grant until 31 October 2015. The evaluation took a bit longer than we expected, and our jury is currently doing the final round of the evaluation, but we would prefer to have one more month to avoid closing the grant in a hurry.

Thanks,

WMUA Treasurer — NickK (talk) 21:31, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Hi NickK, Your request for an extension has been approved. The grant will now end on 31 October 2015 and the report will be due on 30 December 2015. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:47, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Dear KHarold (WMF), thank you very much! --アンタナナ 23:49, 6 October 2015 (UTC)

Extension request (for reporting)

Hello Kacie. We would like to request extension to the grant report deadline until 10 January 2016. We have completed the main activities, but we have a request to help the WLE Syria team to award their winners and to do this we need your approval. Thank you very much --Ilya (talk) 21:06, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi Ilya, your request for extension is approved. We understand that it might take a few more weeks to figure out how to support the WLE Syria team given the difficulties around transferring funds to that country. We suggest that you submit the report by January 10th, even if you have not funded the Syrian prizes yet. We can amend the report after it has been submitted if necessary. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 17:56, 4 January 2016 (UTC)