Grants talk:Conference/Northern Europe Meeting 2018

WMF Feedback

The community input table currently lists 14 topics, which is too many for a small 2 to 3 day event. It is important to prioritize these topics, and be more specific about what you would like to work on. Are you able to identify priorities based on the survey responses? If not, I suggest you either host a call with group leaders to discuss or ask community leaders to vote on priorities and nominate specific projects on the discussion page of this grant request.

• For strategic discussions you should choose a maximum of two topics, and you should be more specific about what you want to discuss. For example, do you want to discuss a new way to train people in the Northern European region? Is there a political topic that affects several communities in this region?

• For capacity development, you should have a maximum of two topics to focus on. Keep in mind that partnership development is the focus of one of the tracks at WMCon next month, so if it is a topic you want to focus on at this event you will need to be more specific about the partnership development skills your communities need to learn or practice together.

• For working groups, you should have a maximum of three topics. Again, you should choose topics with some 12 month regional goals in mind. For example, if you choose diversity projects, is there a goal to increase the number of diversity projects in the region? If you choose volunteer projects, do you want participating communities to develop better ways of supporting volunteer projects, or do you want to see increased participation from volunteers in specific projects?

Below is a list of the topics you listed in the table:

Strategic discussions about regional cooperation (Choose 2)

• Joint initiatives
• Trainings
• Politics
• Growing communities

Capacity development (Choose 2):

• Knowledge sharing (How to best share information and what platforms to use)
• Partnerships development
• Professionalization of volunteer organizations
• Advocacy
• Accessing resources

Working groups (Choose 3):

• Planning for Wikimania 2019
• Diversity projects
• Education projects
• Volunteer projects
• Communication projects
• Technical projects

Let me know if you have questions about this feedback and how to get more specific input and priorities from the Northern European community. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 01:14, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Hi Kacie,

Yes, it is indeed very true that it is way too many things for the final agenda. This was merely intended as a summary of what was presented in the survey, with an analysis how it was prioritized by the respondents. Our intention was to give your committee a better feeling what type of topics we intend to include at this regional event and/or at future ones.

If funded, we intend to develop the program together with a few volunteers that has stepped forward and stated their willingness to work with us around that (as stated under #Organizing team).

If it is crucial to have a more clearly defined scope already at this stage I would argue that the following topics are very likely (based on the answers and discussions we have had so far):

• For Strategic discussions about regional cooperation:
  • Joint initiatives (e.g. what work we could and should do together to achieve more with less)
  • Politics (e.g. Freedom of Panorama)
• For Capacity development:
  • Knowledge sharing (e.g. as we work in similar contexts)
  • Accessing resources (e.g. as there are different regional funds available)
• For Working groups:
  • Planning for Wikimania 2019 (e.g. as we want to find a Nordic angle to it and create value for the regional affiliates)
  • Diversity projects (as we have started discussions around this at WikiDivCon17 and have ongoing projects and applications)
  • Education projects (e.g. as we work in a similar context and many of us have activities with educational partners)

However, I would very much prefer that this is still a bit flexible so that the program committee can adjust things as they see fit.

Best,

John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 10:06, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Hi John Andersson (WMSE), thank you for your responses to my questions. We did not have any additional questions, but we do want to share some of the background on the funding decision, and offer a suggestion for planning the event.

• Partial funding was offered because the host organization is funded through an Annual Plan Grant and can adjust their staffing/program plans this year to do event preparation and follow up. We did fund an external facilitator so that all of the meeting participants can participate in discussions and not be responsible for facilitation.
• Thank you for clarifying the priorities you want to focus on at this meeting. We recommend that you have some preliminary meetings/conversations with leaders from the participating communities to narrow focus a bit further so that you can prepare an effective agenda.

We look forward to supporting you to have an effective event. If you have questions or would like support, please contact Alex Wang. Cheers, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 18:35, 31 May 2018 (UTC)

Updated budget for approval

We have updated our event budget table. The updates are based on the approved grant of 78,012 SEK and an additional sponsorship for dinner. The additional sponsorship has allowed us to relocate money from catering to a post for extra travel and miscellaneous costs. Furthermore, we have broken down the costs for scholarship and catering into smaller posts, to make it easier to compare the budget to the actual costs when the conference has been held.

Item description	Unit	Quantity	Cost per unit (SEK)	Total cost (SEK)	WMF contribution (SEK)	Other sources (SEK)	Comments
Scholarship
Travel	People	15	1,550	23,250	23,250	0	Travel with an estimated average of 1,550 SEK per scholarship recipient. WMSE, WMEE, WMNO pays for travel for their participants.
Accomodation	People	15	1450	21,750	21,750	0	Accommodation for two nights including breakfast and wifi. WMSE, WMEE, WMNO pays for accomodation for their participants.
Worktime
Facilitator at conference	Days	2.5	15,000	37,500	20,000	17,500	17,500 SEK pro-bono work by facilitator.
Catering							This budget has 32 people instead of 25 as stated in the budget in the application. This is compensated by a lower cost per meal.
Lunch day 1	Meals	32	85	2,720	2,720
Lunch day 2	Meals	32	165	5,280	5,280
Dinner day 1	Meals	32	205	6,560	0	6,560	Sponsored by Internetstiftelsen
Other
Extra travel and miscellaneous costs				5,012	5,012		Due to sponsored dinner and good exchange rate we have some extra funds available for to cover travel costs for participants and possible material needed for the event.
			TOTAL	102,072	78,012	24,060

@John Andersson (WMSE): This new budget for the Northern Europe Meeting 2018 is approved. Thanks for letting us know about your work gaining a sponsorship for some of the catering and on your decision to reallocate additional funds to help cover participant travel costs. I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 18:33, 5 September 2018 (UTC)

@I JethroBT (WMF): Thank you for your quick reply. It's much appreciated. John Andersson (WMSE) (talk) 21:29, 5 September 2018 (UTC)