Grants:Conference/Falanster/Wikicamp2017/Report

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Report accepted

This report for a Conference Grant approved in FY 2016-17 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Conference/Falanster/Wikicamp2017.
You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email conferencegrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals?

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Build connections between experienced and new participants of the wiki-movement.	Yes, the connectivity among attendees increased and afterward it became more fruitful and positive.	A number of social events and wiki tours in surrounding created new contacts inside our wiki community.
Discuss future online and offline community self-governance.	In part	We set up the questions about self-governance, but the issue were spoiled with technical and "encyclopedia" related topics and workshops.
Increase and foster technical and humanitarian knowledge of participants.	Yes, we implemented 6+ workshops where we taught each other to make templates, improve articles and deepen knowledge about other Wikimedia projects (ecosystem).	Our guests from Ukraine transferred knowledge very intensively and helped us in various issues. Local wikimedians mostly focused on summarizing their experience in presentation and local area content collecting and processing.

About metrics of success

Metric	Result	Comments
5-6 days in the mid of July, 2017	achieved
About 20 participants in total	achieved
about 10+ newbies	in part	only 6 participants had experience less than 1 year
and 5 experienced	achieved
2-3 wikimedian guests	achieved
Organizational team of 5 volunteers	achieved	but the obligations in team were distributed uneven
70% of new projects initiated as a result of skills learned	no data	we only know that some participant continue their project.
70% of newbies begin to use tools	achieved
equality with 50% of female and 50% of male participants	in part	only 35% of women
10 participants will make a workshop or moderate sessions	achieved
Make a post-event survey	achieved
Experienced wiki-users will be mentors and supervisors	achieved	4-5 experienced wikimedians assist for newcomers
The topic of self-organization inside the wiki-community will be discussed	in part	on low level
1-5 of new tools (Wikipedia pages) or communication channels created to better collaborative work	achieved	We started regular wiki-meetings (twice a month)

Next steps

Please share a brief update about the status projects, important discussions and/or capacity building that took place at the event.

	Activities during the conference	2 months after the conference	6 months after the conference
Strategic Discussions: Were any significant issues your community discussed at the conference?	Firstly, participants mostly focused in creating personal contacts with others because of the first gathering in the community such a scope. Secondly, the significant interest was around tech related topics: bots, wikidata and templates. The topic attracted both newcomers as well as experienced wikimedians. Thirdly, there is no much discussion around how to organize next wiki-camp, or events (contests) which can develop community. In their topic attendees stressed on their wishes to do "something" personally but not discussed common resources and collaborative efforts.	In a week after this camp an organization team met and made a feedback session. It showed that someone was burned out and someone needed more activities on the contrary. Mostly, people focused on the private issues and nobody took any commitment to continue some collaborative regular work. In a month Mr. Zabej offered to make strategic building sessions. And during September We had 4 meetings and 1 survey of community wishes where started to plan activities for further year. The activities was terminated because of lack of personal commitments. But we agreed to make twice a month wiki-Friday with Mr. Zabej, Svetit and Dorinel obligations. It created the premises for possible feedback and planning. Svetit started her academic wiki project. ....	The first point is on the camp every participant gave a personal commitment to achieve something related to wiki movement and wrote that on the postcards. We send these postcards two months ago and we hoped it promoted self-estimation of wiki activism. The second is our regular meetings. These were continued during the autumn and early winter.
Capacity Development: Please list capacity building sessions or workshops.	We started to talk about community portal on the wiki-camp session. The topic was not very interesting for participants. We have two sessions relating to Wikimedia fundraising opportunities. On one session we discussed how to organize an event like the Wikicamp. There were 6+ workshops devoted content processing and technical issue. Mostly Wikicamps attendees took part there.	Two months after we started the strategic planning session and stopped this on the one survey (20 forms). The a tree of problems with prioritization were created based on the in-person meeting discussion and online questionnaire. As was mentioned above, it was terminated because of lack of personal commitment.	...
Projects or Working Groups: What are the most important projects that were started or improved during the conference?	-	During the Wikicamp'2017 participants made a personal commitment on postcards which were sent them two months ago. Created more content (pictures and articles) about local area as well as templates. 2 wiki expeditions. Relaunched #10wikidays challenge.	Wiki in tertiary education - Svetit - on going We started to make Strategic planning session for 2018 (4 meetings on September) - Mr. Zabej Regular wiki-meetups on Friday (twice a month). - on going Svetit, Mr. Zabej, Ihar Dorinel wiki expeditions - on pause #10wikidays challenge - on pause again Planning local Wiki Love Earth'2018 - Ihar Dorinel Planning local Wiki Hackathon'2018 around wikidata project - Mr. Zabej

Learning

Conferences and events do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well at the event?

Because of the first time such a big level of community gathering the most popular was to create personal connections among local wikimedians. Social events were the most popular among attendees.
The second is personal knowledge sharing. The Ukrainian guests were very active in the knowledge transfer and demonstrated us their passion.
The third is that eventually, we created a group of activists who could organize such an event.
The fourth is that even we expect a wider involvement in the event the rest community and local media were informed about our activity. It is a good symbol for future growth.
The last is we used online collaboration tools (trello, google docs) to arrange project data in common space and assign tasks.

What did not work so well?

The hardest was to engage people in the organization process and show them that we can do it together.
Another issue is lack of organizational skills and knowledge of this events scale. Mostly in team people did not know how to do and what is the benchmark of quality.
During the event wikimedians tended to discuss primarily encyclopedia centric topics and ignore or pay little attention to community issues.
Before we were done the camp majority experienced members of the community did not believe that it was possible at all.

What would you do differently next time?

To begin the active phase of participation earlier, especially fundraising activities. Maybe 12-9 months before.
To balance commitment among org team members. Because now we have 2-3 people (...) how took almost all preparation tasks. Maybe by creation role profiles and to organize several workshops for sharing organizational skills in the community.
To work more with newcomers. For example, to make an early announcement (9-6 months before) for them and volunteer call (more targeted).

Financial documentation

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Budget table

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions. Review the instructions here. These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Actual cost per unit	Actual total	Budgeted total	Currency	Notes
1	Transport	Train, bus or car				395	300	USD	Cover the tickets from towns and villages to Minsk and transportation of all the participants to the camp place.
2	Accommodation	A village house or a hostel for 6 days	per person per day	20	11.1	1331	1250	USD	Accommodation during the Wikicamp.
3	Food	Breakfasts, lunches, dinners per 6 days	per person per day	20	10.5	1264	1250	USD
4	Coffee pause and drinks	Coffee, tea, cookies, etc.	3 coffee pause a day			102	100	USD
5	Drinks	Water	< bottles of water			58	50	USD
6	Transport	For guests and organizators				458	400	USD	Includes transport for foreign guests. We extend amount of guest from the Ukraine.
7	Logistics for persons of culture		1-2 persons			69	50	USD
8	Logistics for wiki-expedition	Small wiki-expedition around the event place				71	50	USD
9	Stuff for community building workshops	T-shirts, bags, colors, brushes and etc.				307	300	USD	Also stuff for making a camp banner.
10	Books and souvenirs as awards					210	200	USD
11	Toilet paper, napkins, other similar stuff					51	50	USD	Some stuff to provide a comfort conditions for people.
12	Firewood, coal, and refreshments	For a picnic				52	50	USD	Community-building picnic.
13	Mobile and internet connections					332	300	USD	Costs for communication (calls between organizers and participants). Costs for internet on the Wikicamp place.
14	Stationery	Notes, pens, markers, flipcharts and etc.				204	200	USD
15	Multiplication of collected experience by wikimedian newcomers						0	USD	It can be gifts and stuff for organizing local wiki projects. 300 USD is an amount we are going to collect with attendee fee.
16	Present for teacher-organizator					150	150	USD	The person will be awarded after the Wikicamp (some souvenir) if her/his contribution is considered excellent, otherwise we will use this sum for projects support
17	Other	Unforeseen expenses, project administration, venue for organizing team meetings, etc.				448	400	USD

Summary of funding

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission): 5190

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission): 4800

Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above): 5254

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project: 4800

Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.

Yes, it was personal donation and organizational annual budget (454 USD)

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining? NO.

Anything else

Is there anything else you want to share about the conference or event?

Links

Report from wiki camp in two parts (on belarusian language) made by Mr. Zabej: part 1 and part 2
A personal report (en) made by Da voli