Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/WikiIndaba South Africa 2024

WMF review and feedback

Hi @Bobbyshabangu and Wikimedia ZA,

Thank you very much for this proposal and for your initiative in organizing WikiIndaba 2024. I highly appreciate the time and effort you put into this proposal. I have reviewed your proposal and have some comments and follow up questions:

• Is the conference confirmed to be in Johannesburg?

Yes it is confirmed. (We initially wanted to take it to Cape Town but after doing a feasibility study we realised that Johannesburg will be a less expensive option).

• Can you please elaborate on the hybrid component? What will it look like? Do you intend to include recording and live streaming, or do you also hope to facilitate online discussions and engagement?

We know there will be a huge number of scholarship applicants, and unfortunately not everyone will be granted a scholarship, so we definitely intend to include recording and live streaming the event on YouTube and Facebook, and yes we will certainly facilitate online discussions and engagements by having some of our guest presenters and those who could not make it to the conference to join online - This is what we mean by hybrid component.

• What is the progress or changes you have witnessed since the last WikiIndaba? Were you able to identify any specific areas of growth or learnings you intend to build on top of when designing this year’s program?

There are several changes and learnings that we have identified since the last WikiIndaba, and they are as follows:

• The African Agenda: At the last conference Africans discussed the common challenges that faced them and the proposed solutions which were captured on this document/Meta page. The Conference in South Africa will be used to further socialise the Agenda to those who may not be aware of it and reflect on what is working and what needs to be improved.
• Newcomers: There was a clear need to develop a permanent strategy to onboard newcomers to Wikimedia movement. The conference will discuss some of the strategies to do that.
• Old Wikipedians: It will be a time to meet and reflect on the past 10 years since the first WikiIndaba was organised in South Africa. This conference will enable us to learn from projects they've done in the past 10 years, celebrate them and look at what can be replicated from their work.

• Target audience - it’s great that you want to proactively target newbies. I think that the threshold of 50 edits is too low. It might be more suited for local participants in their first stages of engagement. But as a general criteria to attend this important platform for the region, I expect more involvement and engagement from contributors.

I do agree that 50 edits might be too low. However, we plan to include other factors such as outreach activities, gender parity, region where they come from and the reason why they want to be part of the conference. (I'm tagging the scholarship committee User:T Cells and User: Reda Benkhadra to please note comment about 50 edits)

• Regardless, please take into consideration the need to design a ‘newcomers’ friendly program. This can be a challenge when also needing to maintain a balanced program that everyone can engage with. But if you include that in your strategy, this is definitely doable.

Thanks, we have actually learned a lot from the previous conference about the importance of leaving no one behind. So we are exploring different options to make our programme inclusive to newcomers including matching them with experienced users during the conference. We've also learned that most of our newcomers are young editors who are also eager to learn how to organise the conference, and other skills that will improve their resumes in their career paths. So we have almost all the subcommittees of the conference organising team composed of newcomers. Tagging User:AKibombo and user:Thuvack leading the programme to also note comment about newcomers friendly program.

• You indicated one of the objectives as: “provide training, mentorship, and networking opportunities”. How will you provide these to the online participants?

We believe that the participants joining online will fully benefit from the training and mentorship opportunities offered by the conference since they can always participate actively by asking questions and providing commentary which will be read live on the sessions. We will also bring a professional video recording and streaming service to ensure all sessions of the conference are professionally captured, recorded and translated into French and Arabic. Unfortunately online participants will not fully benefit from the networking opportunities that maybe be available to participants attending in person, and this is purely because of the advantages of attending in person compared to attending online.

• Based on the survey, you want to focus on Community Trends and Innovation. Do you currently have any ideas on how it will be represented on the program?

Yes, it will be represented as “Community Trends and Innovation”, and this will be a session where some of the 20 invited WMF staff members will share with us recent community trends in the movement from their areas of expertise and we will discuss how we will be contributing or taking part as Africans in those trends. We will also discuss some of the recent innovations like AI and its implications thereof for the African continent.

• What are the ‘micro grants’ and what are you hoping to achieve? What will it cover and what qualifies a person or a group to be eligible to one?

Micro grants are small grants intended for communities who would like to organise a meetup or a watch party to join the conference as a group. They may choose and participate actively in specific sessions of the conference like the translation tool session/workshop, or how to navigate Wikidata and SPQRL session then continue with that workshop as a group after the session comes to an end at the conference. They may also choose to organise a watch party and follow the conference on YouTube without contributing to it, they may have an edit workshop linked to the theme or session of the conference or engage in conversations linked to the theme or sessions of the conference. The grants will cover transport, internet and catering. Grants will be awarded to especially those who have made an effort to find a GLAM partner to provide them with free accommodation or free Wifi or meet them halfway somehow.

• If you are referring to independent local meetups, how will it be organised and how will you monitor the carrying out of those meetups and their impact?

We will send out an application form which will require grant applicants to explain why they need to be funded?, which sessions they would be interested in?, if they have a GLAM partner?, how many people they expect to join the meetup?, what goals they would like to achieve with the meetup? Those who will receive the grant will be asked to create an event page on Meta which we will also follow to monitor the events. The Meta page will have to provide background of the event as well as state the intended goals to be achieved. At the end of the conference we shall ask them to provide a mini report which we will check against their application, we will also encourage them to send a video and pictures of their events.

• Scholarship distribution - “split Proposal for speaking at the conference” - I do not know if that’s what you meant, but session submissions should not be tied to scholarships. In other words - if a person got a scholarship, it doesn't mean they are now obligated to submit a session proposal as speakers. Speakers need to have the right and unique skill set to speak in front of an audience. We should evaluate scholarship candidates regardless of their submission.

This is noted, and I must add that we’ve actually experienced this from previous conferences. (tagging scholarship committee lead User:T Cells)

• It looks like you have a really strong and experienced team!

Thanks, in future we would like to have some of the functions of the WikiIndaba conference handled within WISCom by a dedicated team of experienced volunteers. Hence the Core Team of this conference is not necessarily South African volunteers. I'm happy to discuss this further.

• Risks - what do you know about South Africa’s current visa and immigration policy? Do you have concerns that specific nationalities will not be awarded a visa? Judging by this index it looks like many participants from the region will require a visa. Do you have any relationship or connection with the ministry to help with that?

We have a connection with the ministry, and in fact I notified them last year that we might have a conference this year and they indicated that visa approvals should not be an issue as long as our conference participants apply early. They did however indicate that we may have a problem with participants coming from Rwanda. I was asked to engage them once the participants from Rwanda are ready apply for visas.

• Do you currently have any collaboration with the Wikimedia francophone community? This is obviously a very important audience for this event but I don’t remember we ever talked about any strategic partnership with that community? Can you tell me if that is something you are thinking about, or do you consider that out of scope for this event?

Yes we do have, Some in our core organising team are French speakers and we plan to run the conference in English and French ( In person) and in English, French and Arabic online. This is also because the hotel has interpretation booths equipments.

Budget:

• I understand some participants are budgeted for 5 nights (based on the meal budget). Try to prioritize not more than 4 nights for this event.

This is noted, the 5 nights is aimed for particularly two members of our core organising team, this is Communication and Programmes whom I would need to arrive in South Africa before everyone else and join myself, Belinda and Dumisani to view the venue and iron out things before everyone else comes in. We also know from the previous conference that some participants may arrive earlier (due to cheap flights availability), we will weigh our options (do the maths) to see if a cheap flight ticket validates earlier arrival.

• We all love getting swag from conferences and events -- it is a tangible way to share our love for Wikimedia and let folks know we are part of the community. However, over the last several years reports on event swag practices have made it clear that they have a very damaging environmental footprint other than very high costs that are increasing. Therefore we now ask you to limit swag to low cost items like stickers. I see you are budgeting for 3 items per person - shirt, bag and bottle. This doesn't seem necessary. Please choose 1 item.

Noted. I’ve selected the T-shirt only and I’ve adjusted the budget accordingly.

• I see that the hotel provides its own shuttle services, so why do you need a separate Airport transfer budget item?

Indeed, the hotel does provide its own shuttle service, but they are outsourcing that service from somewhere else and add a fee which increases their price. So we decided to hire our own shuttle service which is actually lower than the hotel’s.

• Why are you budgeting for bus rental for 3 days if there is 1 social event?

We will be eating dinner out of the hotel for 2 nights and one night will be for the social event.

• Can you please elaborate on what the ‘Streaming and video recording’ costs include? This sounds like a lot. Do you also have any statistics or evidence on how the recordings from past years were used? How many views or people who participated online during past events maybe? I have a concern that this is a very high expense for very minimal use, especially when there are less expensive methods of recording and documenting.

This cost is for hiring a professional filming and video recording service provider who will be documenting and streaming the event for 3 days. Their services include 4 cameras ( and camera-man) with 1 camera based in the plenary room and the 3 cameras based in the breakout rooms for the duration of the conference, vision mixer operator table, picture taking, post production and streaming. And yes we’ve looked at past events and they had this service as well, it enabled the recording and documentation of all the sessions, they were also able to translate the recordings to different languages to make sure the conference is not limited to the people who attended the conferences. In Morocco for example, there were 74 videos recorded with 1173 views on the WikiIndaba YouTube channel for the conference.The Zoom Channel averaged 100 individual accounts joining online over the duration of the conference. This does not account for those joining as groups. I'm happy to connect you with Reda from Morocco who was part of the organising committee of WikiIndaba in Morocco and also part of this committee share the links and further stats with you.

Thank you again for submitting this proposal. When you're able, please respond to the questions on meta and revise the proposal on Fluxx if needed (I have sent the application back on Fluxx so you can edit it, just don't forget to re-submit when you are done). These revisions will be due by March 4, 2024 after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal to make the funding decisions.:: Indeed the hotel does provide its own shuttle service, but they are outsourcing that service from somewhere else and add a fee which increases the prices higher. So we decided to hire our own shuttle service which is actually lower than the hotel’s.

Best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 04:03, 27 February 2024 (UTC)