Grants talk:Conference/IN-MR/Marathi Conference 2020

Deadline reminder

Hi AbhiSuryawanshi, please note that in order for this proposal to be included as a part of the round review, you should:

• Complete the community engagement survey
• Change the application status from 'draft' to 'proposed' by the submission deadline.

BestCAlmog (WMF) (talk) 19:55, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the reminder. We updated the page right before the deadline. --AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 10:15, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

WMF comments

Dear AbhiSuryawanshi,

Thank you for submitting this proposal. I appreciate you engaging with this reviewing process.

I reviewed your grant request and have some follow up questions.

In general, the proposal is missing significant information regarding the goals you would like to achieve by hosting the first Marathi Conference. As we encourage and see great value in celebrating and gathering, this can not be the main and only goal for the conference. The funds and resources required to organize and host such an event are great, and therefore efforts should be maid to better utilize the resources for making a clear impact on community developments and growth.

• Strategic discussions - Please detail topics related to strategy you would like to address (for example, increasing participation as you suggested).
• What kind of capacity needs the community indicated as important or required for it's development?
• Community building - what other in-person activities do you currently have or planning on creating at the conference?
• Community inputs: Do you have a link to the community survey or analysis, you can share?
• Gathering and in-person meetups are a goal, but as an involved Wikimedia community, we ask you to identify more shared goals. Especially if the community members are quite familiar with other language wiki meetups as you mentioned. What outcomes are you expecting to achieve? What will successes look like? What objectives will suggest you met your goals and managed to increase participation, promote collaborations, and outlining growth strategy (for example)? Please share clear metrics on how you would measure your impact.
• Can you say more about the composition of the scholarship team and the criteria you will use for selection?
• Resources - I see you identified as the only organizing team member. This kind of conference usually require more team members to manage the capacity of work. This is a major factor in the success of the conference. Do you have potential community members willing to endorse and support as core organizing team?
• Risks - What are the risks you identify? 'First conference' is not a risk. Could you please add more information or clarify the risks you are seeing?
• You mentioned you have experienced community members, previously organized national and international events. Are they a part of the organizing team? If so, please add them to the table.

Budget:

• The budget table suggest 3 days conference, but the dated indicate a 4 days conference. Could you please clarify?
• Travel - are you offering 20 or 30 scholarships?
• Gifts - what do you mean by 'Specially for Marathi admins'? Are those awarded for special accomplishments?
• Outreach - can you please detail more about the outreach budget item? You mentioned you are not including an outreach component to the conference. What are the workshops you mentioned as part of the outreach item? Are those training workshops? For what purpose?

• I see you havent mentioned a Fiscal sponsor, but you did include a fiscal sponsor fees. Who is the fiscal sponsor?

Please note that if approved, a Fiscal Sponsor will be required for us to funds this conference. Please find more information here - https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Fiscal_sponsorships

Thank you for the work you have done on this grant proposal. We are excited to see your motivation and initiative to encourage growth within the community. Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 01:06, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

CAlmog (WMF), Thank you so much for reviewing our proposal. I am sharing answers inline.

• Strategic discussions - Please detail topics related to strategy you would like to address (for example, increasing participation as you suggested)

Yes, we will focus on increasing participation.

• What kind of capacity needs the community indicated as important or required for it's development?

Capacity building is important aspect and community needs help in this aspect.

• Community inputs: Do you have a link to the community survey or analysis, you can share?

Community survey link is shared on Marathi Wikipedia Village Pump.Apart from that same link was shared on Usergroup talkpage.

• Gathering and in-person meetups are a goal, but as an involved Wikimedia community, we ask you to identify more shared goals. Especially if the community members are quite familiar with other language wiki meetups as you mentioned.  What outcomes are you expecting to achieve? What will successes look like? What objectives will suggest you met your goals and managed to increase participation, promote collaborations, and outlining  growth strategy (for example)? Please share clear metrics on how you would measure your impact.

We are expecting to come up with more offline outreach events to increase readership of Marathi Wikipedia. Very few people are aware of existence of Marathi Wikipedia. Ideal success will look like : at-least 3 to 4 active volunteers who are willing to do strategic offline outreach. As of now there is negligible and zero to none outreach by 'volunteers' to increase readership. We hope to come up with at-least 5 workshops in next one year, at-least two partnerships with institutes.

• Can you say more about the composition of the scholarship team and the criteria you will use for selection?

We asked community members, user group and senior members to participate in the process of selection. It was up in public domain - on Village Pump for 3 weeks. No one raised any objection to the proposed team. Scholarships will be given to Marathi Wikipedians willing to participate in offline outreach as well as to those who have contributed to Marathi Wikipedia in last 10 years.

• Resources - I see you identified as the only organizing team member. This kind of conference usually require more team members to manage the capacity of work. This is a major factor in the success of the conference. Do you have potential community members willing to endorse and support  as core organizing team?

Table is updated now. list was suggested by user group and it was up on village pump for everyone's attention and approval.

• Risks - What are the risks you identify? 'First conference' is not a risk. Could you please add more information or clarify the risks you are seeing?

This is low level risk attempt as we are catering to small number of people - who live in (almost) same state but never met each other. First conference is risk - because either people are excited or no one shows up. Even if all volunteers show up from organizing team - it would be a success as most of us have never met each other in real life.

• You mentioned you have experienced community members, previously organized national and international events. Are they a part of the organizing team? If so, please add them to the table.

Yes. Personally, I was part of organizing national Wiki Conference India as well as Wiki Conference North America. Other members are part of regional workshops and hackathons.

• The budget table suggest 3 days conference, but the dated indicate a 4 days conference. Could you please clarify?

One day is for check-in and get to know each other (optional).

• Travel - are you offering 20 or 30 scholarships?

20 scholarships and 10 local participants from the city.

• Gifts - what do you mean by 'Specially for Marathi admins'?  Are those awarded for special accomplishments?

Yes. Marathi admins do great job of monitoring and administering Wikipedia. We want to acknowledge their efforts.

• Outreach - can you please detail more about the outreach budget item? You mentioned you are not including an outreach component to the conference. What are the workshops you mentioned as part of the outreach item? Are those training workshops? For what purpose?  

It is promote readership of Marathi wikipedia. Another outreach effort will also focus on publishing conference information.

• I see you havent mentioned a Fiscal sponsor, but you did include a fiscal sponsor fees. Who is the fiscal sponsor?

We are planning to work with fiscal sponsor who can help us to plan the event as per Government of India rules and regulations. Anyone (individual, non profit or association) receiving more than 25,000 INR (approx 360 USD) needs prior approval from the Government of India. Government has clearly mentioned it in official manuals. As user group as well as any other Wiki entity in India does not have permissions, we would like to go with fiscal sponsor for ease of execution. After approval - we will work with WMF team to finalize fiscal agent.

Thank you so much for reviewing and kindly let us know if you have any additional questions for us. --AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 03:00, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

CAlmog (WMF), I would like to mention here that I think some miscommunication happened with AbhiSuryawanshi. Marathi Wikimedians User Group is currently not in a position to organize this event. --Harish satpute (talk) 07:28, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Dear Harish, Thank you so much for the comment. I appreciate your feedback however I am unable to see any communication on Usergroup meta page and/or Marathi village pump which supports your statement. On the other hand, notice for this conference is up on village pump and usergroup meta talk page from one month and no one raised any objection so far. Usergroup should function as per bylaws along with community support. Everything related to this proposal is in public domain and unopposed from last one month. Your statement to take decision on behalf of entire usergroup without consulting community through proper channels is neither as per bylaws nor as per community support. I do understand you might be busy during same time period and we would appreciate your virtual assistance if possible to make it happen. We can change dates to accommodate you if more members agree to it. Looking forward to continuous support and collaboration. Thanks --AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 18:45, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

My concerns

There are many issues with this proposal I will try and be precise as I could. I can actually go with several more questions but, a quick look at this proposal got me to following few...

• My(Suresh Khole), Aarya's, Kalyani's name is mentioned in the table of volunteers - a) As per my knowledge no one from three of us ever said yes to be part of it/ever gave our consent to put our names in any of such proposals. b) Additionally why everyone else has their id's linked to their names and our names are just our names and no links to our accounts. c) There was no communication regarding such proposal being formed or we being included in the same.
• All of the accounts who have proposed this grant - I have serious concerns regarding the whole team showcased as they all happened to be non-active members and most of their contributions are already under scrutiny. The creator of this proposal has no active contributions to the project mrwiki in last two years. Their only participation is notices of various events. Ramu Kurmi with 11, Dhiruraghuvanshi with 795, Asmita with 1208, Harish Satpute with 599, Raut with 421, With such a low global edits, with no trusted status, not a single account out of them.
• I read this line in the proposal We have experienced members in Marathi Wikimedians Usergroup who have organized other national level as well as international conferences (Wiki Conference India, Wiki Conference North America etc). which triggered one simple question in my mind, Where are those experienced people? Why their names are missing from this proposal?
• Total lack of community support and participation : I haven't seen any community member(other than those mentioned in the table of volunteers/creators) ever supported even a idea of having such an event on village pump.
• Who would be hosting this entire event and administration? which organization? individuals? why do they need such an extra-ordinary administrative cost (90,850/-Rs)?
• Where are those active 20 admins on Marathi Project? who would be facilitated? on what basis?
• Why there is a different budget of 20000/-? for video documentation? can't our volunteers do that? and won't it be a paid contribution? as we would be uploading those videos to commons?
• What is the actual plan for outreach events? as there seems to be no mention of it otherwise.
• What is the process for selection of scholarships? as I have great doubt on the current team, I am scared who would be in the jury and how they are going to distribute those scholarships? QueerEcofeminist ^{"cite! even if you fight"!!!} [they/them/their] 13:39, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for taking out time to comment, I share some concerns with you about people who initially said yes, were inactive, came forward to volunteer and then disappeared again. We need some consistency and 'accountability' if we want to get anything. I am moving it back to draft till people who originally offered help make themselves available or we get additional resources in terms of team members. --AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 14:15, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

AbhiSuryawanshi, There are other questions apart from active participants, will you answer those? or Shall we consider you are dropping the whole idea of this proposal for now? QueerEcofeminist ^{"cite! even if you fight"!!!} [they/them/their] 15:42, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Concerns should be answered by concerned persons --AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 03:03, 4 October 2019 (UTC)

Draft version

Proposal will be in draft version for now --AbhiSuryawanshi (talk) 14:08, 1 October 2019 (UTC)