Grants:PEG/Olaf Kosinsky/Wikipedians in European Parliament/Report

Draft report

This is a draft of a grant report for a grant funded is fiscal year 2013-14. Please do not respond or comment on it just yet

it's not yet ready for review. To read the approved grant submission, please visit Grants:PEG/Olaf Kosinsky/Wikipedians in European Parliament.

Compliance and completion

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?: YES

Is your project completed?: YES, albeit follow-up tasks are still being done (photos retouched and uploaded, videos edited and uploaded, integration of media in Wikipedia articles, migration of biography data into Wikidata)

Did you use any of the grant funds?: YES

Activities and lessons learned

This section describes what the grantee did, and what the grantee learned from implementing the project. This section should be useful to others implementing similar projects and is an opportunity for the grantee to reflect on the project's performance.

Activities

Provide a detailed list of activities performed to complete this project, descriptions of these activities, and the amount of time spent on each activity. This section should also include a list of participants, or a link to pictures, blog posts, or videos from the project or event.

Sunday, Feb. 2nd: arrival of ~50% of the participants in Hotel Ochsen in Kehl, gathering at dinner (paid individually)
Monday, Feb. 3rd:
- hotel:
  - arrival of the rest of the participants
  - project meeting, instruction round, briefing, discussion about the plans, exchange of ideas and tipps from "veterans"
- European Parliament:
  - distribution of press passes to all participants
  - tour through the building
  - group photo
  - setup of photo booths, cosmetics, welcome counter right outside the chamber
  - testing, a few first pictures from MEPs
Tuesday, Feb. 4th:
- photo shooting
- video setup, first videos
Wednesday, Feb. 5th:
- photo shooting
- video shooting
- moved to a new location with better light and more space after long discussions with officials, supported by MEPs and their assistants both lingual and how to get along with EP bureaucracy
Thursday, Feb. 6th:
- European Parliament:
  - photo shooting
  - video shooting
- Tour
  - shifts were arranged so half of the particpants could make a tour for half a day, at lunch the groups meet and changed shifts to allow the other half to have a tour
  - tour to Colmar
  - tour to visit concentration camp
  - visit the city of Strasbourg
Friday, Feb. 7th:
- European Parliament:
  - photo shooting
  - video shooting
  - dismantling
  - departure of some participants
- hotel:
  - re-packing all the material and equipment, checking completeness and ownership
  - arranging pick-up by parcel service to deliver everything back to the individual destinations (chapters, renting company)
  - debriefing
Saturday, Feb. 8th:
- departure

Lessons learned

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects? Consider the following questions and respond with 1 - 2 paragraphs.

What went well?

quite a significant number of pictures could be taken
participants from several countries worked well together, no major disagreements or arguments
despite the project was quite exhausting (early mornings, long hours, standing / walking all day, sometimes stressful when many people showed up at the same time, handling many people with different characters and languages required a lot of flexibility) most participants indicated that they felt inspired and motivated
several participants indicated that they like the idea and want to do similar projects in their home country
several participants never edited Wikidata before and started doing so (and learning how to do) through this project
we got videos of languages where we didn't had any video material or not even audio at all on Wikimedia Commons, such as maltese, welsh, gaelic, lithuanian... in total we collected material in 24 languages
several participants indicated that they have learned from each other, eg. shooting better pictures, how to arrange portraits, using special equipment or just simple tricks

What did not go well?

We underestimated the bureaucracy of the European Parliament, despite three visits on site, talking to officials and several phone calls and e-mails arrangements where challenged, different departments did not accept arrangements made by other departments, leaving us between all chairs. Arrangements where changed on-site and even those new arrangements where then challenged again by other officials, so we had to move our stuff several times, rooms which were assigned to us suddenly were used by other groups etc., costing us a lot of time and effort to re-arranged every time a changed was imposed. We were lucky that several MEPs heard about it. Some of them complained directly and engaged in the discussions with officials, they were also sympathetic and told us that they in fact face the same challenges with their administration. Thanks to Mr. Pöttering and his assistance, who in the end "guarded" the project for two full days, staying with us, negotiating and translating and making use of his influence we could move to a new location which was actually better and we could stay there for the rest of the project without being bullied again. If we had the chance we would have taken this place right from the beginning but contradicting rules and procedures prevented us from making any suggestions that were taken serious.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Be bolder on what we can request, make support of political groups / parties mandatory:

they should pay for meals
they should actively support the project, not only endorse it.

The EP project in Strasbourg was a good lesson but also became an asset allowing us to make requests in the futures for similar projects, Because of its size and results it is a great promotion of what we can do, if they support us. In the past we kindly asked because we wanted something - to get them to participate and support us a little. In the future we know that they are keen of us coming and they need to support us before we accept and make the effort. This already worked well in Germany but it was hard to bring the project on an international level. Just because german and austrian politicians understood and loved the project didn't mean that european politicians understood it. Now they do.

Project goal and measures of success

This section should reference the project goals and measures of success described in the approved grant submission. See Grants:PEG/Olaf Kosinsky/Wikipedians in European Parliament to review the goals and metrics listed in the approved submission.

Project goal

Provide the project goal here.

Improve the content on Members of the European Parliaments by sourcing material right on-site:
- take professional but freely licensed portraits
- take video statements in as many languages possible (typical english + mothertongue)
- improve Wikipedia articles
- complete Wikidata statements
Outreach:
- get in touch with people
- get Wikipedia exposed to a big target group
- show them what we can do and who we are
- indirect influence by winning them for our cause, explain and make them aware how Wikimedia works

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.

Yes.

All of the above listed items where done and we do have figures for all improvements on the content side. More would have been better but we still think the results are impressive. Outreach definitely happened, many business cards from each sided changed hands, discussions were held and many people who did not know how Wikimedia works have been explained and were impressed. It is hard to measure any impact this might have, though.

Measures of success

List the measures of success exactly as provided in the approved grant submission, and evaluate your project according to each measure listed there.

	Measures of success from approved grant submission	Project measures
1.	at least 1,000 new photographs of MEPs and the European Parliament overall	1,079 images
2.	at least 200 new photographs of MEPs which did not have pictures yet, incl. 200 Wikipedia articles with new images in several languages	564 images used in 3147 pages; 52% of images are in use
3.	100 new or better articles on MEPs in english plus 100 new articles in other languages in at least four other languages	images used in 109 different language projects
4.	at least five different chapters involved (sending and supporting volunteers)	8 chapters/orgs sent volunteers
5.	similar projects start to happen in other countries due to transfer of ideas and experience how to do this kind of project

Provide an overall assessment of how your project went according to these measures.: PLACEHOLDER TEXT
If you were to plan a similar project, would you measure it differently? If yes, please explain how.: PLACEHOLDER TEXT

Impact

This section ties this project to Wikimedia's broader goals, and shows what the project accomplished.

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic goals? Please answer in 1 -2 paragraphs and include specific measures of impact such as the number of readers or editors reached by a particular project, or the number of articles edited or improved.

Stabilize infrastructure
Increase participation
Improve quality
Increase reach
Encourage innovation

PLACEHOLDER TEXT

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here?: YES

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. 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.; Note that variances in the project budget over 10% per expense category must be approved in advance by Project and Event Grants program staff. For all other variances, please provide an explanation in the table below.

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Actual cost per unit	Actual total	Budgeted total	Currency	Notes
1	Catering	lunch / dinner	meal	8 m. x 45 pers.		3.024,25	7.200,00	EUR	political groups sponsored some meals
2	Travel Costs	project management, preparation	lumpsum	1 trip		199,40	250,00	EUR
3	Communication Cost	project management, preparation	lumpsum	1		114,99	300,00	EUR
4	Travel Costs	between hotel and EP	bus	4 b. x 7 days 1 b. x 4 days	150	1.574,00	4.200,00	EUR	calculated costs were for renting small busses from car rental, instead we booked a bus company just for the direct trips on mornings and evenings and negotiated several quotes
5	Marketing Material	informational brochure for MEPs and visitors	lumpsum	1		826,75	200,00	EUR	We produced a "Wiki loves parliament" cup with our logo and group photo which we handed out to key persons. Due to the short-term production (group photo shot on Monday and sent into production, cups arrived on Wednesday to be distributed) the costs where higher than anticipated but there was no choice. Several cups where sent to the WMF.
6	Total					5,739.39	12,150	EUR

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission): 38.650 EUR

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if the Project and Event Grant is your only funding source): 10.000 EUR

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

Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project (this total will be the same as the total amount spent if the Project and Event Grant is your only funding source): PLACEHOLDER TEXT

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

Wikimedia entities funded travel costs and accommodation for their participants (as planned and calculated in the budget).
(WMDE, WMAT, WMFR, WMUK, Amical Wikipedia, WMSE, WMNL, WMCH)
Political Groups covered several meals at the European Parliaments (additional to budget, reducing actually spent money).
many volunteers brought their own equipment so we only had to rent very few things (partly as planned and calculated but still reducing actually spent money).

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?: Answer YES or NO.; PLACEHOLDER TEXT

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.)

PLACEHOLDER TEXT

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.

PLACEHOLDER TEXT