Grants:Project/Rapid/Hackathon 2022/Greece Ionian University/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2022-23 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Hackathon 2022/Greece Ionian University.
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 rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

We definitely met our goals and the project went exceptionally well! We are very excited with the project's progress and outcome.

We reached out more new developers than we expected and most of them expressed their interest to be active members of this community. The majority of participants was students of the Dept. of Informatics of the Ionian University, however students from other departments participated, too. Both undergraduate and graduate students participated. Both academic and teaching staff from various departments express their interest to learn about our event and participate in future ones. We also had some high school students!

Participants created and edited numerous wikidata items and relations for the Ionian University and the Ionian Islands (400+ edits)

Participants had to accomplish a data challenge entitled “Corfu and the United States of the Ionian Islands”, so they followed a SPARQL tutorial and executed more than 200 SPARQL queries with the Wikidata Query Service. They mentioned that the data challenge made them to follow the tutorial and learn about SPARQL and Wikidata.

The Ionian Wikithon was an event that attracted a great deal of publicity in local media, like newspapers and tv channels and it trended on social media.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets. Please be sure to review and provide metrics required for Rapid Grants.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
100 Total participants	113 Total participants	We reached and surpassed our target!
40 newly registered users	58 newly registered users	We reached and surpassed our target!
100 - content pages created or improved	500+ edits	All newly registered users made at least one contribution.
100 SPARQL queries made from participants	204 SPARQL queries	Participants in the SPARQL data challenge created from 3-12 SPARQL queries.
10 photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons	35 photos uploaded to Wikimedia Commons	Photos from the two main events and various meetups are uploaded.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

The promotion campaign went very well, as we attracted more than expected participants. The community of the Ionian University, students and academic staff, expressed their interest for the prehackathon and the Wikimedia hackathon and we had more than expected participants.
The event attracted very interesting presenters including Michail Stefanidakis, Professor of Dept. of Informatics and Magnus Manske, Senior Research Scientist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, UK & Wikimedia Software Developer. It is worth mentioning that Magnus Manske approached us, thanks to our publicity outreach.
Participants found really interesting the SPARQL data challenge "Corfu and the United States of the Ionian Islands" that we created, and it really motivated them to follow the SPARQL tutorial in their own pace and acquire new skills.
The cooperation between thew Wikimedia User Group and the University students and personnel worked well. We hosted a lot of meetings and the understanding of the Wikimedia tools was made clear.
The director of the Informatics Department expressed their interest to host the event next year and asked whether it would be possible for the next Wikimedia Hackathon to be hosted in Corfu.
The event was highlighted in local mass (TV, radio, newspapers) and social media.
We connected the event with a very important local event: The unification of Ionian Islands with Greece which is celebrated on May 21st every year.
Volunteers translated Code of Conduct for tech events in Greek for the first time.

What did not work so well?

The only issue that we had to manage was the big number of participants taking into account the laboratory's capacity. We tackled this issue exploiting the patio next to the laboratory, where participants used their own laptops.

Next time remember to buy some batteries beforehand because the presenter needed AAA batteries.

What would you do differently next time?

During the prehackathon we used the https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org but it turned out that it doesn't take into account Wikidata contributions, which was our main focus. Till the next Wikimedia Hackathon we will either collaborate with the dashboard creators to add this feature or we will create our own tool.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

We spent the following:

No	Category	Description	Total Amount
1	Print materials - Banners	2 promotional Banners	€260.00
2	Print materials - Posters	Colourful posters for the event	€200.00
3	Print material	Handouts, certificates	€200.00
4	Food & Beverages	Brunch/coffee for the organizer team and volunteers. We held three (3) meetups before Hackathon (April 2022)	€185.70
5	Food & Beverages	Brunch for the organizer team and volunteers meetup to set up Ionian Wikithon, create tasks and data challenge (8 May 2022)	€345.70
6	Food & Beverages	Small group meetups volunteers and organizer team (April - May 2022)	€77.20
7	Food & Beverages	Lunch / Dinner / Drinks for the in-person event - pre-hackathon workshop - 14 May 2022 (67 participants and 5 speakers)	€951.27
8	Food & Beverages	Lunch / Dinner / Drinks for the in-person events during Hackathon - 20-22 May 2022 (46 participants and 3 speakers)	€1248.69
9	Travel	Transportation - tickets to and from Athens for community meetup & transportation during prehackathon and hackathon	€805.43
10	Unforeseen expenses	Notebooks, paper, markers, stamps.	€156.96

Total cost of project: €4,430.95

The grant fund was €4,400.00

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

No we haven't any.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Media coverage

Tweets

TV coverage

Links of interest

Gallery

Magnus Manske
Students
Magnus, Marios, Manos and Dimnitris
Discussions
Workshops
Talks
Media coverage
Invited speakers
Eating and brainstorming
Eleni mentoring
Opening ceremony
Data challenge
Organising the event