Grants:Conference/WikiCon Brasil 2022/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Conference Grant approved in FY 2021-22 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/WikiCon Brasil 2022.
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.

Guidelines on how to fill out this grant report

If you wish to write your report in your native language, you are free to do so. Please indicate (in English) what language are you using.
If you prefer to submit the narrative report in a video format, you can. The video should be in English. Please upload the video to Wikimedia Commons and share the link in your report page. Make sure to answer all the required questions. All Financial documentation will still need to be submitted in a written form.
If you struggle with some of the questions, or wish to have a debrief meeting with your Program Officer before submitting your report, we are very happy to meet and walk you through the report template. This can be especially helpful if you want our help in identifying and reflecting on lessons learned. Please get in touch with your Program Officer.
If you have other ideas, preferred methods on how to submit your Conference Grant Report or concerns - please reach out to us.

Outcomes and Impact

Thanks for bringing value back to the Wikimedia movement by sharing in this report. Everything you learned during your project is useful knowledge to offer future Wikimedians planning similar work.

In this first section you are asked to reflect on your initial goals and the impact the event had on your community. Remember there is no right or wrong answer. Even if your goals have changed over time, or the impact was different than what you expected. Feel free to share your long or short answer - we are happy to hear whatever you have to share.

Did your event have any impact that you did not expect, positive or negative?

Group photo

We were positively surprised by the engagement and participation of our community during the event. Since it was our first ever conference and coming from a long period of social distancing and uncertainty due to the pandemic, it was surprising how everything went smoothly and according to the plan.

Please tell us about the top 2-3 innovative (new to you and your community) or things you tried this conference.

Volunteer committees Besides the core organization team formed by Wiki Movimento Brasil staff and contractors, we formed committees with volunteers from the community in order to actively have the community voice incorporated in relevant decisions for the conference. The committees were:

Scholarships Committee
Diversity Committee
Executive Committee
Program Committee

We were able to balance professional capacity with volunteer availability to ensure that the event would be representative of our community’s identities and needs. For that, we organized a meeting routine with several proposals presented by the professional team and validated by the volunteers in the committees.

Scholarship distribution process

Scholarships were distributed based on a diversity criteria

As one of the main goals of the conference was to empower participants to be local agents in the dissemination of Wikimedia activities in their home cities and bring people from underrepresented regions of the country, ensuring regional diversity in the conference through the scholarship distribution process was key for the success of the event. For that, we designed two scholarship processes: a diversity based one - that combined regional diversity, gender and racial identities and deficiency - and a call for proposals one - that ensured participation of speakers coming from long distances as well. The diversity criteria was developed balancing different weights on self-declared diversity statements and dissertative questions. With that, the committee tried to balance demographic aspects with experienced wikimedians and rising leadership in our community to attend the event. That means that we selected individuals who could act after the event as local agents in the dissemination of Wikimedia activities in their home cities, as proposed in our main goals for the conference. We were able to provide 45 full and partial scholarships -- 33 of them were directed to people outside the states of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, as stated in our initial grant proposal.

Capacity building and strategic discussions sessions

Remote training for capacity building sessions and strategic discussions facilitatators

The pre-event survey highlighted that for our community capacity building sessions and strategic discussions were top priority for the conference program. The organization team listed more than 50 themes for those sessions that were then selected by the Program Committee given an evaluation of priority for the community. Then we reached out to members of the community based on their expertise and invited them to facilitate the sessions. The goal of capacity building sessions were to share knowledge and develop skills within the community, while the strategic discussions should inspire serious reflections upon the Movement Strategy 2030 under the Brazilian context. Although the people invited to facilitate the sessions were experts in their respective topics, many of them never offered a proper session on it for the community. In order to support them, we organized a training session for them with WMF staff: Asaf Bartov, Hanan El-Youssef and Tila Cappelletto. The feedback report on the facilitators session showed that 87,5% felt more prepared to conduct their session after the training. WikiCon Brasil had keynote speaker presentations, community presentations, thematic meetups, cultural sessions, capacity building sessions and strategic discussions. The program format was based on the community survey we ran and, given the uncertainty of the pandemic situation, we decided to build a program with several activities in parallel with small groups. The venue of the conference is a German cultural center in São Paulo, which means that besides the auditorium we had available a lot of classrooms. Participants received an individual schedule indicating the capacity building sessions and strategic discussions they should attend. They were free to attend the sessions in other formats.

Were there any significant changes from the initial grant proposal?

Not in terms of the general scope of the conference, in terms of budget. We had to ask for more resources and complement the ones provided by WMF with another partner in order to provide scholarships and all related infrastructure, since air travel became exponentially expensive in a short period of time due to the post-pandemic tourism and rise in fuel prices.

What do you think will be the long term impact of this conference?

WikiCon was the perfect opportunity for people from different groups and regions to gather and strengthen their projects

From start to end, the proposal was to have WikiCon Brasil as a platform for the development of new leadership spread across the country and the strengthening of strategic discussions involving Wikimedia in Brazil rather than solely a nice event for our community. From the outcomes and feedback of the event, we expect the long term impact to be the rising of new and autonomous local communities in different regions of the country and the development of a culture of strategic thinking in our community.

Do your best to estimate the number of attendees in your event that have never attended any Wikimedia event before. How were you able to support and engage this group?

Around 10% of the attendees had other Wikimedia in person conferences experiences, such as GLAM-Wiki Conference, WikidataCon and Wikimania. Coincidently, part of these wikimedians were members of the WikiCon Brasil organization team as professionals or as volunteers. Their insights during the organization of the event is part of the reason why we were able to smoothly bring the ethos of a Wikimedia event to our local culture.

Do your best to estimate the number of participants who have been involved in Wikimedia activities for more than 5 years. How were you able to support and engage this group?

WikiCon Brasil balanced new community members and experienced volunteers participation

We estimate that 40% of the participants have been involved in Wikimedia activities for more than 5 years. As the other groups formed by people with less years of experience in our movement, they were particularly engaged by the Program Committee through invitations to facilitate capacity building sessions or strategic discussions, based on their expertise. We also distributed the participants in sessions that could be of their particular interest, blending new people in the community and more experienced ones. This was key for enabling easy knowledge exchange in different sessions and for the general engagement of the participants.

Learning and next steps

Conferences and events do not always go according to plan! Please use this section considering the perspective of what future event organizers within our movement organizing a similar style conference can learn. Make sure to include lessons around work with external/ internal partners; your communication efforts; your work with the community and volunteers etc.

What would you do differently next time and why? Please share with us if there's anything you wouldn't do or something future organizers should avoid.

Recording the sessions is a great way of sharing resources with the community

Next time, we’d like to provide more infrastructure for recording sessions and broadcasting it live. Since this was our first ever conference and resources were limited, we wanted to ensure that the in person experience would be a high quality one, so we couldn't provide means for remote participation this time. Coming closer to the event, members of the community who wouldn’t be able to attend in person were very interested in having this resource, but it obviously depends on a higher level of planning and infrastructure. We only recorded the sessions that were happening in the auditorium, but not the capacity building ones or the community presentations since they were happening simultaneously in different small rooms. Next time, we’ll definitely try to record them as they are great resources to be shared with the community, even if only after the event itself.

Was there any non-financial support that the Wikimedia Foundation could have provided that would have better supported you in achieving your goals?

WikiCon Brasil was the first in person Wikimedia conference that Maryana Iskander, WMF CEO, attended

No, we had all the support we needed. Actually, the meetings with our Program Officer established a great relationship based on trust, so we’d feel comfortable asking for more support if needed.

What would you recommend on a local and/or regional level as the best next step to leverage your success and momentum? (Please consider potential new allies and partners; internal wiki collaborations; future projects etc. We don't expect you to necessarily do those, we are only looking for more ideas from your own perspective.)

Don't forget to bring your partners to join your conference with wikimedians!

Our program sparked strategic discussions on topics such as knowledge equity, inclusion of new contributors on Wikimedia, technical development, Wikimedia governance and more. The participants were selected to attend specific sessions, given their personal interest and expertise on the topic. The next step would be to create working groups for each topic so the outcomes of the discussions are actionable too. Another possibility for Wiki Movimento Brasil as an affiliate is to identify local leaders in different Brazilian states, keep close contact with them and support their particular needs for developing activities. Also, an important aspect of the conference was to bring together partners and members of the community. Partners are not often in the same environment as wikimedians, so after the conferente they were able to better understand how our community works and this gives momentum to strengthen the relationship with them and propose new forms of collaboration.

Does your organizing team / affiliate / user group have any plans to follow up with your attendees in the future or support efforts related to the outcomes of this conference within your community?

"Calibra" kicked-off strategic discussions with potential leaders accross the country

One of the main outcomes of WikiCon Brasil was the establishment of a network of wikimedians interested in a Movement Strategy Implementation Grant project Wiki Movimento Brasil is conducting called “Calibra”. The project will design a leadership capacity building program based on ongoing research with community consultation. Calibra ran a survey during the event and 89% of the 53 respondents (54% of the total participants of the conference) stated that they are interested in keeping up with the project. WikiCon also served to better outreach initiatives and activities led by Wiki Movimento Brasil that the community may not be aware of. After the event, many attendees asked to be informed about our future events.

Please add any 3 operational recommendations for future events organizers.

1. It is worth bringing the Wikimedia ethos to the organization of the event. Try to make it a collaborative and iterative process with your community, in the spirit of organizing an event by and for your community. But keep in mind that staff and volunteer committees have different perspectives and rhythms of work and you’ll need to balance that in order to have a successful event.
2. Invest in a decompression room or any other special space that makes sense for your community’ needs. For us, it was very important to have a separate room where talking was not allowed and where people could just relax. That was planned because social interactions after the long social distancing period can be quite overwhelming, especially for neurodivergent people. It was a very appreciated room, as well as the free editing room we managed to have for people who wanted to use some spare time to edit Wikimedia projects.
3. A good way to start the organization of your event is deciding a theme and a visual identity for it. Otherwise you can be stuck in how to communicate the concept of the event for your community and disengage people.

Financial documentation

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Budget table

Item	Unit	Quantity	Budget (USD)	Final cost (BRL)	Final cost (USD)
Travel and acommodation costs
Air travel	Tickets	40	$8.461,54	R$ 53.039,98	$10.319,06
Ground travel	Tickets	30	$1.730,77	R$ 2.723,45	$529,85
Local transportation	-	1	$961,54	R$ 6.233,75	$1.212,79
Lodging	Double rooms	35	$2.355,77	R$ 48.914,25	$9.516,39
Catering	Meals	440	$7.615,38	R$ 41.901,03	$8.151,95
Total travel and accomodation costs			$21.125,00	R$ 152.812,46	$29.730,04
Venue costs
Rent	Venue	1	$4.230,77	0	0
Coffee breaks	Meals	220	$1.057,69	R$ 401,00	$78,01
Technical support	Service per day	2	$5.769,23	R$ 8.548,44	$1.663,12
Total venue costs			$11.057,69	R$ 8.949,44	$1.741,13
Staff costs
Production officer	Position	8 months - 30 hours per week	$10.000,00	R$ 45.499,96	$8.852,13
Communications officer	Position	4 months - 30 hours per week	$5.000,00	R$ 24.483,33	$4.763,29
Administrative officer	Position	6 months - 30 hours per week	$7.500,00	R$ 1.625,00	$316,14
Administrative assistant	Position	4 months - 30 hours per week	$2.500,00	R$ 19.445,83	$3.783,23
Production assistant	Position	4 months - 30 hours per week	$2.500,00	R$ 12.999,66	$2.529,11
Total staff costs			$27.500,00	R$ 104.053,78	$20.243,90
Other expenses
Design and printed material	Graphics	1	$3.846,15	R$ 34.439,40	$6.700,27
Swags	Items	1	$1.923,08	R$ 21.642,07	$4.210,51
Venue decoration	Items	1	$1.230,77	R$ 24.025,56	$4.674,23
Internet support	Service	1	$961,54	R$ 1.656,36	$322,24
Cultural activities	Event/tour	1	$2.692,31	R$ 54.790,00	$10.659,53
Unforseen expenses	None	1	$2.884,62	R$ 21.759,86	$4.233,43
Total other expenses			$13.538,46	R$ 158.313,25	$30.800,21

Summary of funding

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission):

$73.221,15 (original request)

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

$73.221,15 (original request) + $6.850,00 (additional request); total of $80.071,15

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

$82.515,28

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project:

$80.071,15

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

Yes, Comitê Gestor da Internet no Brasil (CGI.br).

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?

NO.

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

Evaluation

Participants feedback

Between July 24 and August 08, 53 out of the 87 participants anonymously answered our feedback questionnaire on the conference. You can find below the main results.

General view

The attendees left general comments about WikiCon Brasil. We selected some of them to share in this report.

It was one of the best events I've attended in recent years and I learned a lot from the ways of organizing. Congratulations on the work, dedication, delivery and brilliant programming. I was willing to participate in other sessions, I loved the way you guys duplicated some meetings to make it possible for everyone to participate. Perhaps, other actions aimed at contacting sister projects and improving the experiences of editors and users could be duplicated in the same way.”

It was the best event I've ever been to in my life. What an energy, what an affection, what an atmosphere of exchanges, what a pleasure!

The combination of interaction and learning was perfect. Keeping all the participants in the same place, which included scientific, cultural and social programming, was an excellent idea. What could be better? Frequency of the event (now that you organized the first one... we want more), and maybe less simultaneous sessions with a little more time in between them. CONGRATULATIONS TO THE TEAM!!!!!!! I COULDN’T IMAGINE THAT WIKICON WOULD BE SO AWESOME!!!!”

Conference goals

WikiCon Brasil program was built based on the results of a survey on themes and formats sent to the community. Sessions that would allow social integration, development of skills and strategic discussions were prioritized. By the end of WikiCon Brasil, the majority of participants agreed that the formats were suited to the conference goals, as expressed in the chart below:

Sessions format and conference goals

Movement Strategy 2030

In the conference registration form, we asked participants how familiar they were with the Movement Strategy 2030. The conference program highlighted the strategy in the Brazilian context and, after the event, there was a 37.3% increase in participants who considered themselves very familiar with it, while there was a 27.2% reduction among participants who were not familiar with it at all.

Familiarity with the Movement Strategy 2030: before and after WikiCon Brasil 2022

After the event

WikiCon Brazil was successful in encouraging connection and comfortable interaction between people from the Brazilian community, in preparing volunteers to lead wiki activities in their respective cities, and in increasing familiarity with the movement's strategic discussions. WikiCon Brasil participants had their expectations for the event fulfilled or even exceeded.

Program

Click on "Expand" on the right side to view charts on the topics below:

Keynote speakers presentations

Comments from participants

It was amazing! Due to the quality of the people invited and the density of information, in a short time

The sessions were very productive and allowed me to broaden the ways of approaching issues related to disinformation

Respondents attendance in keynote presentations
Evaluation of keynote speakers presentations

Community presentations

Comments from participants

All of them were very interesting... I really enjoyed it! Too bad I missed a few D:

They could have been a little longer, to allow more time for discussion.”

'It was what I liked the most about the event. Our community is amazing!

Respondents attendance in community presentations
Evaluation of community presentations

Capacity building sessions

Comments from participants

I learned a lot. I am now more aware of how to organize a wiki event, thanks to training. But I also learned (meta-learned?) how to put together a short training speech. The generosity, serenity and didacticism of the training, always focused on our learning, were incredible.”

The sessions were wonderful and filled with a lot of learning; we all had so much to say, share, ask, that the closing was a bit rushed. But they were incredibly helpful and motivating to continue the actions on the Wiki.”

Respondents attendance in capacity building sessions
Evaluation of capacity building sessions
'Você aprendeu algo?

Strategic discussions

Comments from participants

Encouraging and giving everyone the right to speak, giving each person time to express their opinion and ensuring that a single person not to talk all the time. In my discussion the moderator managed to give space for everyone.”

I don’t think we were able to address the theme by complete, but it is a long one and we advanced well on the equity discussions!”

Respondents attendance in strategic discussions
Evaluation of strategic discussions
Impacts in the community

Thematic meetup

Comments from participants

The meeting was well conducted and provided space for interaction between experienced editors and less experienced ones”

Respondents attendance in thematic meetups
Evaluation of thematic meetups
Social integration format

Cerimonial sessions

Comments from participants

Perfect interaction climate, very light, with great pleasure for participating in it”

The ceremonial sessions were very informative and relaxed”

Respondents attendance in cerimonial sessions
Evaluation of cerimonial sessions
Sufficient information
Community identity

Cultural sessions

Comments from participants

OMG! I will never, ever forget these shows. How amazing and wonderful. I feel like crying just thinking about it. Everyone around me was thrilled.

They closed the event days with a flourish, in addition to being linked to WMB’ initiatives and released on Wikimedia Commons afterwards, anyway... wonderful!!!

Respondents attendance in cultural sessions
Evaluation of cultural sessions

Decompression room

Comments from participants

The idea of having a decompression room is genius'

The decompression room was an environment that allowed you to renew your energies to be able to continue participating in the following activities

I didn't compress. Everything was airy.

Decompression room usage
Evaluation of decompression room

Free editing room

Comments from participants

It was great. I used the space to finish preparing for my presentation

Free editing room usage
Evaluation of free editing room

Infrastructure

Click on "Expand" on the right side to view charts on the topics below:

Goethe-Institut São Paulo spaces used for the conference

Comments from participants

In case other editions of Wikimedia events organized by WMB happen in São Paulo, Goethe is a place where the dynamics are already working well!

A very beautiful building, a very nice and clean environment, with many cool features in the rooms and other spaces.

A place that allows open meetings (outdoors) is essential, to air out and make the experience less tiring. I think the space was perfect - cozy, open.

Goethe-Institut São Paulo spaces
Reception coffee and afternoon coffee break
Luch
Cocktail
Pizza restaurant

Cleaning
Cleaning service

Check-in and welcome kit

Comments from participants

The welcome kit was amazing and it will be used way beyond the conference

'The notebook is so perfect I do not dare to touch it. I’ll put it on a safe!

Visual communication

Comments from participants

I’ve never seen such caring and details in communications. This is a true learningNunca antes vi tamanho cuidado e detalhamento na comunicação. Um aprendizado!

Achou que a comunicação visual rolou muito bem, eu acho que estenderia para pré-aquecimentos do evento, como vídeos e workshops para mostrar como seria o encontro presencial

Community identity in the event setting

Organization team and volunteers

Comments from participants

The team was excellent. I appreciated the team work.

Organization team
Volunteer support

Next WikiCon Brasil

Keeping up with the conference momentum, we’ve asked in which region and in which time of the year a future WikiCon Brasil should happen. The majority expressed interest in the Northeast region in July.

We also asked what can be improved in future conferences:

We could have cultural sessions in open air spaces, so that people can come and go as they wish

The time for the sessions could be improved. Strategic discussions could have at least 1:30 and capacity sessions 2 hours. I felt that we had little time!

I think it's natural to be a little upset about not being able to attend all the sessions. However, one idea is: right after training/discussion/presentations sessions, intentionally make a social dynamic of bringing together groups of people, in which there is a member who participated in each lecture (one attended training A, another attended B, another watched C, ...), to exchange and talk about how the sessions went. It could be 30 min. I think that, in this way, people integrate more (because the group would be selected by the organization and that way we would have the chance to meet people that we might not have talked to at the event), and they also get to enjoy a little of the other sessions without having participated in them.

And what have worked really well that can’t be missed in future events:

The egalitarian way in which they treated all participants. I believe that sharing meals in the same place, the fellows staying in the same hotel, having breakfast together, this strengthened the sense of equity in other spaces, such as discussion spaces, for example. Congratulations on this.

Open spaces combined with closed spaces. Group concentration in space, sharing meals and cocktails together, medium size in terms of audience. Keep the idea of being an event for those who do, and not to watch. Continue stimulating groups and discussions in a more horizontal way.

The activities proposed by the community and organized collectively, led by more than one person. This made people from different areas of the movement unite different discussions.

Respect for diversity and urgent decolonial approaches to the community

The invitation to experts to speak on topics of impact and reflection in the community.

Anything else

Photos

We had thousands of photos taken during the event! Check out the main category on Wikimedia Commons. You can find easily below some of the image categories: