Grants talk:Project/Rapid/WMGUG/Africa Open Data Conference/Report

Report extension

As communicated over email, the submission date for this report has been extended to 31 August. If any further changes or updates are anticipated, please be sure to post them on this page and ping us at rapidgrantswikimedia.org. Thank you!
Best,
Morgan Jue (WMF) (talk) 23:12, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

@Masssly, Sandiooses, and Flixtey: Thanks very much the report on the open data conference, and please accept my apologies for the long delay in my review. Here are my comments:

• I'm glad to see that you were able to attract an sizable audience that was unfamiliar with Wikimedia projects. The participation goals are slightly under, but on average, you did attract around 30 people, so I would call that goal reached. Given that your event had some important successes.

• It's interesting to see that at least some participants in your audience were more interested in how to use Wikidata rather than contribute to it. In the future, have you considered hosting events that strictly focus on the utility of Wikidata and how to use it? I'm not certain whether this would attract a larger audience per se compared to attendance at this conference, but it might attract a different audience that stands to benefit from knowing how Wikidata might be useful for them.

The Wikimedia Ghana UG has had a Wikidata only event. We kept the attendance minimal as you rightly observed that we may not attract a larger attendance. Compared to Wikipedia, Wikidata doesn't have as many events so we are willing this year to have more Wikidata focused events. Sandiooses (talk) 22:58, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Hi I JethroBT (WMF), it's not yet clear when the next Africa Open Data Conference (AODC) will happen (would likely be in 2019), but yes, we've thought about adding an event at the next AODC that focuses solely on the practical use of Wikidata. Like mentioned in the report, some participants at the conference were already established data scientists whose sole purpose at the event wasn't to learn how to contribute to it, but rather to learn how to utilise Wikidata's 40 million statements. That set of audience might be few, but I also agree that we'd have to cater for them as well. Locally, and in the meant time, as Sandiooses wrote, the usergroup is looking forward to hosting Wikidata events in Ghana in the coming year; at least one of which would be focused on the "utility of Wikidata and how to use it".—M@sssly^✉ 21:38, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

• Would you consider doing a session at this kind of conference again in the future? If so, given that you had some success during this conference, could you use that to advocate for a slot during the main conference?

Hello, my involvement was more of putting our sessions together – space, food, volunteers etc on behalf of the user group so I can speak on those issues. In the future the user is likely to participate in such a conference. However some if these conditions must be noted. Conference organisers are not privy to our grant processes. Changes here and there, demands for how we run our sessions that came in could have brought overspending.

More changes to dates and venues by conference organisers brought some stress to the user group volunteers. This kind of activity is better suited to paid people who can fully dedicate some days to getting stuff done especially when some of the sessions were on a working day. Conference organisers went about things as though the user group was using full time staff.

Communication and the publicity we had to do for our sessions was a lot of work. Sandiooses (talk) 22:58, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Yes we're eagerly looking forward to participating again at the next AODC. One thing Sandiooses mentioned that I would like to reiterate: Although I was mostly engaged as the resource person, I'm aware that the behind the scenes arrangement of the event was incredibly arduous, but at the same time it served as a good learning experience for us. Unlike local events whereby the usergroup gets to decide everything, the AODC as an international event was different. I know the WMF is keen on preventing volunteer burnout but at the same time the present grants policies (I believe) do not allow for the compensation of volunteer time (efforts), hence I want to ask whether the WMF might be able to directly help manage planning such events on behalf of volunteers in the future?—M@sssly^✉ 21:38, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

This report is officially approved, but please respond to my questions above when you are able. Thanks for your work preparing and running these sessions at the Africa Open Data Conference. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 21:21, 15 December 2017 (UTC)