Grants:Conference/Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference 2022

statusFunded

WM UK/Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference 2022

The Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference aims to bring people together to share their experiences of working on sharing information in minority and minoritized languages. Our aim is to help people learn how to direct the flow of information across language barriers and support their communities. As in previous years we will have a strong focus on Wikidata and its potential to support languages.

targetMinority and minoritized language Wikipedias

strategic priorityIncreasing Participation

event dates1 July 2022 - 2 July 2022

amount-localGB£27,152.84

amountUS$35,646.25

typeOrganization

nonprofitYes

creator• Daria Cybulska (WMUK)

contact• daria.cybulska

wikimedia.org.uk• Richard Nevell richard.nevell

wikimedia.org.uk

organization• Wikimedia UK

website• https://wikimedia.org.uk/

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Event overview

Purpose and vision

Please give a brief description of the event you are planning. What do you hope to accomplish during the event? Why is this event important for your community?

The Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference aims to bring people together to share their experiences of working on sharing information in minority and minoritized languages. Our aim is to help people learn how to direct the flow of information across language barriers and support their communities. As in previous years we will have a strong focus on Wikidata and its potential to support languages.

Driven by the vision of Wikimedia UK, together with local partners and fellow Wikimedia chapters, the Celtic Knot carries the experience of five annual editions, including two online events. In each of the first five years, the conference has spotlighed a language or language family, and the participants can learn more about the cultural context as well as the state of the Wikimedia projects in these languages. For the 2022 edition, Wikimedia UK, with the support of Wikimedia Deutschland, proposes a broader approach, with an emphasis on skills development for a diverse group of participants.

Our vision is to provide a workshop-focused online gathering aimed at developing concrete skills and uncovering specific issues and challenges experienced by Wikimedians from minority communities. Participants will be invited to propose and participate in workshops most relevant to them, as per the subsidiarity principle. We are planning a range of offerings, some technical (infoboxes), entry level (translate property labels in your language), or more focused on community management.

The Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference is a place where people working on growing and maintaining their communities (on Wikipedia, but also Wikisource or Wikidata) can meet, learn from each other and support each other on topics like community growth, technical tools or collaboration with partners. Over the years, during the Celtic Knot events, we have enabled a range of outcomes such as connections being made between Wikimedians and local institutions, groups of Wikimedians helping each other to create Wikidata infoboxes in their languages, or revive a Wikipedia community that was dormant. After five editions, the Celtic Knot is supported by a group of engaged, committed community members who cherish this conference and are willing to onboard newcomers, expanding the original topic of Celtic languages into a broader, inclusive concept that welcomes language communities from beyond the core Celtic language family.

Do you consider this to be a Regional; Thematic or Growth event? You can read more about each category here.

The conference is primarily a thematic event around diverse languages on the Wikimedia projects. Beyond their location and country of origin, the participants will exchange ideas, knowledge and skills related to the topic of underrepresented languages on the Wikimedia projects. There is a strong secondary regional theme to the conference, as it aims to gather the community of a specific region or language around the Wikimedia projects.

Is it a Remote, or in-person event?

This event will have a mixed format, with the main event being an online-focused programme and optional in-person events after the conference which can be added by local communities where restrictions allow. Some local followup gatherings will be supported, e.g. local community meetings after the event. This will only be held on an intra-country level without international travel, e.g an event in the UK would be attended by people based in the UK. Most of the content will be delivered and available online, allowing for an inclusive programme reaching a wide audience and a flexible approach if local conditions mean that in-person events are no longer advisable. The conference will not involve international travel.

Important details

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)	1-2 July
Proposed location	Online
Number of participants	We are hoping to have on average 10 active participants and 30 watchers in each of the 6 workshops. Overall, we hope to be able to reach out to 100 different people over the 2 days of the online event. The number of participants for onsite gatherings will depend on local regulations for onsite gatherings in various countries - at that point, we can guess that we will integrate 5-6 local gatherings to the conference, involving 50 people in total.
Event page	TBD
Primary contact person	Wikimedia UK: Daria Cybulska (WMUK) (daria.cybulska wikimedia.org.uk)

Background

Community input

In January 2022, we ran a survey of the existing Celtic Knot community (participants of previous conferences) and people active in the underrepresented languages groups. We adapted the proposed survey template to fit the format of the conference, released the survey in four languages (see the questions here), and distributed it to various channels where our community is active. We also directly invited a number of individuals to feed back, where we felt their opinion would be particularly useful. We received 35 anonymous answers from people involved in 40 different Wikimedia projects and collected plenty of very useful feedback and suggestions.

In the form, we made preliminary proposals of workshop topics along our initial vision for this event. These proposals were received positively: the topic of community management and recruitment scored the highest with 74% of survey respondents who think it would be useful to their community. Two proposals based on reusing data from Wikidata (creating articles based on Wikidata items, and Wikidata-powered infoboxes) received more than 60% of approval.

In the following questions, we asked respondents to share their wishes and ideas of workshops and sessions that they would like to see at the Celtic Knot conference, and what they would like to learn during this event. We received many quality responses that helped us create a map of the needs and main concerns of the underrepresented languages communities.

Main areas created by the respondents of the Celtic Knot Conference survey: Wikidata & centralized data, Abstract Wikipedia, Editing & translation, Editing together, Community building, Growth, Tools & development, Context & advocacy, Networking, Social events. The areas highlighted in blue are the ones we are focusing on during the 2022 edition of the conference.

Several proposals were mentioned multiple times, which help us identify the most important topics that should be addressed during the conference:

Wikidata: editing and reusing lexicographical data, building queries
Networking: exchange with other groups, learn from each other, compare experiences
Growth: how to onboard new editors and improve the quality and quantity of articles

The survey respondents also highlighted the wish for onsite gatherings, the need of scholarships to allow people to attend the online event, and share their excitement about the upcoming conference.

Although these results are showing a broad range of topics and session ideas, we keep in mind that we cannot answer every need with the conference program, and we will be selective so that we can create a cohesive, engaging programme which is engaging for the audience.. While we cannot incorporate all suggested sessions, some may be addressed by previous conferences and will have video documentation which we can reshare with the community; it may also be possible to address some of these topics during other Wikimedia events, such as regional conferences or Wikimania.

In addition to this focused survey, at Wikimedia UK we have a track record of evaluating previous iterations of this conference. For Arctic Knot in 2021, in collaboration with Wikimedia Norway we ran a post-event attendee survey - there were 36 responses and 100% said they intended to attend Celtic Knot again. The opening speech by President Keskitalo moved many participants, pointing to the emotional importance of talking about the beauty of being able to live your life online in your own language. Other people highlighted the value of connecting with language communities from all over the world, and reconnecting with participants from previous conferences - which makes us very confident that this conference has an ongoing value and importance.

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 annual Celtic Knot as supported by Wikimedia UK and run in collaboration with various partners and wiki communities has become an established event of our movement. In 2021 we have pivoted to online because the value of delivering this to the community is very high - supporting groups, building shared practice, providing safe spaces to learn and discuss barriers are vital to the survival of diversity of language across wikis. There’s an expectation and hope that there would be another iteration of this community event in 2022. The post-conference survey in 2021 also showed a 100% support for another event. What has particularly inspired us to run the event in 2022 is an opportunity to try a different format while we still need to focus on online events. The workshop-led format gives us an opportunity to experiment and maximise the usefulness of the event. For example, we are considering two levels of participation, active workshop attendees and ‘observers’ through a platform such as a livestream on youtube. The workshops could also be recorded for documentation and future circulation.

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

WMUK’s key strategic programme is ‘Increase the engagement and representation of marginalised people and subjects’ and within this we ‘Support the development of minority and indigenous language Wikipedias’. This means we aim to support the development of minority language Wikipedias, often within the context of Celtic Knot which we have been supporting for a number of years. Wikimedia Deutschland is developing Wikibase, the Mediawiki extension powering Wikidata, supports the international Wikidata community to make sure that the project is thriving, with various events and community engagement projects. We are also facilitating the onboarding of new editors by making it easier for Wikipedia communities to monitor, edit and reuse data from Wikidata. Since 2018, we enabled lexicographical data on Wikidata, which allows editors to describe words and phrases and reuse them on other Wikimedia projects. In 2022, we have a strategic focus on supporting underserved minority languages through the Software Collaboration for Wikidata program, and we are working closely with the Abstract Wikipedia team at WMF to enable more opportunities for growing Wikimedia projects.

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

Not formally, although the Celtic Knot community in the UK has met a number of times over lockdown to exchange challenges and potential solutions. The telegram chats from previous conferences remain active, with an active group of people interested in peer support and capacity building within minoritised language Wikipedias.

Plan

Program design

The conference will consist of two main components: an online event, taking place during two days on July 1-2, 2022, and a network of local onsite events, organized autonomously by communities in the regions of the world where it is possible.

Our intentions for this event are to provide to participants:

High quality sessions that can enable them to unlock new skills and apply them directly on their projects;
Accessible content that can later be translated, reused and shared with other language communities to enable further capacity building;
A spirit of connection, mutual support and exchange among participants who share similar goals and issues.

With these intentions in mind, we will aim for a light and curated program, with a limited number of workshops that will be prepared together by speakers and organizers, and a focus on practical, action-oriented discussions.

2 days of online event

During the two days of the online event, we want to provide a few sessions that can be watched live or asynchronously. The program contains only one track, without parallel sessions, a lot of breaks to allow people to rest from screen fatigue, and most sessions will be recorded.

We are focusing on workshops that will be delivered to participants with two levels of engagement: active participants, who will be able to interact directly with the facilitators, share their screen and be actively coached by the facilitators, and passive participants who will watch the content in livestream and interact in the text chat. The main interaction will be between the workshop leader and active participants in the online room; the passive participants will have an opportunity to ask questions via a facilitator over text. The conference aims to support existing communities and the workshops will be best suited for people who have some knowledge of Wikipedia editing basics. New and returning conference attendees are welcome at these workshops.

The details of the topics will be decided later on, based on the results of the community input survey and after a call for proposals to the community, but already built the outline of the program:

1 opening session, presenting the concept of the event and how to participate (CKC organizers, live, recorded) - 10 min
1 “update from the community” session, where people from underrepresented communities have 5min to present an update on their projects, what’s new, what they accomplished in the past year (communities, mash-up of 5 min pre-recorded videos) - 40 min
4 practical workshops run by community members with support of the organizers, on topics to be defined (10 active participants + unlimited watchers, recorded) - each day two 2hr workshops
Alternative options for people who are not attending a workshop: a selection of videos from previous conferences to watch, and an open room for participants to discuss and work together
1 guided discussion & networking session, where participants can exchange on various topics (30 active participants + unlimited watchers, recorded) - on 1st day, 2hrs
1 online social event to engage with participants in a fun and relaxing way (quiz, game - not recorded) - on 2nd day, 90 min
1 closing session, presenting the highlights of the event and the next steps (CKC organizers, live, recorded) - 2nd day, 20 min

The workshop topics will be chosen by the organizers based on the community input survey results. We will reach out to people from underrepresented language communities that could facilitate a workshop, and we will support them in the preparation and running of the workshop: training prior to the event to gain knowledge on workshop facilitation, finding co-facilitators, technical support.

As this year’s program doesn’t need a traditional “call for proposals”, we will make sure to engage with the communities and offer them a space to present their activities through other ways:

They will be invited to present an update of their project during the “update from the community” session (and provide support for them to prepare and record their presentation)
They will be encouraged to join the networking session to exchange with others about their current activities

Distributed autonomous onsite events

As the situation doesn’t allow bringing all participants to an in-person event, but taking in account the need for real-life connections, we would like to encourage regional communities to meet in person, when their local context allows it.

These onsite events will be autonomously organized by the communities, together with their local chapter or user group; they can take place before, during or after the online event.

The Celtic Knot organizing team can provide limited support to help the groups define their goals and needs, as well as financial support (see “scholarships” below), and will maintain a list of all onsite events organized by the communities.

Here are some examples of onsite events that could be organized along the Celtic Knot:

Introduction to Wikipedia, Wikidata or any useful project or tool
Contributing session, where people edit together and help each other
Gathering during the online event to watch sessions together and discuss
Discussions about the specific challenges of a language community
Social gathering, meetup, open discussion
Post-event discussion to reflect on what they learned and exchange highlights
Post-event workshop where participants share the skills they learned during the event, to empower their local community
Post-event contributing session, to keep improving the content or tools that were started during the conference

Depending on the projects and goals, these onsite sessions could be recorded or livestreamed so other communities can benefit from them.

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?)

We are planning a primarily online conference, with elements of in-person gathering for local communities. In-person gatherings will be organized autonomously by participants, with a possibility of financial support from the Celtic Knot organizers (see “scholarships” section below). In the UK we are considering providing a meeting space for our Celtic Knot communities either pre or after the conference, and are currently discussing plans.

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

n/a for the main event; we will highlight this aspect to any community gatherings

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

Yes, to help focus the time of the organising team and volunteers on the core of the conference. A key aspect that we are drawing on externally is workshop training to build the skills of our community workshop leaders. More :highlighted in the budget.

Friendly space policy

We will reuse the Friendly space policy we designed for the first online Celtic Knot in 2020, that is an adaptation from WMF’s code of conduct with a focus on online components.

Participation

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

The Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference has an established brand and a target audience of Wikimedians working within minority languages, wanting to exchange and support each other. The format caters to a range of wiki skill levels and aims to be inclusive also of allies of language communities. Each iteration focuses on a particular language or a community - with an inclusive, open spin in 2022 - but not to exclude others. Rather, it’s a way of discussing challenges and solutions on a particular example, while helping to build that community.

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)?

Usually the Celtic Knot Wikimedia Language Conference does have an outreach element to NGOs and decision makers within specific language communities, aimed at bringing visibility to the Wiki project (e.g. in Cornwall, where we involved the council). In 2022 we are aiming to focus on capacity building of the existing wiki communities though.

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.

With the focus on internal skill building of our wiki communities we are not prioritising bringing external partners for this iteration of the conference.

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).

Key areas where we would welcome Foundation’s support - and are keen to discuss with WMF - would be:

Trusts and safety volunteers/staff to help us manage the safety of the online event
Speakers/workshop leads for the event (e.g. a long standing contributor to the Celtic Knot conference WMF Language strategist Amir Aharoni, or someone from the Abstract Wikipedia team such as Denny Vrandečić)
Engagement from the WMF comms department to share & promote marketing for the event
Advice on managing the scholarships process at Wikimedia UK

Scholarships

1. How many scholarships would you like to offer and what expenses will the scholarship cover?

We will offer two types of scholarships:

Online participation: this scholarship aims to enable the participation of people to the online program. For the two days of the online conference (July 1-2), we could cover:
- Mobile data to access the conference sessions
- Help to take care of dependants
- As well as anything that the applicant describes as necessary to dedicate their time and energy to attend the conference
Organization of an onsite event: this scholarship will be attributed to a group willing to organize an onsite event before, during or after the online Celtic Knot program. The applicant will be invited to provide an estimate of their expenses, including for example:
- Rent of a space
- Rent of technical equipment (internet, laptops, screen or projector…)
- Food and drinks for participants
- Local transportation for participants (no international travel)
- Communication costs to advertise the event (flyers, social media ads)
- Welcome kit/goodies for participants We will not require detailed spending evidence, to reduce the burden on the community. According to our budget estimate and our internal resources, we should be able to cover the costs of online participation for 30 people, up to an amount of £80 (including processing costs). For the onsite events, we would like to support 10 local groups with a scholarship of maximum £1000.

2. How will scholarship recipients be selected?

We will run a scholarship application process in April 2022, where people will be able to fill in a form, providing details about their situation and their needs. The Celtic Knot organizing team will select the recipients based on the following criteria:

Relevance of the application and the described expenses
Involvement on the Wikimedia projects around an underrepresented language (edits, involvement in the local and global community, advocacy activities…)
Involvement in the conference: how the applicant plan to contribute to the event, and what they hope to take away from it
Capacity building: how the applicant plan to apply what they learnt during the event and share their newly acquired knowledge with their local community

3. Do you plan to target or prioritize specific communities or participants?

We would like to have a good mix between people representing the “historical” crowd of the Celtic Knot Conference (Celtic languages Wikipedias) and other small-size wikis. In order to achieve this, we will select people from various countries and languages, making sure that as many communities as possible can have at least one “representative” attending the event. We will also make sure to have a good balance between experienced users and newcomers.

Resources and risks

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

Resources

Organizing team

The core organizing team consists of Daria Cybulska (WMUK), Richard Nevell (WMUK), and Lea Lacroix (WMDE), who work together across all areas of the conference. Below we are highlighting specific areas of leadership within the team.

There are additional members of the WMUK team who will support the event - comms and finance team for example. We will also be drawing on additional admin help for tasks such as scholarship management.

Team	User Names
Wikimedia Foundation Liaison	Daria Cybulska (WMUK)
Logistics	Daria Cybulska (WMUK), Richard Nevell (WMUK)
Conference Program	Léa Lacroix (programme), Richard Nevell (speakers)
Scholarships	Daria Cybulska, Richard Nevell, WMUK admin support
Communications	Léa Lacroix, Richard Nevell, WMUK comms support
Volunteer Coordinators	Léa Lacroix, Richard Nevell
Other team members	Finance administration - WMUK team

Risks

Further covid disruptions affecting the conference negatively

creating a flexible event format which allows for local in-person participation, but being led by an online experience

Fatigue of online conferences, lack of engagement

Focus on skill building, discouraging passive consumption and instead giving people an active opportunity to learn something. Novelty of focusing on workshops rather than passive talks.

Participants and speakers struggling with internet access

Providing scholarships to enable equitable participation in the conference, and providing equipment for speakers/workshop leaders where appropriate to help with content delivery. Hire may be more appropriate/cost-effective in some circumstances. WMUK will work to establish where this is the case, and when new equipment is purchased it will be returned to WMUK.

Partial grant received

With a primarily online event, it would be possible to deliver elements of the conference with a reduced budget. However, we would need to consider carefully at what point this becomes counterproductive. We are aiming for a quality event that will empower participants, and without significant investment this would be challenging to deliver.

Budget

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here. See Budget Guidelines.

All past proposals can be found here, you can use these for inspiration and reference but you are required to do your own local research and come up with your own budget numbers. Keep in mind that each event is different, has local context and needs, and there is not a one-size-fits all for our communities events. While making decisions on what to fund we will consider the local context and community needs for each event.

Event budget table

Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Cost per unit	Total cost	In kind contribution	Currency (all £)	Notes
Organisation	WMUK organising team, comms and financial oversight	hours	148	32.8	4854.4	-	£	cost per unit average across team
scholarships	administration (WMUK in house/contractor)	hours	20	15	300	-
Local events	admin support	hours	20	15	300	-
Merch	admin support	hours	10	15	150	-
Organisation	WMUK (in kind)	hours	200	32.62	-	6524

Technology	subscription for services necessary to deliver conference (eg hosting tool)	per tool	2	100	200	-
						-
speaker support	training for workshop hosting	per training	4	500	2000	-
speaker support	training for video updates	per training	10	100	1000	-
speaker support	equipment eg microphone, broadband	items	5	30	150	-

Translation/transcription	Translation/transcription	hour	36	30	1080	-

Comms	paid promotion i.e. boosting Facebook+Twitter	platform	2	125	250

scholarships	scholarships incl processing costs	scholarship	30	80	2400	-		WMUK has experience of processing international Wikimania scholarships

Merch	design	set fee	-	1000	1000	-
Merch	materials	item	50	10	500	-
Merch	shipping costs	postage	50	10	500	-

Local events	scholarships for organisers (one per event)	event	10	1000	10000	-


					24684.4	6524
10 % Unforseen costs					2468.44
					TOTAL direct	TOTAL in kind
					27152.84	6524

Total cost of event: 33676.84

Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program: 27152.84

Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this event, and amounts funded: 6524; The contribution of Wikimedia Deutschland to the event will be done by dedicating working time of Léa Lacroix, Community Engagement Coordinator for Wikidata, for the organization of the event. This will represent about 100 working hours from January to the end of July 2022. Wikimedia Deutschland is also providing access to their self-hosted tools (such as Nextcloud Forms) or other services if needed. To note - tickets would be free to participants.

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

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.

Strong support The Celtic Knot Conference is an important moment of exchange, support and learning for the underrepresented languages communities, not only among Celtic languages but in many different areas of the world. I am looking forward to this upcoming edition and I am excited and proud to support WMUK again this year in organizing the conference and engaging the Wikidata community in the program and social aspects of the event. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 15:32, 7 February 2022 (UTC)
Strong support Celtic Knot is an important event in the calendar of minority-language Wikimedia projects. I've attended the last 2 virtual events and they have been both interesting and inspirational (and made me only more disappointed that I failed to attend the preceding in-person events 😉). As an adult learner of a heritage minority-language, this is one of the ways in which the Wikimedia movement — and the affiliates involved: WMUK, WMIE, WMNO and WMDE in particular — are breaking new ground in the Open Knowledge and minority language spaces. — OwenBlacker (Talk) 09:27, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Strong support This conference series has become a very important event for connecting small-language communities from all over the world. Having attended all but one of the previous conferences (and helped host the last one), I can attest to the usefulness and connectivity it brings. I am also excited about the focus on workshops for this year's iteration, since it will give a practical, hands-on participatory experience to the attendees. Jon Harald Søby (WMNO) (talk) 21:26, 8 February 2022 (UTC)
Strong support daSupremo 13:38, 9 February 2022 (UTC)
Support Language diversity in the Wikimedia Movement is very popular among community members but underresourced financially. This conference builds infrastructure for community to organize and advocate for themselves. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:31, 10 February 2022 (UTC)
Strong support -—M@sssly^✉ 08:43, 12 February 2022 (UTC)
Strong support Celtic Knot has been quite useful as an annual gathering of many like-minded people from both the Wikimedia community and beyond. The conversations, structured discussions, collaborations and co-building strategy have been useful considering focus areas such as on low-resource languages. --Psubhashish (talk) 13:22, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
Support Iñaki LL (talk) 10:34, 18 February 2022 (UTC)
Strong support This conference will build on the excellent knowledge sharing and networking of the previous conferences and continue the momentum. Smaller language Wikipedias offer cultural resilience and pushback against the colonialism of the Internet.Bunty Avieson (talk) 03:44, 15 February 2022 (UTC)
Strong support Shahadusadik (talk) 23:30, 19 February 2022 (UTC)