Grants:IndicWiki/2nd Wikimedia Technology Summit
Event overview
editPurpose 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?
Our world has changed is a statement that we hear quite often. Our lives through the Covid-19 pandemic have made us repeat and reflect on this particular statement more intentionally. While we are aware of the things that have changed, are we also aware of the impact that these changes have brought and continue to bring on our lives?
Efforts that have been made towards ensuring access to accurate, credible information during the pandemic have received accolades and are being heralded as the virtue of an interconnected network (read internet). How did this interconnected network/s (online and offline) come to be developed? Has it always been developed and shaped by large multinational companies? The Internet which was seen and marketed as a place for entertainment, profit-making initiatives, and contentious debates is also being acknowledged for its fight against misinformation, ensuring last mile access, and providing platform/s for underrepresented voices.
These virtues are either of minimal impact or in their nascent stage of evolution. What is the role of a society that is invested in the internet to develop these capabilities further? What critical questions do we ask of our efforts and collective organizations in shaping an equitable, safe, and rewarding internet? How can our good intentions and actions of providing educational resources, building idealistic ventures, and constructive partnerships navigate the questions of bias, harassment, and nefarious dealings by the powerful?
2nd Wikimedia Technology Summit aims to bring these questions, have discussions that will build long-lasting partnerships, provide the necessary support for emerging ideas and engage in honest conversations about our limits and possible superpowers that can be used for the greater good.
Do you consider this to be a Regional; Thematic or Growth event? You can read more about each category.
Thematic
Is it a Remote, or in-person event?
In-person event, with remote presence
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) | 3rd, 4th March 2023 |
| Proposed location | The International Institute of Information Technology - Hyderabad, India |
| Number of participants | 200 |
| Event page | 2nd Wikimedia Technology Summit |
| Primary contact person | Kasyap |
Background
editCommunity input
editUse 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 can discuss on how to restart conduct periodic meetups and occasionally, conferences to keep up the enthusiasm.
* Discuss on how we can increase the technical know-how among all the wikimedians and increase the effective usage of gadgets and Wikipedia and wikidata tools. * Languages is supported by G-board but some of the characters are missing. * Create a new font for Kaahmiri language and other Indic language in which words are rendered correctly. |
High |
| Capacity development:
Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn? |
* In our community there is a lack of technical skills i.e creating or editing on templates, Wikisource proofread technicality, usinf mediawiki tools etc. Basically I am in interesten in creating or editing on templates and I hope that this summit can help me rearding this.
* attendees to know more about Kashmiri language and problems faced by the Wikimedians due to lack of technical support. Kashmiri Languages is supported by G-board but some of the characters are missing. We want to get some technical help so that people could help us to create a new font for Kashmiri language in which words are rendered correctly. |
High |
| Working groups:
Are there joint projects that need to be planned in person? |
* Discuss on the immensely successful Wiki Loves Butterfly,
* Knowledge on most technical aspects of Wikimedia are limited to only few wikimedians. That number needs to go up. |
Medium |
| Community building:
Are there other in-person activities are important for community building? |
* Capacity building and collaboration
* Proper keyboard support. * Bringing experienced Wikipedians who have of late, become inactive, back to the movement. |
High |
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?
We have sent this survey to MediaWiki India mailing list, we have received responses from four.
* Capacity building and collaboration
* Proper keyboard support.
* Bringing experienced Wikipedians who have of late, become inactive, back to the movement.
* Capacity building and collaborations with instutitues
* In general we want to learn more from other languages do that we could keep our mother tongue alive in this digital era.
* In order to develop local Wiki community we strong need training and resources on Capacity building and collaboration programs
Context
editIt 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?
- Mediawiki and its community are growing, and more and more individuals, communities, institutions, and organizations are becoming aware of the potential of Mediawiki and its underlying software. We have organized the two-day Wikimedia Technology Summit 2021 with diversified speakers who are at the pinnacle of their respective fields for the MediaWiki stakeholders conference has been a huge success. The 2nd Wikimedia Technology Summit will be an excellent opportunity to bring together Mediawiki and Open Data enthusiasts and to provide a unique chance to connect in real life.e have successfully organized Wikimedia Technology Summit 2021 (https://indicwiki.iiit.ac.in/summit2021/) A virtual platform to share and discuss state-of-the-art tools, technologies, knowledge, and ongoing research in Indian languages and enhance, and enrich the Wikimedia ecosystem in the medium and long term, this virtual event was scheduled on 19-20 November 2021. We understand that more people were interested in attending the in-person conference, so this year we're planning to conduct the hybrid event with possible themes like Future of Open Knowledge Initiatives,Engaging the digital and creation of Knowledge, Importance of open knowledge and understanding Creative Commons licence etc., with around 200 participants, and design a participant selection process. This way, we will make sure that the people who attend the event in hybrid mode bring something to the conference and the discussions.
- The 2021 conference showed the high interest and need for Mediawiki events and opportunities to learn more about MediaWiki and other technology. The needs and actions of a constantly evolving community of Wikipedia participants have affected MediaWiki's development and vice versa. The Wikimedia Technology Summit is integral to understanding how and where MediaWiki and related technologies can be improved.
- 2. How does this event relate to other activities that your community is working on?
- We are conducting a Wikimedia hackathon as a pre-event for this we are conducting series of training session for 700 participants by expert volunteers from Mediawiki community, The goal of this training session is to introduce the wiki technical ecosystem,to build technical capacities to participate in the Hackathon for 2nd Wikimedia Technology Summit . We support communities and partners by providing information and help, gathering feedback to further improve Mediawiki, and being present at movement events and beyond. By bringing people together, we want to create opportunities to learn, share, and evolve knowledge and skills around Mediawiki. We invite all MediaWiki stakeholders – power users, maintainers, and service providers, who have a professional or semi-professional interest in the software – to join us for a two-day summit full of MediaWiki knowledge and networking!
- 3. Do you have any Thematic or Regional committee or group? (Such as WISCom, CEE, Iberocoop, etc.)
- MediaWiki Developers and users
Plan
editVenue and Logistics
edit- 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 venue IIIT-H campus is located less than 1 hour away from Hyderabad International airport (RGIA) as well as the major Railway Stations and metro connectivity. There are several affordable hotels and hostels near Gachibowli Hyderabad, most of them are 10 minutes away by road.
- 2. Is the event venue and hotel accessible for people with physical disabilities?
- YES
- 3. Are you planning to outsource some of the services? For example - a travel agency, an event production service?
- IIIT-H a flagship institution has a sprawling campus with medium size rooms and several auditoriums well equipped with projectors, computers, and the Internet We have event, outreach team with vendors.
Friendly space policy
editPlease link to the friendly space policy that your community will be using for this event.
We use the Friendly Space Policy by the Wikimedia Foundation Friendly Space Policy. We might come up with additional points also in the context of this being a conference on diversity
Participation
editIt 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.
- Target audience will include diverse range of participants from at Wikimedia community,The main audience of this conference are board members, volunteers of the Wikimedia Movement affiliate, and Open-source developers. We are also planning to invite a small number of community leaders and external partners
- 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)?
- We are conducting series of online Wikimedia technical training session The object of these training programs is to promote the use of software resources that extend content contributors and consumers capabilities and insights beyond those provided by the core wiki experience.
- 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.
- We are collaborating with The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) is an executive agency of the Union Government of the Republic of India, Open-source communities and we are exploring other sources.
- 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).
- We need Wikimedia Foundation staff support in Overall planning, speakers' sessions, outreach, community management and Pre event Hackathon.
Scholarships
edit- 1. How many scholarships would you like to offer and what expenses will the scholarship cover?
- Ideally, we would like to offer 60 scholarships
- 2. How will scholarship recipients be selected?
- Each affiliate chooses its delegates, according to the previously published Eligibility Criteria. The Scholarship recipients will be chosen based on a clearly defined and transparent criterion taking into account:
- The involvement and progress of the candidate who are participating in Wikimedia Technology Training program,
- The involvement of the candidate in the Wikimedia movement and Wikimedia projects,
- The involvement of the candidate within their communities to promote Wikimedia projects,
- The involvement of the candidate to promote Open Knowledge
- The willingness and motivation statement of the new user to join and contribute to the open source and free knowledge
- 3. Do you plan to target or prioritize specific communities or participants?
- We are prioritizing MediaWiki technical communities and volunteers who are engaged in Open-source development
- 4. How will you insure diversity and inclusion in your scholarship process?
- We will form a Scholarship Committee (SC), comprised of various people from our community with experiences in such processes, that would be tasked with selecting the people,Scholarship committee will ensure the diversity with clearly defined criteria and transparent process.
Resources and risks
editDescribe the resource potential for successfully executing this project and the key risks/threats.
Resources
editOrganizing team
edit| Team | User Names |
|---|---|
| Wikimedia Foundation Liaison | Kasyap |
| Logistics | Divya Thirumal |
| Conference Program | Vibha |
| Scholarships | Mamatha and scholarship committee |
| Communications | Ramu ummadishetty IndicWiki Outreach Team |
| Volunteer Coordinators | Mourya Biswas NSK |
| Other team members | Jagseer S Sidhu,Abhilash |
Risks
editExamples of risks, along with how you would minimize or overcome them, are:
the following themes are related to potential risks:
Intra-organisational communication
The Wikimedia Technology Summit only works when planned and implemented in close collaboration with other teams, especially from the Wikimedia Foundation. We rely on people’s deeper thematic experience and knowledge of the status of the Movement discourse and current research to enrich conversations. Also, in terms of logistics, e.g. travel booking process, we rely on IIIT-H’s expertise.
For the follow-up process, we will consult with WMF & Movement entities and external experts on how to increase engagement
- we noticed that the level of participation and engagement during the event had decreased. Also, the engagement in the follow-up process was quite limited; we guess that this is mainly due to the resource and energy-consuming Movement Strategy Process.
- For the next Wikimedia Technology Summit, we aim to further reduce the number of frontal presentations and create more interactive sessions and so-called “Moments of Sharing” within and beyond the conference program. That means, that we would like to facilitate more social interaction between individual participants.
Examples of how to minimize these risks include:To avoid any misunderstandings and miscommunication, we aim to work more closely, more openly with all teams involved and plan processes ahead. Especially, having regular – weekly or bi-weekly – check-ins could minimize the risk of misunderstandings.
- 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
editPlease provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to this template. (sheet 2)
You can find all past proposals, 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
Serial Item description Cost per unit No. of units Total cost (INR) Total cost (USD) Notes Category A: Travel A1 Bus/train/flight charges for speakers/ special invitees residing in India 15000 30 450000 5514.705 A2 Flight fare for Wikimedians (scholarship recipients) residing in regions not mentioned above - international (SAARC region) 15000 30 450000 5514.705 A3 Bus/van/car rental (for airport transfers in the venue city, and other necessary local commutation in groups) 2000 50 100000 1225.49 A4 Other incidentals for invitees, organisers (local travel, food during travel etc.) -- Hyderabad India 2000 70 140000 1715.686 Total of "Category A: Travel" 1140000 13970.586 Category B: Accomodation & Food B1 Accommodation on a twin-sharing basis (for 3 nights) + 3 meals & refreshments twice a day for all two days of the conference and one day each of pre and post-conference. 10000 30 300000 3676.47 B2 Water bottles 60 300 18000 220.5882 B3 Food and refreshments for volunteers from Hyderbad 4000 10 40000 490.196 Total of "Category B: Accomodation & Food" 358000 4387.2542 Category C: Event Logistics C1 Rental of audiovisual devices (projectors, mikes, speakers etc.) 5000 4 20000 245.098 C2 Stationary (pens, charts, papers, printing etc.) 5000 1 5000 61.2745 C3 Internet + WiFi Routers 20000 1 20000 245.098 C4 Posters (for display by community members around the venue) 500 10 5000 61.2745 C5 Souvenirs for presenters of cultural event and other related expenses 50000 1 50000 612.745 C6 Standees (for poster session) 1000 10 10000 122.549 C7 Cameras, session recording & live streaming devices 30000 4 120000 1470.588 Total of "Category C: Event Logistics" 230000 2818.627 Category D: Event Management D2 Press Conference a month before the main conference; for the purpose of media coverage of the event 25000 1 25000 306.3725 D4 Team meeting of some organisers post-formation of the whole structure, from across the country 50000 1 50000 612.745 D7 Emergency Services and Support (law enforcement, medical etc.) 30000 1 30000 367.647 D8 Site visits (travel, local commutation, food and other expenses) 10000 1 10000 122.549 D9 Fundraising (including material printing, travel as necessary to meet potential sponsors) 50000 1 50000 612.745 D10 Organising expenses close to the conference dates (extensive local travel, accommodation for a few organisers to be on ground etc.) 50000 1 50000 612.745 D11 Hiring communication expert for Event communications, documentation,media and outreach 380000 1 380000 4656.862 Total of "Category D: Event Management" 595000 7291.6655 Category E: Merchandise E1 ID cards 20 200 4000 49.0196 E2 T-Shirts 250 200 50000 612.745 E3 Printouts (flyers) of the Conference program 20 200 4000 49.0196 E4 Water bottles 20 200 4000 49.0196 E5 Certificates 40 200 8000 98.0392 Total of "Category E: Merchandise" 70000 857.843 Total of "Category F: Mini Hackathon Expenses" (Pre Event) Category G: Sponsorship from other stakeholders F1 Bus/train fare for Hackathon scholarship recipients residing in Andhra Pradesh & Telangana 2000 20 40000 490.196 F2 Mini Hack-a-thon before the conference Venue and Food 150000 1 150000 1838.235 We would like the hackathon of the conference to deliver concrete outputs, which would be based on a survey of technical needs with the community. F3 Campaign and Digital Marketing expenses 100000 1 100000 1225.49 Total of "Category F: Sponsorship from XXXX 290000 3553.921 Category G: Unforeseen Expenses G1 Unforeseen expenses 268300 3287.98967 10% of the sum all the preceding categories (A+B+C+D+E) Serial Category Amount (INR) Amount (USD) Notes A Travel 1140000 $13,970.59 B Accommodation & Food 358000 $4,387.25 C Event Logistics 230000 $2,818.63 D Event Management 595000 $7,291.67 E Merchandise 70000 $857.84 F Mini Hackathon Expenses 290000 $3,553.92 G Unforeseen Expenses 268300 $3,287.99 T1 Total 2951300 $36,167.89 X Institutional T2 Grand Total (for WMF) T1 + X G Sponsorship from other stake holders T3 Total Budget for the Conference T2 + G
- Total cost of event
- ~INR 2951300
- Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program
- USD 36,160
- Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this event, and amounts funded
- We have asked for further sponsors and are to be notified by October TBA, 2022.
- Please confirm that you are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.
- Yes, We are ware.
Discussion
editEndorsements
editDo 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.
- I hope this grant will help wikimedians to gather and learn about wikimedia technology. And also enhance the knowledge and awareness in technical platforms in technology.Aniketbambole2022 (talk) 11:06, 13 September 2022 (UTC)