Grants talk:TPS/Jim Carter/Lua Annual Workshop

Questions about your participation

Dear Jim Carter,

Thank you for your interest in representing Wikimedia projects at the Lua Annual Workshop. As you've noted, Lua plays an important role in templates on Wikipedia and having an active Wikipedian like yourself attend this event makes sense. Typically, we would prefer to have a Wikipedian local to the event represent the movement in order to improve the impact-to-cost ratio. In light of that, can you please respond to the following questions:

• Funding international travel would make sense if your participation would bring unique benefits to Indic language Wikipedias that a local volunteer could not. You mention that none of the Indic language Wikipedias currently use Lua as their backend for the templates, and that, as a result of attending, you would help Indic community with framing and understanding Lua scripting. Please provide more detail about how attending this event would help you achieve this goal and what your plan is to follow-up after the event to make this happen.

• Given the high costs of travel, we would prefer to see a more detailed participation plan. Although it is useful for you to give a talk, we are not sure the talk alone will create a sufficient level of engagement to prompt ongoing, self-motivated participation in Wikimedia projects by other attendees of the Lua Annual Workshop. Do you have any other plans to engage Workshop attendees through other methods than your talk (i.e hackathon session, lunchtime discussion table, online meetup space, collecting contact information and sending follow-up communication after the event, something else....).

Please provide your answers directly on this page.

Thank you!

--Marti (WMF) (talk) 18:11, 31 August 2016 (UTC)

Hello Marti! Thank you for your questions!

• Basically, I need to understand how much more we can benefit from Lua scripting language, in what other ways (other than templates) we can use Lua to integrate Wikipedia (Benefit for not just Indic users), I'll be discussing this aspects to the main developers of Lua during the post-workshop and meetup times. Lua, though being a lightweight scripting language is capable of doing tasks that JavaScript couldn't do. We Indic users never got a single workshop or talk regarding this scripting language and its implement, more than half of the fellow contributors from India is unaware of Lua altogether. My aim is to organize workshops on Lua scripting (hackathons) after my participation in the Lua Annual Workshop. Out of 24 Indic languages, only a few wikis uses a little bit of Lua in the templates, yet they are unaware of how to use (They just copied the modules from English Wikipedia). Even no one helped me with Lua, there has never been any workshops in India, I self-learned Lua programming, though the Lua mailing list was helpful. With my involvement in organizing India's biggest WikiConference this year, I've quite mastered the skills of organizing events. I'm planning to give workshops to Indic users about scripting in Lua only after I'm 100% sure that what I'm telling them is the right answer to their questions, for which I need to attend their workshop, to gain more skills. And from what I can see, Indic users are enthusiastic to learn how Lua module works on Wikipedia, and interested for a workshop. Apart from this, I have recently started doing Education programs and Tech sessions in Technical Institutes, where I would like to enlighten the technical students with templates (lua module) alongside Mediawiki API and bot.

• Yes, during the workshop I have plans to show (in a group discussion) the fellow attendees about how we implement Lua. Which will infact be a method I think will help in engaging them with Wikipedia. During that group discussion, I would encourage them to ask questions regarding the usage and discuss further development, which in turn will connect them to Wikipedia. From my perspective, I think the fellow attendees will be enthusiastic to learn more when they find that- volunteers can help in technical fields of Wikipedia. Most people are not aware about that. Most people know that they can edit Wikipedia, but they are not aware that they can create templates, create user gadgets, help creating third party tools (AWB, Stiki, bots) etc. When a global meeting of developers takes place like this, it is very reasonable that many would contact me (instead of me approaching them. I will approach them anyway) when they learn that Wikipedia is also a place for developers. Every year over 500 participant comes to the workshop and I am confident that my approach will be a benefit that would be much more than the investment.

I can understand Wikipedian local to the event is helpful, but I feel, my involvement will help (more than 800 indic active users) others too.

I feel even if a wikipedian local to the event attends (Event taking place in an English language speaking country), they would benefit English or a specific language Wikipedia. But here I will benefit a whole (Indian) community, those who works on more than 24 indic Wikipedias. Jim Carter (talk) 12:09, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Request funded

Dear Jim Carter,

Thank you for answering the questions I posted on your talkpage. Your plan to offer workshops and hackathons focused on Lua sounds like a great way to share your knowledge from this event. Also, it sounds like you are prepared to actively engage participants in the event in discussion about contributing to Wikipedia. We think your participation plan suggests that the impact justifies your international travel request and we're happy to approve your request.

Please review the next steps for your grant as described in "How the program works". Your post-event report must provide a link to an outcome from your participation. We recommend that you start planning your outcome now so you are prepared to submit it as part of your report, which is due 14 days after the event. Note that an outcome does not include the materials you prepare to present at the event (though we’d like you to link to those, too), but something that is created during or after the event because of your participation, such as a link to something new that was co-created by you and your fellow participants at the event, a blog post you wrote to share your experience with others after the event, or a learning pattern to teach others something you've learned at the event. If you choose to make a learning pattern, think creatively about what you learned. Simce you have special expertise about engaging a specific community (for example, Indic users), your learning pattern might focus on a strategy you employed that was successful in engaging that specific audience in our projects.

Our Grants Administrator will be in touch with you about your grant. Thank you for work on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation.

Warm regards, --Marti (WMF) (talk) 15:30, 7 September 2016 (UTC)

visit the WMF?

Hi there, User:Jim Carter!
Congratulations on this grant! When you are in SF area for this event in October, do you expect to have time to come into the WMF office? It would be lovely to see you. KLove (WMF) (talk) 19:01, 14 September 2016 (UTC)

Hello Katy! I just send you an email regarding this. Please check :) Jim Carter (talk) 19:21, 14 September 2016 (UTC)