Grants talk:PEG/WikiSym Initiative/2016 OpenSym Conference

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

GAC comments

lessons learned

• what do you think about current venue? Will it be affordable and suitable for participants? Prior experience in San Francisco was not perfect... rubin16 (talk) 20:10, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

• The venue this year has been made available for free, so it'll definitely be affordable. I've heard very good things about its location and facilities, but haven't been there myself yet. Let me check with others in the organisation about their assessment. OkkeSchrijvers (talk) 17:13, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
• The venue this year will be very nice: It is a major German research institutions's place for representative things, centrally located in Berlin (Fraunhofer Forum). Last year's venue in San Francisco in itself wasn't bad but the catering service (tried to) kill us. This year, with strong local management support, I believe we will have both affordable and high quality food. As to overall prices for participants, you can find the pricing on the website already at [1] -- people can (kind of) choose what they can pay and so I think with three days for EUR 180 fully-fed is a very fair price (and much lower than most conferences, not to speak of commercial events.) Dirk Riehle (talk) 16:36, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

• will you attract other partners/sponsors? rubin16 (talk) 20:10, 29 May 2016 (UTC)

• @OkkeSchrijvers: sorry if I'm too persistent :) rubin16 (talk) 11:39, 5 June 2016 (UTC)
• great question. We currently have also have Google as a sponsor and are using some funds that have been carried over from last year. Additionally we have several sponsors in kind. For example the venue is made available to us free of cost. OkkeSchrijvers (talk) 17:13, 8 June 2016 (UTC)
• Great answer by Okke already (who is our sponsorship chair). We have multiple sponsors, some giving money, some giving other resources, like room and labor. The current list can be found at [2]. Dirk Riehle (talk) 16:36, 8 June 2016 (UTC)

WMF Comments

Hi OkkeSchrijvers and Dirk Riehle, thank you for the effort you have put into creating this grant request and responding to GAC questions. It is great to hear that the conference organizing committee has continued to be successful in getting funding and in-kind support from other organizations. We understand that this conference has been valuable to WMF staff and Wikimedian communities over the last few years, and we are pleased that we are able to continue to provide financial support for the event this year. In our new fiscal year that begins on July 1st, 2016, we will have a new grants process for funding movement events with a budget of about $200,000 USD. If you plan to request funds from WMF next year, it will be important to focus on the outcomes of this conference, similar to what was done on the evidence page created in 2015 - you may want to include questions to help gather this information in the evaluation survey after this year's conference. Thank you for covering the status of how open access publishing will work as part of this conference - it is good to hear that the papers presented at the conference will be available to read on your website. We appreciate your efforts to negotiate lower OA fees with ACM and that you considered covering the fees with the conference budget. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 20:55, 8 June 2016 (UTC)