Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/TexasWP at SXSW 2025 (ID: 22894808)

Date uncertainty

Preparation starts at least a week out, and writeups and follow-ups continue after the last of the series of events. So I listed the month around the scheduled sessions as the timeframe. –SJ talk  06:06, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Name

As part of the purpose here is to coordinate across the many Wiki events happening around SXSW, this should probably be renamed to something like SXSWiki 2025 with annual updates to the SXSW page. The largest event will be a gathering of Texas Wikipedians, but since drafting the idea an additional session (the Wiki Future session with IA and CC) was added to the schedule, and the hackathon which began as an idea for local devs, expanded to include other topics that people coming into town were excited to present and hack on.

I don't want to further confuse any internal databases of names, but let me know if there's a standard way to rename after a proposal has been saved. –SJ talk  06:10, 2 December 2024 (UTC)

Ok, I think now I've successfully deleted the duplicate proposal, and submitted this one fully, in Fluxx itself. –SJ talk  19:32, 5 December 2024 (UTC)

@Sj: As far as I know, there's not a clean way to do this unless the entire proposal is deleted and recreated on Fluxx under a new title. Because Fluxx (and the associated bot) work one-directionally in writing to Meta-wiki in terms of creating and updating pages, there isn't a way to rename pages in way that is similar to moving a pagetitle. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 06:47, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

Thanks, I'm learning. –SJ talk  20:20, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

Hello Sj, and thanks for this proposal supporting various activities related to gatherings and activities at SXSW. Please see my questions below:

• I appreciate you bringing feedback from WCNA last year to help inform this proposal to help gather Wikimedians in this community together. I agree there is a lot of benefit to connecting new and experienced editors together in some of the proposed activities you've named here.
• The proposed tasks under the meetup themes (developing a calendar, contact lists, introduction to movement tools) also seem valuable in building some core capacities around communication and supporting both participants and potential event organizers in the community.
• One aspect of eligibility that is unclear for me in this proposal is that Rapid Funds can't be used to fund conference participation in general. The budget and related work must be specific to supporting their participation in events independent from conference itself, like the proposed meetup or the hackathon. Rapid Funds isn't resourced to be able to equitably support conference participation in the movement, even if that conference is local. Can you confirm that funding will not be used to support people to generally attend or participate in SXSW, and if not, can the proposal be revised to adjust this?
• Fiscal sponsors are not required or typically needed for Rapid Funds. Is there a reason one is needed or preferred in this case?

Please let me know if you have any questions or needs for clarity. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 07:26, 13 March 2025 (UTC)

• • Hello I JethroBT (WMF)! Funds are only for covering the cost of renting a shared venue, organizing food for the meetups, and the like. No funds are being allocated to tickets to attend the event. (SXSW has comped us six free event passes for a range of wiki-related work, but that's not part of this request). The fiscal sponsor is noted here as they are already a point of contact for the venue, we would send funds to them to cover venue costs anyway, no need for the extra hop. They are also providing some matching funding [covering whatever grants like this do not].
  • While the calendar caught up with us, we went ahead with most of this plan, bringing in other groups to share the space and with additional help and sponsorship from WMNYC around the gathering happening today (now a Wikicurious event!). Across the week's events we have a solid list of interested local and regional participants so far. We could still use a revised $2k of the proposal to recoup costs from the rest of the week; I can resubmit a revised budget if helpful. –SJ talk  20:20, 14 March 2025 (UTC)

@Sj: Thanks for these clarifications. Unfortunately, the decision to conduct the event before a funding decision was made introduces some important eligibility issues such that we cannot proceed with funding:

• The Rapid Fund program is not a reimbursement program. Applications need to be for future, planned activities based on our eligibility criteria. Importantly, this means that activities or spending that requires funding cannot before a funding decision is made.
• Funding decisions for the current round are expected on or before 28 March, whereupon some time is needed to transfer funds for approved proposals. For a proposal to be eligible, its funded activities have to begin 11 April or later. This proposal's start date was set for 1 March, well before this date, and unfortunately, proposals where activities are planned to begin earlier than that are not eligible for review. Sometimes, we support grantees to shift the timeline of their activities, but it seems unlikely that it could have been changed in this case.
• I am going to suggest we meet to discuss these circumstances more, as I am open to funding any activities or work related to these events that has not yet started, but want to be clear that the purpose of the funding cannot be to reimburse past activities. I will reach out separately to discuss this.

With thanks, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 19:36, 18 March 2025 (UTC)

I submitted at the start of December, aiming for that cycle, and did not expect it to be reviewed for the Feb 15 cycle. The dates in the proposal had passed (or were about to) by the time of your reply above, which is what I meant by the calendar catching up to us :) This event week has wrapped now, but thanks for returning to leave a comment, we assumed that the proposal had simply not been accepted for review. Maybe there's a way to make explicit what cycle a given proposal is being considered for (or has expressly not been considered for)? Cheers, –SJ talk  21:18, 18 March 2025 (UTC)