Grants talk:Conference/WMTR/Wikidata Trainings For Turkic Wikimedians

WMF comments

Dear @Mehman97: and @HakanIST:, Thank you for submitting this proposal! We are extremely happy to explore the opportunity to support you in hosting the Wikidata Trainings For Turkic Wikimedians, especially after recent developments with Turkish Wikipedia.

Your proposal has many strengths to highlight. I especially appreciated the vision behind collaborating with other affiliates and the role you have taken in leading the development regional efforts for WikiData.

I reviewed your proposal, and have some follow up questions and comments to offer as a part of staff review:

Community input

• “In the first two days there will be presentations, panel discussions, trainings that will be related with Wikidata and Wikipedia, open knowledge, diversity and gender gap and about Wikidata projects.” This seems to be a very generic overview of all major issues that the Wikimedia movement is thinking about. Maybe it would make more sense to focus on one / some / a few things and not tackle everything at once. Especially as this is meant to be a conference focusing in Wikidata.

I agree with you, so it’s clear that it's a generic overview, but in reality it will not be so. The fact is that the submissions, that will be made at conference in part will contain all of the above issues. But so that in our application there would be no misunderstanding I will make changes and leave only Wikidata.

• The three day event with the first two days being conference / training and the final day being an editathon sounds like a good event flow. It could be worth making the last day a specialized wikidata-editathon/hands on day that incorporate a Wikidata onboarding for newcomers, instead of a more generic wikipedia focused editathon.

Everything will be as you propose to us, Wikipedia is given here in the aspect that we will work on integrated templates and infoboxes that are related to Wikidata (the source of information is Wikidata). The third day will be fully aimed at working on Wikidata, both for beginners and advanced users.

• The goals you identified are a bit vague. Please elaborate on the main objectives and outputs that will indicate you achieve your goals. What will success look like? Try to use metrics to do that.

We will definitely create metrics to indicate our goals, as well as to monitor our achievements.

• Why is having a different set of tracks for beginner and advanced participants is essential? How did the community survey reflect this need? What do you think about asking the advanced folks to take on a mentoring / instructing role?

We will mainly give scholarships to participants who will have at least minimal knowledge of working in Wikidata, it can also be seen in the polls that all respondents have minimal knowledge, but from our past events it is clear that interest in such events is high and we expect students from our university (Uskudar University) and from other communities there will be interested persons who want to study Wikidata, so we decided to make two tracks for beginners and for advanced users. Please watch the video from our last event at university.

• The proposal initially mentions diversity, gender gap, and generally open knowledge but those things are not mentioned anywhere in the survey results or the rest of the proposal. Are they in scope for this event? If so, what is the specific plan?

Yes, this is for the purpose of our event. We will teach the participants of the event the at the conference days, how to involve people with different backgrounds in Wikimedia projects, and we will also talk about the importance of gender equality among users of Wikimedia projects. The importance of open knowledge, its capabilities and development is also important for us and it will be in the program of our event.

Plan

• The creative commons global summit code of conduct looks good, but it has quite a lot of wording in it that is relevant only to that specific event. Is there any reason why you would not use one of the existing wikimedia friendly space policies? Generally the wording in there will be more generic to any wikimedia event and not specific to the Commons Global Summit and its specific events team.

I agree with you that CoC of creative commons global summit is built for a specific event. We chose it because it describes all the processes in more detail, but after your letter we rethought it and decided to change it with the FSP from the Wikimedia Foundation, which is used at the Foundation’s events. We think it will fully work for our event.

• Part of the plan for event follow up mentions “we expect participants to conduct active trainings in their home communities”. How do you intend to achieve or monitor that? It would be a fantastic key / measurable outcome to report on if you could count how many Wikidata trainings took place as a direct result of this event.

Some (mostly representatives of UG) scholarship recipients from us must agree upon registration that after the event they are ready to share their knowledge acquired during the conference with their home community after the event. In turn, we will help (online, with training materials and financially) so that they conduct Wikidata training at home. We will create a special page and a scoreboard to track the progress of the trainings. We will always be in touch with conference participants and potential trainers. The organizing committee of this event will actively monitor all participants after the event.

• An idea for your consideration can be to build in some train-the-trainer type sessions, and to ask participants as they register for a scholarship to agree in advance to running these trainings in their communities and submitting a plan for doing so after the event.

Yes, we plan to do it. As I indicated above, we will conduct special trainings for UG representatives, so that in the next they can plan and conduct trainings in their home communities. We in turn will help them with planning.

• WMF attendance - It sounds like the event is relying on the following folks. If the people mentioned are not able to attend, do you have back-ups? Is there anyone more local who would be able to take the lead on organizing the trainings? Another way to go about it would be to add a question in the scholarship selection criteria, or to prioritize those who can train or teach.

We focused on specific individuals from the WMF, but if these people cannot be present we have backup options, for example, inviting people and Wikimedia Germany (WMDE). In addition, we have people at the local level who will be able to conduct trainings on Wikidata and other Wikimedia projects. In addition, we are going to invite people from the Trust and Safety, it will be great if someone from this team can come to our event.

Resources and Risks

• Have you ever worked with the Uskudar University before? Will they be in charge of all the operational issues on ground? Or would you need to assign volunteers to do so? It would be good to have a local wikimedian from the organizing team also taking ownership for logistics and working with the university to make sure everything will run properly / do sight visits / own set-up and take down and onsite registration, etc.

We’ve held 2 seminars at Uskudar University with experienced Wikimedians as presenters. Second seminar was part of the Wikidata Birthday event in 2017. We have hosted an international guest speaker sponsored by WMF. Event was held with the help of volunteer students that were coordinated by a local Wikimedian. We’re planning to build up on that experience. It should be noted that one of the organizers of this event - Hakan is an employee of this university, who will coordinate the event on the spot.

• Is there a more specific plan to help encourage women to participate / do outreach around that? What happens if you don’t reach your quota?

We will use different tools to attract more women to the event. One of the ways that we are going to use – quota. So, affiliation will have two 2 or 3 representatives, they will be required to choose at least one woman representative. As well as the scholarship committee will observe a gender balance when selecting participants. We will also personally encourage active Wikipedian women to apply for a scholarship to attend the event. It should also be noted that, at the university where we will hold the conference, the majority of students are female (70%), we think that there will be many interested persons from the university at our event.

Budget

• Between 40-50 participants are expected but only 35 bed spaces are available each night (30 beds in 15 double rooms, 5 beds in 5 single rooms). Do you expect a lot of Istanbul locals? Or scholarship recipients to pay for their own hotels?

The 35 people whom we pay in full for their stay are international participants and an invitation to guests. The remaining 5 people are local participants from Turkey (Istanbul) who have a place of stay during the conference, we pay them only transport and food expenses.

• The promo package for participants is a lot more than we usually provide. When it comes to swag, we ask to be environmentally mindful and wWe suggest only providing stickers and maybe one other item (like t-shirt or bag or folder or notebook). Please consider reducing this significantly.

We took into account your proposal and left the amount here only for hoodies for event participants and volunteers. Also, we will ask the host university to sponsor bags and notebooks with their branding.

• Have you considered a travel agency services? Being mindful of the fact that this is a first time, volunteer based event, I would consider outsourcing some of the services and tasks. This is an expense you can add to the budget if you decide to do so.

I agree with you, since we have not held such an event before, we have less experience in this matter and I think we should hire a travel agency. Unfortunately I can’t tell us how much it will cost and I think we can be helped in this matter by the Wikimedia Foundation, which hires such agencies during Wikimania. We can work with an agency that the WMF recommends to us. We can add an amount to this after WMF says how much it costs, before that we can add an approximate amount to the budget.

This is an excellent idea and a very useful event. It sounds like there is a significant need for Wikidata training and more collaboration in the region. Generally, everything looks great, but my biggest challenge would be the scope of the event and the content.

Therefore, we would suggest reducing the scope of the event to really focus on the Wikidata training, experience sharing and partnership development. I think that in this case, focusing and even simplifying, will go a long way.

When you're able, please respond to the questions above and revise the proposal as needed. These revisions will be due by 27 February 2020, after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal.

Thank you again for your significant role in supporting your community! And for this very thorough proposal. Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 15:00, 20 February 2020 (UTC)

Dear @CAlmog (WMF):, first of all, thanks for your feedback. I tried to answer your questions and comments in detail. I will make the corresponding changes to the grant application. I also want to note here that at the moment in the application an incomplete version of the budget is given, we are waiting for feedback from you regarding travel agency. If there are any more questions or comments, we will quickly answer them. Kindly, --Mehman 97 22:41, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

WMF comments - April 2022

Hi Mehman97, HakanIST, and Zafer,

Thank you so much for this revised proposal. I'm very happy you decided to apply again and I think it's a great opportunity for capacity building and skill learning for your community. As this is a proposal we already reviewed and talked about in the past (which unfortunately had to be withdrawn due to the pandemic) I will mainly focus on the risks and budget parts. But I am curious to know why you decided to change the scope of the event that was originally meant to be local, but now has a significant international focus to it. It's ok that you changed it, I'm just curious to know what was the motivation.

Risks

• Gender balance - I understand you cannot predict who will apply for a scholarship, and of course, there are cultural elements. But if you wish to correct the gender gap in your community, you need to actively target women editors and make proactive efforts to reach out to them specifically. That is something to plan for.
• Covid risks - I strongly suggest that you will allocate budget for travel insurance. You should also negotiate with vendors and service providers on the best cancellation policies and terms.

Budget

• Thank you for this detailed, and well thought out budget!
• You said you will provide 40 scholarships but I see you budgeted for 37 international flights + 15 local. I also see 70 Promo packets, but catering costs for 60 people. So i'm not clear on how many participants and scholarship recipients are you planning for. Can you please clarify the participants breakdown? How many international/local/team?
• Why do team and key speakers need 7 nights stay? I understand additional 1 or 2 nights for on ground organizers before the event take place, but why the rest? And why do key speakers also need to be accommodated for 7 nights?
• What about breakfast? Is it included in the hotel costs?
• Promo packets - please be mindful and environmentally aware when thinking of the promo packets. Generally we do not encourage mass production of swag and prefer low cost, low environmentally damaging items such as stickers.
• In kind venue - that's amazing! Very good news.

Thank you for submitting this proposal! I look forward to reading your answers and moving forward with the event. Please respond as soon as possible so we can finalize the process.

All the best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 13:09, 24 April 2022 (UTC)

Hello CAlmog (WMF), thanks for your updates and questions. I will try to be specific and concise in answering your questions.

This event was an international event from the beginning, we planned to hold it in 2020, but due to the pandemic, we had to postpone it. Instead, we periodically held small online meetings, but the effectiveness of in-person meetings is much greater, which we tested and proved at our hybrid meeting in 2021. Therefore, we have decided to hold a fully in-person meeting for the community this year.

Risks

• Of course, it will be difficult for us to maintain gender balance, but we have already developed a plan to try to achieve this. Specifically, we will do the following:

1. We will give priority to women in the scholarship applications and if they meet the criteria, they will have a better chance. Of course, in this case, the quota will be observed so that there is a balance in the number of participants.
2. We will actively encourage women and other members unrepresented groups to take action, through Wikipedia, social networks and other communication channels.

• The amount for insurance is already included in the price of each ticket, but if you think this is not enough and you have recommendations for us, we are ready to listen to you and act accordingly.

Budget

• We update number. We will have 37 international travels and 15 local ones, 52 in total. But based on our and especially on the previous experience of our colleagues from Turkey, there is a high interest of the local community for such events, and we are also confident that the interest in the event from university students will be high, which will increase the number of participants of the event. Therefore, we have indicated the maximum number of participants up to 100. Accordingly, we have indicated a high number (which is average) for catering.
• Only the international organizers of the event will stay for 7 nights and some of them are also key speakers, the rest of the speakers we need to accurately organize the event and clarify the details related to the program and the course of the event. We would like the speakers to take an active part in organizing the event and get acquainted with the needs and the situation in general on the spot.
• Yes, breakfast is included in the hotel price.
• Yes, we take this factor into account. I remind you that only organizers and volunteers will receive hoodies. All other participants in promotional packages will receive stickers and personal hygiene items (masks and etc.).

If there are other questions, please contact us, we will be happy to answer them. --Mehman 97 21:55, 27 April 2022 (UTC)

Grant approved

Hi Mehman97, HakanIST, and Zafer,

Thank you for your work on the grant request and for responding to our comments. We are glad to inform you that we have reviewed the final proposal and we are happy to support it in the amount of US$60,000.00. You can expect an email in the next few days with more instructions and next steps. I will also circle back soon to schedule our first meeting. Looking forward to working together! On behalf of the Conference Grants Committee and Community Resources team. Best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 16:03, 6 May 2022 (UTC)