Grants:PEG/WikiSym Initiative/2014 OpenSym Conference/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2013-14 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/WikiSym Initiative/2014 OpenSym Conference.

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 grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Project status

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

Is your project completed?: YES

Activities and lessons learned

Activities

Basic statistics

94 participants

64 research paper submissions

All information made public here including history: http://www.opensym.org/about-us/historic-data/

Overall program

3 days, 2-3 tracks each day, open space

4 invited keynote speaker on open data, open educational resources, open source, community management

Details available here: http://www.opensym.org/os2014/program/overview/

Reports about OpenSym

On our own blog: http://www.opensym.org/2014/08/30/photo-impressions-from-opensym-2014/

On Twitter as a live tweetstream: https://twitter.com/search?q=opensym&src=typd

From another grantee: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:TPS/shchung/opensym_2014/Report

A report to appear in the Software Engineering Notes of the ACM: http://www.opensym.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/floss-research-track-opensym-2014.pdf

Known mentions on the Wikimedia Research Newsletter: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Newsletter/2014/September

Lessons learned

What worked well?

Overall process, engaged participants

What didn't work?

Diversity of research tracks needs more consistency/alignment

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

More earlier communication about conference vision, logistics

Learning patterns

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Learning_patterns/Use_telco_to_clarify_questions_early

Outcomes and impact

Outcomes

Provide the original project goal here.

Basic success is "another instance that isn't worse than what came before" and better success is growth into "the other open collaboration topics" beyond wikis and Wikipedia.

Basic success is a successful conference with about 100 participants, an enjoyable program, a published proceedings of research papers

Better success is a successful conference with a total of 150+ participants, a broad program drawing equally on all things open (not just wikis), published proceedings, and more practitioners than in previous years

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

We achieved basic success and got half-way to "better success", specifically:

We achieved the desired diversification; it is all things open now, not just wikis and Wikipedia, but also open source, open data, open educational resources...

We did not grow the number of participants but had the same as the previous year.

Progress towards targets and goals

FOR ALL THAT I CAN SAY THIS TEMPLATE IS BROKEN---IT DOES NOT SHOW THE target outcome FIELD AT ALL

For basic success (see above):

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
A conference that worked without major flaw (measure: nobody died)	No major flaw	Goal reached: Diligent people!
Had about 100 participants (measure: number of participants)	94 participants	Goal reached: Oh well...
Had a good overall conference program (measure: diversity of keynotes (at least 2), workshops (at least 1), tutorials (at least 1))	4 keynotes, 1 workshop, 1 tutorial	Goal reached: great keynoters!
Had a continued strong Wikipedia research program (measure: research paper submission number = 20+)	20 Wikipedie research paper submissions (of a total of 64)	Goal reached: Just right.
Had a published freely accessible conference proceedings (measure: downloadable by anonymous)	Here they are: http://www.opensym.org/os2014/proceedings/	Goal reached: We always make the proceedings freely available!
Are set up for the year 2015 (measure: announcement for 2015 ready and performed at end of conference)	We are on our way...	Goal reached.

FOR ALL THAT I CAN SAY THIS TEMPLATE IS BROKEN

For better success (see above)

Project metrics

Project metrics	Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
A conference that worked without major flaw (measure: nobody died)	Nobody died.	Goal achieved.
Had about 150 participants or more (measure: number of participants)	Nope, only 94.	Not achieved, will work harder.
Had a good overall conference program (measure: diversity of keynotes (at least 2), workshops (at least 2), tutorials (at least 2))	4 keynotes, one workshop, one tutorial	Goal reached, approximately.
Had a continued strong Wikipedia research program (measure: research paper submission number = 20+)	20 Wikipedia research paper submissions out of 64 in total.	Goal reached.
Had a broad (not just Wikipedia) research program on open collaboration (open data, open source, open educational resources, etc.) (measure: Wikipedia research papers are <= 30% of published papers)	64 research paper submissions, broad diversity	Goal reached, we did well!
Had a published freely accessible conference proceedings (measure: downloadable by anonymous)	Here they are: http://www.opensym.org/os2014/proceedings/	Goal reached: We always make the proceedings freely available!
Had non-trivial practitioner participation (at least 40% of participants self-declare as practitioner or industry)	Sadly, we were about 90% researchers	Goal not reached. Remains a major issue with me (Dirk Riehle). Working on new angle for 2015.
Are set up for the year 2015 (measure: announcement for 2015 ready and performed at end of conference)	We are set up and running.	Goal reached.

Global Metrics

We are trying to understand the overall outcomes of the work being funded across our grantees. In addition to the measures of success for your specific program (in above section), please use the table below to let us know how your project contributed to the Global Metrics. We know that not all projects will have results for each type of metric, so feel free to put "0" where necessary.

Next to each required metric, list the actual outcome achieved through this project.
Where necessary, explain the context behind your outcome. For example, if you were funded for an edit-a-thon which resulted in 0 new images, your explanation might be "This project focused solely on participation and articles written/improved, the goal was not to collect images."

For more information and a sample, see Global Metrics. I don't think these metrics apply to a research conference like OpenSym. We do not edit Wikipedia at the event but rather present research on how to improve Wikipedia. |}

Learning question: Did your work increase the motivation of contributors, and how do you know?

PLACEHOLDER TEXT

Impact

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic priorities?

Option A: How did you increase participation in one or more Wikimedia projects?

Option B: How did you improve quality on one or more Wikimedia projects?

We are one step removed from immediately improving a Wikimedia project. The research presented at OpenSym helps improve projects, but does not do it itself.

Also, simply by having an outlet like OpenSym, researchers can get published and are motivated to perform this research; without OpenSym, there would be less researchers performing research into Wikimedia projects.

Option C: How did you increase the reach (readership) of one or more Wikimedia projects?

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? Answer "Yes" or "No".: Yes

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Cost per unit	Total cost
1	Repro services	T-shirts	-	-	-	€1427
2	Misc services	Posters, decoration	-	-	-	€385
3	Catering	Catering	-	-	-	€11332
4	Social event	Conference Dinner	-	-	-	€7654
5	Event staff	Local arrangements	-	-	-	€9705
6	Committee/speakers	Travel expenses	-	-	-	€3096
7	Miscellaneous	Materials, other	-	-	-	€1389
8	Fiscal sponsor	Accounting, other	-	-	-	€769

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission): 40000

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if PEG is your only funding source): 15000

Total amount spent on this project: 35757

Total amount of Project and Event grant funds spent on this project: 15000

Are there additional sources that funded any part of this project? List them here.: Google grant, event fees

Remaining funds

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

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.

The WMF grant funded 37.5% of the project. In all expense categories, we spent more than 37.5% of the originally budgeted amount, using up the WMF grant.