Grants talk:Conference/WM UA/CEE Meeting 2018/Report

WMF comments

Hi NickK, Taras r and all the Wikimedia Ukraine team. Thank you so much for the time and effort you spent in writing this very thorough report. This is highly appreciated. I'm also happy to see you published the Survey results and the Learning pattern on registration. Those documents are always very helpful for future organizers.

I reviewed your report and have some comments and questions I would be happy to clarify and learn some more on.

Goals

1. Gender gap work is a movement priority so if possible, we do expect organizers to try and create the platform to discuss the issue (low interest can suggest the existence of Gender gap and therefore should be addressed).
2. Were there any decisions made regarding the CEE Spring, or other major projects?
3. I'm glad to hear the Ukrainian Wikimedians had the chance to engage successfully. Were there any clear outcomes on the local community development?

Next steps

1. We will be happy to hear any future updates on the local and regional work on strategy (and provide help if needed).
2. Seems it was very impactful if 3 User groups were created. Thank you for your part in creating the platform to do so.

Learning

1. Would you consider to share the weekly timeline you created, as a source for future organizers?
2. I'm so glad to hear you spent time and effort in working with the speakers. This is sometimes can make all the difference between a good program, and a less effective one.
3. Wikimedia 2030 - This is really important and thank you for allowing this discussion.
4. What was the format to the 'How can we better work together session'? What kind of format would you suggest in retrospect?
5. Could you please shortly describe the selection process you had? Did you chose the participants, or it was only the affiliates who chose through an internal process?
6. The CEEM participation status is really an important discussion to have, but we do believe it is for future organizers and for the CEE community to determine the nature of the conference. We will be happy to support and think about it together.
7. The translation issue is indeed a challenging one. As we try to be inclusive and diverse, it is sometime a struggle to operate. In early April the Wikimedia + Education conference was held in San Sebastian and had simultaneous translation to some of the sessions, that seemed to work well. It's worthwhile waiting for their report to see how effective it was. In the future, when we will have more best practices, we can consider funding the extra cost.

I'll be waiting for your response so we can learn a bit more through this questions. Thank you again for the time spent in filing this report, and for the team efforts and hard work in hosting this event. Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 14:55, 26 April 2019 (UTC)

Hi Chen, I put our comments below. Please feel free to comment respective paragraphs if you have further questions (I hope this will be a convenient way to continue discussion). -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi ViraMotorko (WMUA), Thank you for your response. See my comments following your answers. Thank you again for taking that time to create the report and to share all you have learned. We thank you for your huge and impactful part in developing the Ukrainian Wikimedia community and for giving the CEE community this well deserved platform. I will now review the financial report and will get back to you shortly. Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Goals

Gender gap work is a movement priority so if possible, we do expect organizers to try and create the platform to discuss the issue (low interest can suggest the existence of Gender gap and therefore should be addressed).

We are all aware that gender gap exists and this issue was mentioned among others during strategic discussions at the CEE Meeting. What we lacked in 2018 is having qualified speakers who want to share something new with the audience. We had one interesting presentation and a couple of lightning talks, which means the platform was available. A possible learning for the future is identifying successful gender gap projects, and proactively encouraging their leaders to present them if they are from the region, or invite them as speakers if they are not from the CEE. -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Were there any decisions made regarding the CEE Spring, or other major projects?

The major decision regarding the CEE Spring was to continue organising it in 2019 identifying content gap is a focus of the contest. Participants identified that the contest format generally helps achieve this goal, and focused 2019 work on better support to local organisers and better identification of content gaps (using automated tools like WCDO and possibly expanding to sister projects). -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

I'm glad to hear the Ukrainian Wikimedians had the chance to engage successfully. Were there any clear outcomes on the local community development?

The two major impacts for Ukrainian Wikimedian community were around strategy and education. On strategy side, this helped Ukrainian community better understand what the 2030 strategy process is about and how they can get involved. This contributed to the involvement of community members in Wikimedia Ukraine strategy process we have started this year. On education, CEEM2018 was an opportunity for Education Programme leaders from Ukraine to learn from the regional experience and work on their own plan. Ukrainian education leaders have established more friendly contacts among themselves and are working closer together when it comes to promoting Wikipedia in schools. Finally, many Ukrainian attendees present in Lviv became more involved in WMUA projects, with one joining the chapter after CEEM2018 and becoming a board member. -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

New active contributors/ community members and a new board member is such a wonderful outcome! Thank you. CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Next steps

We will be happy to hear any future updates on the local and regional work on strategy (and provide help if needed).

Wikimedia Ukraine hired facilitators from NGO Insha Osvita to guide it and started its strategic process. We had our first ever strategic session on 16 February and a team-building session on 23-24 March; our next steps will be having a series of face-to-face interviews in May/June, another strategic session to identify a project of strategy in June/July and working online on finalisation of the strategy afterwards. According to our plan, we will have the strategy of the chapter validated at Ukrainian WikiConference in October. -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Sounds great. If you are doing it as a part of the Wikimedia movement Strategy salons, then great. If not, you might find it useful. Good luck and thank you for the update. CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Learning

Would you consider to share the weekly timeline you created, as a source for future organizers?

We created and shared a Google Document with an overview for our Serbian colleagues.

It includes a simplified timeline. If you advise to create a Learning pattern out of this, it can be done. -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing this doc. If it's fine by you, we might share this as a source for future conference organizers. Please let me know if you have any reservations. CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Yes, this doc is totally shareable --ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 14:50, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

What was the format to the 'How can we better work together session'? What kind of format would you suggest in retrospect?

The session was held in the form of a Plenary Workshop. It was designed and held by Julia Kirchner. This session was originally created for a working group of 60 people, but we at CEEM2018 had twice that number and because we had that many people the session couldn’t show its full potential. So in retrospect, this format is right for this kind of session, but the number of people has to be small(er) in order for it to work. It is quite difficult to come up with a format where a reasonable number of facilitators (2 or 3) would keep a group of 129 people involved, thus formats from Wikimedia Summit in Berlin would be more appropriate for such audience sizes. -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Yes, it might worth thinking in the future of using working groups model for such big sessions. CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

Could you please shortly describe the selection process you had? Did you chose the participants, or it was only the affiliates who chose through an internal process?

We strongly recommended that participants were selected by the community and could provide a link to the respective on-wiki discussion/board decision/etc. Each community from the CEE could send two delegates who had travel, accommodation, visa etc. costs funded by the conference grant. For some (less active) communities the CEEM2018 organising team members started community discussions themselves, particularly on local village pumps, and, if available, on mailing lists or social media groups. In these cases we invited some experienced local members to participate in discussions and potentially apply, notably administrators, outreach event organisers or previous participants of international events. Some affiliates sent additional participants and covered the costs of their participation themselves.

So the community representatives were selected by the communities or affiliates. After that we invited speakers who can benefit the program and the conference in general: Board Training speakers, WMF Trust & Safety Specialists, AffCom representative, Community Liason etc. We also invited members of Movement Strategy process, so that all strategy groups were represented at the conference by at least one person. Our main criteria for inviting these people were their expertise (known to us from other Wikimedia events and projects) and availability (some invitees could not come because of their tight schedule). -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

I highly appreciate the efforts you've made in reaching out to less involved communities, so their voices will be heard. CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 15:11, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

The CEEM participation status is really an important discussion to have, but we do believe it is for future organizers and for the CEE community to determine the nature of the conference. We will be happy to support and think about it together.

As of today, CEEM 2019 is following the steps of 2018 edition, without major changes in this field. -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

The translation issue is indeed a challenging one. As we try to be inclusive and diverse, it is sometime a struggle to operate. In early April the Wikipedia + Education conference was held in San Sebastian and had simultaneous translation to some of the sessions, that seemed to work well. It's worthwhile waiting for their report to see how effective it was. In the future, when we will have more best practices, we can consider funding the extra cost.

This is particularly difficult for the CEE community. We had native speakers of 33 languages in Lviv, which is extremely costly for translations. Even if we chose the most popular languages other than English, we would still have at least three, with German for Central Europe, Russian for Eastern Europe and Serbo-Croatian for Southeast Europe, and even with that several countries (e.g. Albania) will be excluded as they use none of these three. This is a real diversity problem for our region as such events exclude those who don’t speak English, but there is no good solution so far. -- ViraMotorko (WMUA) ^(talk) 10:32, 16 May 2019 (UTC)

Grant report approved

Hi ViraMotorko (WMUA) and all the WMUA team.

Congratulations on completing your grant!

Your complete grant report has been reviewed and accepted, and documentation of expenses has been received. Thank you for your engagement with the reporting review process, and with your work throughout the grants process. We appreciate the outcomes from your project, and what you learned with WMF and the community. We also warmly welcome any updates or follow up plan you would like to provide us about your completed grant. We thank you for your work for the movement, and offer you our best wishes for your future work.

Thank you! All the best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 23 July 2019 (UTC)

Documentation of expenditures has been received by WMF.