Grants:Conference/Algeria Wikimedians User Group/WikiArabia 2021 Remote Conference

The purpose and the vision of this remote WikiArabia 2021 is to provide an opportunity to the Wikipedians/Wikimedians of the Arab region to interact and to share their experiences and their activities. It is also a chance for the Arab community to bring up organisational problems and discuss possible solutions in order to enrich the quality and quantity of the content of Arabic projects. This edition is Also the conference where an Arab World Affiliate Committee will be established. This year's event will also serve to create several other affiliations across the Arab world.

Please add key information to the table below. The dates, location and number of participants can be estimates and do not need to be finalized at this time.

Proposed date(s)	TBD
Proposed location	Internet
Number of participants	150
Event page	WikiArabia/2021
Primary contact person	dezedien

Background

Community input

Use the results from the community engagement survey to fill in the table below. Since you cannot cover all topics or meet all needs at one event, prioritisation is important. Please rank the priority of each topic, skill, project or problem as high, medium or low. Finally, please answer the questions in the table below, if any of the questions are not relevant leave it blank.

	Description	Priority
Strategic discussions: What are the top issues affecting your community that need to be discussed in person?	We will prioritize the strategic discussion especially on 1. Systematic approach to improve satisfaction and productivity 2. Funding for underrepresented communities, 3. Increased awareness about the Wikimedia Movement 7. Revenue generation for the Movement	HIGH
Capacity development: Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn?	Developpement of editorial and technical skills	HIGH
Working groups: Are there joint projects that need to be planned in person?	All the event will be held remotely, only the core organizing team will be present together at the conference to ensure the conference.	LOW
Community building: Are there other in-person activities are important for community building?	Learn about the arab and the international community, harvest the aspiration of the communities in the MENA (Remote)	HIGH

Survey analysis:

How many people did you send the survey to? :500 mass messages on wikipedia arabic + 3 days on banner + all by reaching arabic and global community on social media How many people responded to the survey? 133
Did you see consensus around shared goals that this community wants to focus on in the next 12 months? What were the top 2 goals? Yes
Based on survey responses, what are the most important things your community should do at the conference to achieve those goals? increase their skills in general

We have received very good feedback on the organization of the Arabic remote wiki

The survey period for Wiki Arabia Algeria lasted 12 days Since the survey was started, we have received : 126 responses in Arabic, 5 in English, 2 in French and from everyone we received help from the Arabic wikipedia project to broadcast mass messages and a banner for 3 days

A preliminary reading of the survey:

We were able to capture the desires of the community on the most important topics Choosing a date that suits everyone for the conference The length of the conference that suits everyone It is very interesting to discover that female participation increased during the survey to almost 20%,

A more detailed report will be published on a subpage of the conference once we have all analyzed, so that the whole community can benefit from it.

Context

It is helpful to get an understanding of why this event is important to your community, and what experiences you have had in the past. Please answer the applicable questions below.

1. What inspired your community to begin planning this event?

The previous conferences have inspired us to continue and specially with the emergence of new users group in the Arab community, Sudan, Emirates, Mauritania, and the recent formation of an Arab group that is active throughout the region, there is also attempt for gulf UG .

2. How does this event relate to other activities that your community is working on?

The results of this conference will help other existing groups and new groups and even future groups to strengthen the links between the community especially the increase of experience in all areas

3. Do you have any Thematic or Regional committee or group? (Such as WISCom, CEE, Iberocoop, etc).

No

Plan

Venue and Logistics

1. Do you have any proposed venue for the event? If so, please share details (such as: how far is it from the airport or transportation hub; how close is it to the hotel, do you anticipate any challenges with using the space for the event you are planning?)

The event will be held remotely

2. Is the event venue and hotel accessible for people with physical disabilities?

The event will be held remotely

3. Are you planning to outsource some of the services? For example - a travel agency, an event production service?

The event will be held remotely

Friendly space policy

Friendly space policy for Wikimedia Foundation events will be used for this event.

Participation

It is crucial that most participants have a minimum level of Wikimedia experience so that they can engage actively in workshops and discussions. Please answer all applicable questions below.

1. Please describe the target audience for this conference or event.

Attendees are active Arab speaking contributors on Wikimedia projects, and also other people working on open knowledge questions, as well as local Algerian contributors.

2. If your conference has an outreach component to also target non-wikimedian individuals or mission aligned institutions, can you explain your intention for this outreach (for example: how will you ensure engagement with these participants after the conference, and what impact do you see them having on the projects)?

Since the participants will be chosen based on their activity and therefore their commitment, the follow-up will be done through social networks and online meetings. An email will be sent three months after the conference to the participants to hear from them and get their updates.

3. Are you thinking about collaborating with potential partners? Such as national; educational or thematic groups and organizations? If so, will this partnership be a financial one (such as sponsorship), or a visionary one (to collaborate in regards to the content of the event)? Please share some details if you have any.

The Foundation's staff will be invited, we wish to invite the current executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, and the co-founder of Wikipedia (Jimmy Wales) in order to encourage the local community and promote the foundation and the open knowledge work in Algeria. Among the teams of the Foundation we’re thinking on inviting members working on the following fields: Wikipedia Education Program, Community Resources team, the legal team, Communications, Learning and Evaluation (Operations), Community Programs, Talent and Culture, LangCom.

4. In which ways can Wikimedia Foundation staff support your event onsite? If you would like support, please list the different capacities in which we can support, or describe how you would like Wikimedia Foundation staff to be involved in the event. (Some examples of Wikimedia Foundation support or involvement might be: for outreach and communication efforts; to lead specific sessions; for legal or safety reasons, etc).

Because the event will be at remote, we will need to involve the staff in the presentations to share their experiences and set up workshops, and get in touch with the community to transfer the experiences.

Resources and risks

Describe the resource potential for successfully executing this project and the key risks/threats.

Resources

Organizing team

Team	User Names
WMF Liaison	dezedien, Reda Kerbouche, Nacim Aboura
Logistics	Adel Nehaoua
Conference Program	dezedien, Ismail Trabelsi, Mekkia Benama,
Communications	TBD
Volunteer Coordinators	dezedien
Other team members	Zakaria M., Muhammed amine benloulou.

Risks

We have internet bandwidth concerns, :

We will use the infrastructure of a hotel center, and as a backup a second server based in Russia so that during the conference there will be no outage

Budget

Event budget table

Nr.	Item description	Unit	Quantity	Cost in DZD	Cost in USD	Comments
1.	Travel costs				150,49 USD
1.1	Domestic travel costs	participant	2	20 000,00 DZD	150,49 USD
2.	Accommodation & catering				1 027,68 USD
2.1	Accommodation technical team	double rooms * nights	2 x 3	85 608,00 DZD	644,02 USD	Accommodation in double rooms
2.2	Lunch / Dinner / Break	day/participant	2 X 3	51 000,00 DZD	383,66 USD
3.	Remote event costs				4106.16 USD
3.1	Office for the conference	days	3	183 336,00 DZD	1 379,21 USD
3.2	Wifi Connection	days	1	60 000,00 DZD	451,38 USD
3.3	Software for meeting ZOOM	1 year	1	4 6210,58 DZD	350,00 USD	Pricing for month
3.4	cloud storage account	1 year	1	19 985,00 DZD	150,35 USD
3.5	Plugin for subtiles (otter.ai)	30 days	1	3.961,35 DZD	30,00 USD
3.6	Human translators	3 days	3	30 000,00 DZD	225,69 USD
3.7	Design / logo / graphic charter		1	200 000,00 DZD	1 504,58 USD
3.8	Video Jingle (Placeit soft)		1	1 974,08 DZD	14,95 USD	Pricing for month
4.	Additionnal expenses				4 965,11 USD
4.1	Raffle for participants	Raffle	10	50 000,00 DZD	376,15 USD	Online subscriptions, gift cards ... (10 000 DZD/winner)
4.2	Emergency & contingencies	-	-	50 000,00 DZD	376,15 USD	Social event
4.3	Compensation 4 months full time	-	-	560 000,00 DZD	4 212,81 USD	for 2 full-time managers
TOTAL					10 249,44 USD

Total cost of event: The total estimated cost of the event is around 10 249,44 USD.

Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program: The total amount requested from the conference and event grant program is 10 249,44 USD.

Please confirm that you are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

Yes, we do confirm that we are aware that changes to the budget beyond 10 % needs approval in advance.

Discussion

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Conference Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.