Talk:Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2018/Bids/Ukraine

Some questions

Hello @Taras r:! Hello WMUA colleagues!
Thank you for the great bid, I enjoyed reading it. While doing so, I got some questions and comments:

• Your proposed date for the CEE Meeting is really early, as there is only one month between Wikimania 2018 (July 18–22) and your proposed date (August 17–19). Is this the only option? Would there be any possibility to have a Lviv CEE Meeting in September or October?

  We think it is better to have an event in August, first of all, because the campus would be ours only (almost no students). And we also believe that it would be a good opportunity to have new people attend CEEM, as affiliates / communities might consider sending different people to these important events. September is also an option, and the 1st half of October (namely October 13 - 15, 2018, as then we have holidays in Ukraine). But we would be able to lock the dates only after the bid is approved. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:28, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• Looking at your budget, the columns "Total cost" and "USD" are always equal, is this a mistake? Or is it that I don't understand something?

  The budget is in USD, UAH is not very stable, so we plan (and accordingly) receive our grants from Wikimedia Foundation in USD. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:33, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• The buffer ("Unforeseen costs") says 1000 and 600 at the same time. What is the correct amount?

  Yes, we corrected that. Thanks! --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:33, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• I didn't understand the costs of the venue rent and how much you get as an in-kind donation. Could you clarify that?

I have the same question - Do I understand correctly that the total cost is 250 USD a day, of which WMUA will cover 80 USD and the donation will be 170 USD? --Misosoof (talk) 09:02, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Yes, the total cost per day day would be 250 USD (approximately), we expect that WMUA will cover 80 USD, and 170 USD will be in-kind donation from the University. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:33, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• “The venue provides enough WiFi capacity for 100 people”. To be honest, this does not sound promising. Don't forget, having 100 people you need at least 200 log-ins, as basically everyone uses at least 2 devices. Is there a way that you could guarantee us a stable wifi connection?

  I have checked with the venue. The WiFi is stable and covers all 6 floors. It can support over 200 log-ins. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:38, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• Have you considered cuts on your "Materials and gifts for participants"? Do we need "pens, notebooks, t-shirt or bags etc"? Please don't forget that we are using Movement (as in: donor) money for these costs, and I would advise to try to save as much as possible.

  We think that it is a good idea to give some sort of a visual reminder of a conference to participants, so that they can give visibility to CEE by wearing a T-shirt or bringing a bag to events in their country. The materials line cannot be reduced (participants still need badges and programmes) but the gift line can be reduced if needed. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:33, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• (I asked the same question to the WMRS bid:) The bid focuses obviously mostly on logistics, which is the purpose of this bidding process. Have you, however, considered to change anything in the program design, compared to previous CEE meetings?

  We thought of doing it the same way to Poland did it (setting up an International Programm Committee, with WMUA facilitating their work), unless the CEE community would like to change it. We indeed thought that the main goal of the bid is the logistics, we think that what to change and how to change should be decided by the entire community in a discussion led and faciliated by the chapter that will be hosting the event. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:38, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• Please take my questions and comments only with the intention to improve the bid :) Thank you, --Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE) (talk) 09:50, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you! --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:50, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Air connections

How are the connections from CEE capitals to Liov? There seem to be around 5-10 flights a day to the most important hubs in the region, but at somewhat weird times, which would probably lead to long travel times overall.--Strainu (talk) 08:47, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

@Strainu: We expect that one-way travel from most capitals will take less than 6 hours (for instance, for Bucharest it is 4.5 hours with a stopover in Vienna).

You can find the current timetable of the Lviv International Airport (LWO) here. There are currently daily flights from/to Istanbul, Minsk, Munich, Vienna, Warsaw, wll at reasonable times (usually around noon). Other capitals like Baku or Berlin also have regular direct (but not daily) flights. In addition there are at least two flights per day to Kyiv Boryspil (KBP) which has direct flights to many European capitals, and current Ukraine International Airlines fares basically make flights to Lviv via Boryspil cheaper than direct flights to Boryspil. The Mayor of Lviv and his administration are currently actively working on opening new routes, so we expect to see more direct flights to Lviv in 2018.

There are also direct train connections to Bratislava, Budapest, Minsk, Moscow, Prague and Warsaw (as well as non-capital Krakow, Mahilyow and Wroclaw). Note that spellings on that website are weird so if you don't manage to find your city try just to write it differently.

For other destinations we advice travelling with stopover in Munich (Western Europe), Warsaw (Central Europe), Vienna or Istanbul (Balkans and Southern Europe), Kyiv (Eastern Europe) or Minsk (Russia). We will be able to provide more accurate information once 2018 summer timetable is available — NickK (talk) 10:00, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Questions by Misosoof

Dear Ukrainian partners,

Firstly, I would like to thank you for your interest in organizing CEE Meeting again next year and for putting together this proposal! Although everything is generally clear in the proposal I would like to ask couple of additional questions and add couple of comments from my part.

Questions

• You propose to hold event in Lviv UCU library building. I would like to hear more about the venue. How many parallel sessions are planned, i.e. how many rooms and with which capacity you plan to rent? How difficult will it be to rearrange conference rooms (from auditory to u-shape to circle)?

  We plan to have one general room for up to 160-180 people and provide room for two parallel sessions (maximum is 80 people), and also host smaller meetups or trainings (20-30 people). I have heard that there was a “corner” for this in Poland, but it would have been better to have a proper room, especially for trainings. The rearranging is not difficult, it would require moving chairs if needed. As the Center has a lot of rooms, we would try to arrange to have different rooms rather than rearranging the chairs, or plan the programm in such a way, that the sessions would be happening in the required space. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• Wikimedia CEE Meetings are known for late night discussion groups and activities. Have you planned to have space for such activities on Friday and on Sunday in the hotel? Does it reflect in your budget?

  Yes, we plan to have space for them, it is not reflected in our budget, as we hope to get them from the hotel for free or for some small amount of money, and that would be covered under unforeseen expenses. As User:Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE) wrote about: we should “try to save as much as possible”, and paying for this would be considered last (I have also heard that people just hosted this activities in their hotel rooms in Poland). --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• Would it be possible to add a spreadsheet to your proposal that gives more detail on how international travel costs were calculated?

  We did not prepare a separate spreadsheet for calculating travel expenses, but used the data from the previous year: Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2014/Travel. Lviv should be cheaper for people travelling from Central Europe (shorter distance) and for people travelling with UIA (if you take a return flight to Kyiv with UIA, you get a connection to Lviv for free), in addition, we expect to save some money by buying tickets in advance. Our rough estimations show that the same budget is needed. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• In your budget you state that technical support consists of filming of the event. Does it also include basic editing?

  Yes, it includes basic editing. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• The main difference in the budgets of your proposal and the one by Wikimedia Serbia is lodging costs. Is your quote based on an actual offer and realistic? Have you visited the premises and ensure the quality of accommodation?

  I believe that everything is cheaper in our proposal (but for international travel), but the lodging is indeed the most significant one. The cost indeed is low, but that’s because it is for students / teachers / guests of the University mostly. We have not been to the hotel itself, but the pictures and description of what the rooms include look okay. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• You state that following a good Wikimedia tradition it makes sense to organize event with a GLAM institution. Are there any activities planned to make use of that? What are (potential) outcomes of organizing the event in a library for CEE collab, WMUA and for UCU?

  Yes, Lviv has a lot of GLAM institutions (museums, libraries, galleries and archives) we would like to partner with, and we believe an international event would help us a lot. We have a small presence in the UCU right now - just some educational courses run by a teacher or two. Working with them closely on organising this event will help us to establish more profound ties with the University, and we hope to be able to use the library for our future events. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Comments

• Unforeseen costs are roughly 1.6% of total planned costs. As a somewhat experienced project manager I think that this is not enough for a project of that scale and I recommend to reconsider.

  I have changed to 1000 USD, thank you!--Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

• I appreciate that you have estimated time allocation of team members in your bid. However I would prefer the use of unit "hour" instead of "month" in staff/volunteer time use calculations. But it is just a personal preference.

  I think it should have been specified in the bid then. We have calculated that as max 4 hours per day, so 2 months will be 240 hours and so on. I shall change that if I have enough time before the deadline. --Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:48, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

This was just a minor detail and personal preference and for me provided clarification would have been enough to understand use of human resources on this project. The main issue here is variation between work cultures and traditions and full-time equivalents between countries. So thank you for the explanation and change in proposal! --Misosoof (talk) 04:28, 15 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your time and kind attention! --Misosoof (talk) 09:02, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Thank you!--Нестеренко Оля (talk) 15:50, 14 October 2017 (UTC)

Dear Нестеренко Оля, thank you so much for taking time to answer also my questions and comments! It helps me to understand your bid better and hopefully it provides some more detail for the committee. Дякую! --Misosoof (talk) 04:28, 15 October 2017 (UTC)