Grants:Conference/WCNA/WikiConference Americas

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WCNA/WikiConference Americas

WikiConference Americas will be a combined virtual conference for the Americas, as a collaboration between WikiConference North America and the user groups and chapters of Central and South America. It will be built on the success of WCNA 2021 as a multilingual conference and focus on community building and knowledge exchange.

targetWikipedias (en, es, fr, pt, nl, and others), Wikidata, Wikimedia Commons, among others.

strategic priorityIncreasing Participation

event datesQ3 of 2022

amount-localRoughly estimated to be around $30,000 to $50,000

amountRoughly estimated to be around $30,000 to $50,000

typeorganization/group

nonprofitNo

creator• Fuzheado

contact• andrew.lih

gmail.com• Evelin Heidel scannopolis

gmail.com

organization• WikiConference North America

website• https://wikiconference.org/

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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?

WikiConference Americas will be a combined virtual conference for the Americas, as a collaboration between WikiConference North America and the user groups and chapters of Latin America. It will be built on the success of WCNA 2021 as a multilingual conference and focus on community building and knowledge exchange in multiple languages, including but not limited to English, Spanish, French, Portuguese, and Dutch.

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

This is primarily a regional virtual event with the Americas as the focus.

Is it a Remote, or in-person event?

This will be designed as a virtual event, with related in-person local meetups as appropriate given the state of the pandemic.

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)	Q3 2022
Proposed location	Virtual platform, with local in-person events possible with pandemic conditions allowing
Number of participants	Target of 200-300 core participants, but more watching recordings or video materials
Event page	To be determined
Primary contact person	Evelin Heidel (Wikimedistas de Uruguay), Peter Meyer (Wikimedia DC), Andrew Lih (WikiConference North America)

Background

WikiConference North America has been a conference held every year since 2016 as a collaboration among North American affiliates, and has recently been embracing a multilingual online format. In 2020, WCNA was held in an online virtual format and in 2021, WCNA worked with Wikimedia Mexico to deliver a simultaneous translation of a number of tracks. In 2022, we are proposing to work with the Latin American community in Central and South America to combine forces to extend the model to create WikiConference Americas.

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?	TBD	TBD
Capacity development: Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn?	TBD	TBD
Working groups: Are there joint projects that need to be planned in person?	TBD	TBD
Community building: Are there other in-person activities are important for community building?	TBD	TBD

Survey analysis:

How many people did you send the survey to? How many people responded to the survey?
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?
Based on survey responses, what are the most important things your community should do at the conference to achieve those goals?

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?

We have seen widespread Wikimedia community disruption with COVID-19, especially with the lack of in-person events and the high barrier to creating compelling online events. We saw an opportunity to combine forces and experiences in running a combined online event to help bring the user groups of the Americas together in multiple languages.

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

This builds on the work of WCNA and multilingual content (Spanish, French, et al) in the last few years, and the Latin American community's work together in Spanish language programming.

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

Yes, WikiConference North America and Wikimedistas de Uruguay are working together on the initial stages, with plans to work with the larger Iberocoop and the Latin American community (in addition to the traditional North American affiliates such as WMDC, WMNYC, WMCA, Wikimedia New England, et al)

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?)

As a virtual event, we plan to work with a platform similar to last year's WCNA system, such as Hopin and spatial.chat.

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

N/A

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

As with last year, the main outsourcing will be in the translation services, as simultaneous translation is a major expense.

Friendly space policy

Please link to the friendly space policy that your community will be using for this event.

A safe space policy will be based on the WCNA 2021 safe space policy, as documented here: https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2021/Safe_Space_Policy

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.

The target audience will primarily be Wikimedia community in the Americas, regardless of language. Therefore, it will be designed with English and Spanish as the primary languages, with French, Portuguese or Dutch as possibilities for sessions. Programming that addresses new Wikimedians is also being considered, with edit-a-thons and collaborations that are beginner friendly.

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)?

Outreach components include the holding of edit-a-thons and training during the conference (something we have done with WCNA the last few years), as well as social events and "birds of a feather" type meetups to discuss topics (ie. Commons photography, GLAM, etc.) A feature of WCNA in the past has been to include local GLAM institutions in training and content improvement, and this has great potential with the WikiConference Americas model, where it may be possible to do local in-person events with local GLAM institutions (health conditions allowing) with no great financial expenses.

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.

As stated previously, WCNA and Wikimedistas de Uruguay are leading this proposal, and will work on collaboration with Iberocoop and other Latin American affiliates, in addition to the traditional North American affiliates such as WMDC, WMNYC, WMCA, et al.

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).

As with WCNA 2021, the help from WMF would include safe space enforcement; publicity and communication; making staff available for technical workshops or hackathon type events.

Scholarships

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

Scholarships are not expected to be a large portion of the budget, given the virtual nature of the event. However, we would imagine some scholarship money would be allocated for things such as telecommunications, child care, or other compensation to allow for time to participate.

2. How will scholarship recipients be selected?

TBD

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

TBD

4. How will you insure diversity and inclusion in your scholarship process?

TBD

Resources and risks

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

Resources

Organizing team

Team	User Names
Wikimedia Foundation Liaison	TBD
Logistics	Peter Meyer, Richard Knipel, et al.
Conference Program	TBD
Scholarships	TBD
Communications	TBD
Volunteer Coordinators	Evelin Heidel, Peter Meyer, Andrew Lih, et al.
Other team members	Phoebe Ayers, Sam Klein, et al.

Risks

Properly balancing language needs for the combined audience.

Examples of risks, along with how you would minimize or overcome them, are:

Skill gaps in project leadership team (e.g. no financial management experience)
Components of the measurement process that are hard to quantify

Examples of how to minimize these risks include:

Recruiting volunteers with desired skills to project leadership team.
Working with the Wikimedia Foundation Learning & Evaluation Team to develop an appropriate measurement and evaluation plan.

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

As a virtual event, the primary cost will be in supporting the technology and platform, as well as ensuring translation that enables maximal participation.
Category	approximate cost	notes
Conference platform	TBD	A hosted, supported conference platform will make the experience much smoother. Last year WCNA successfully used Hopin
Registration software and Mailchimp for communication with attendees	TBD
Translation platform and live translation	TBD	Last year WCNA very successfully used interpreters from Tlatolli + the Kudo platform, which got great reviews from participants and enabled simultaneous English & Spanish translation. We would seek to expand translation capabilities for this year.
Scholarships for virtual attendance	TBD	Small scholarships to cover technology, childcare, etc.
Supporting in-person gatherings	TBD	Depending on Covid, we may be able to support small regional gatherings in conjunction with the conference
Tools for program submission review
Video support for prompt conversion and uploading of multimedia
Prizes for awards ceremony		Two years ago we also showcased commissioned digital art, and provided a small stipend (mainly covering travel)

Total cost of event: Estimated to be US $35,000 to $50,000

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

Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this event, and amounts funded: TBD

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

Discussion

The WALRUS group for United States discussion talked about this event at its February 2022 meeting. Notes are at WALRUS/February 2022. Bluerasberry (talk) 17:17, 26 February 2022 (UTC)

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.