Grants:Project/Rapid/Wiki Loves Uniformed services (India)/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2016-17 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/Wiki Loves Uniformed services (India).
• 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?

• No, we're not able to meet our goals. I would rather say that I was not satisfied with the project, in terms of progress made, outcomes achieved, and also in planning and execution. However, this has become a good learning experience for the organizers and also of the community.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
1500 images	958 images	One of the major drawbacks of this Wiki Loves campaign is the title. Because as it is not as simple as Monuments, Earth, or Art. The photographers did not exactly get the context of the campaign. Other factors that led to this include the pitfalls that were overseen in planning and execution. The other factors are explained in the later sections.

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?

• Even though we got a very less count of images compared to the target, some images are so good, and also some of them are distinct with good representation of the subject, which can later be used in the relevant articles.
• Photo-books worked well, we included not only images from this project, but also from various other "Wiki Loves" initiatives conducted in India. I was also able to convince my college to sponsor some part of the expenditure for photo-books.

• What did not work so well?

• There are many things that hindered us from achieving the targets. They are explained below:

• One of the first the thing is the the project did not have proper reach. As the title of the project is looks a bit complex, it was not understood easily by editors and as well as reader who came across the central notice.
• Initially, we started at May 15, 2017, and set the initial deadline for July 13, 2017. But the count of images was too low, and was really discouraging. As then, August 15 (Independence Day of India), was close, as there would be parades and uniformed services showcase themselves to the public, it would be good opportunity to get good images. So to circulate this message, we approached the central notice admin, but due to delayed response, the notice did not up at the expected point of time. It was live on the next day of August 15. We consider this a one of the factors for low image count.
• As organizers, one potential factor that we overlooked is museums. India has many military museums, and war memorials that come under the scope of this project. But we almost ignored this all the way, until only when we understood the potential in the last moments. However, we tried to engage some of the volunteers, and get some images.
• Also, initially we didn't have the idea of conducting photo-walks. Because I was concerned that it would be risky for a volunteer to go searching for uniformed services' personnel in the city, and directly photograph. But with the idea of photowalks for organized events, such as public parades, ceremonies etc. also got washed off. But at the end we did one photo-walk at an army investiture ceremony, got some good images.
• Another issue is, is the clash of this campaign with Wiki Loves Earth 2017 in India. As I've already we started off the project on May 15, but later got the information that WLE 2017 in India is to happen from 1 June to 30 June. But are we've already started there is no way to withdraw, and we continued. Due to this overlap of the campaigns, also both being photographic events, the participants may have been confused and also were split between the events. Also, the case may be, as WLE is famous and we established campaign, users were more interested in that rather in this campaign.
• Lastly, considering the psychological aspect, users might have felt that they might get into risk, if they photograph uniformed services' personnel. So this factor also stopped from taking an extra effort.

• Apart from the factors related to achieving the targets, the others aspects that didn't go well are:

• In the central notice message, we included the phrase, "win prizes worth INR 100,00/-", this was strongly opposed by the community members, as they suggested that it is not the right way to attract volunteers, especially by showing heavy monetary benefits. After the issue was raised, I contacted the central admin, and got it changed to just "win exciting prizes". I suggest that central notice page must have a policy on such matters like what can be included, and should not be included etc.

• What would you do differently next time?

• All the above mentioned issues can be understood, if we did a pilot project before the actual one. So next time I would definitely go for a pilot project before going for the main campaign. Also from my experience with this project, I've created learning pattern on how to handle new "Wiki Loves" initiatives. Please review it at: Learning patterns/Organizing "Wiki Loves" campaigns.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

S.No	Description	Amount
1	Promotions	₹4,000.00
2	Photowalk 1 (Delhi – 1 person)	₹724.18
3	Photowalk 2 (Bhopal – 8 persons)	₹3001.00
4	Prizes	₹22,000.00
5	Photo-books	₹30,600.00
6	Shipping and logistics	₹5,056.9
Total expenditure		₹65,382.08
1	Interest gained from the grant amount	₹894.00
2	Sponsorship received for photo books	₹15,000.00
Total credit received		₹15,894.00
Total grant funds spent		₹49,488.08

Remaining funds

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of 83,610.42 80,609.42 INR were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:Project/Rapid/Krishna Chaitanya Velaga/OpenCon 2018 New Delhi.

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

S.No	Description	Amount
1	Total grant received	₹130,097.50
2	Total grant funds spent	₹49,488.08
3	Left over funds	₹80,609.42

Reason for underspent

From above breakup it can be observed that only 35% of the funds were spent. The reason for this is as follows; As the campaign started we didn't get enough images even after extension of the deadline. The count is low compared to the original target. So I felt that I wouldn't right to spend huge amounts for a project was not as successful as expected. So I contacted the Program Officer Delphine Ménard, who approved this grant, and explained the situation with a new significantly scaled down budget. The discussion can be referred on the grant's talk page.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

• Nothing much, I think we need to have a platform or a sort of committee comprising of organizers from "Wiki Loves" initiatives all over the world. It would help in providing insights, and also provide support as the campaign progresses. As "Wiki Loves" initiatives one of the major events in the Wikimedia movement, I suggest WMF to start something of this sort as suggested above.
• A copy of photo-book has been sent to Asaf Bartov (Senior Program Officer), please have a look at it. I expect it to be delivered by the end of December.

Images

Here are the top five images:

• 
  Presidents' Body Guard riding horses during change of guard.
• 
  National Cadet Corpss Air Wing cadets performing Samne Salute.
• 
  National Cadet Corps Off-Parade Uniforms (left to rightː airforce, navy, army).
• 
  Indian Army Hall of Fame at Leh.
• 
  Akash surface to air missile.