Grants talk:Conference/WikiConference India 2023

WMF feedback

Hi WikiConference India 2023 team,

Thank you so much for submitting this proposal. It's been long since the region had an in person meet up and I appreciate the need and importance for a cross-community connections. This has been a very informative proposal. So there are not many questions left unanswered.

But here are a few comments and suggestions:

• 58 people to answer the survey given you are targeting 200-250 participants is not a lot. How can you be positive this is a good representation of the community needs?
• I see you are planning 120/140 scholarships, but you also indicated there will be 200-250 total participants. Will the others be self funded attendees?
• Overall, is seems like you have many issues you would like to address, including governance, strategy, content creation, skills and community development. I think it's too much to do, especially as the main intention for the gathering is to enhance community bonds and connections. This is something that you can do as you move forward with the planing and maybe also considering opening the survey again to get mote inputs, but in general, I think you should better prioritize the issues you would like to tackle at the event.
• Probably my biggest concern is around the capacity of the organizing team. This is a relatively large scale event and I am also aware of the fact that some of the core organizing team members will be also involved in the organization of the 2nd Wikimedia Technology Summit. As I understand, the core organizing team (non-WMF) is around 4-5 people and I'm very worried of the bandwidth and capacity.

I know you are planing to hire an event manager, but for that scale, I think it's still not enough. My first recommendation on that will be to budget for a separate travel booking service, that will not be handled by the event manager. The booking and back and forth communication with so many attendees will be a lot of work and shouldn't be owned by the same person. Travel arrangements is one of the simpler tasks to outsource and is worth the extra budget. I would think about more outsourcing services and also about a plan to recruit more volunteers (or paid staff) for different roles.

• You've done a really great Risk Analysis - thank you for that.

Budget

• Please make sure to budget flights as needed. I know that traditionally in previous events in the region organizers sometimes prioritized ground transportation for very significant distances. I don't think this is needed. If the ground transportation is more than a few hours drive, I would budget for a flight. Same as we do in other regions.
• Is $628 enough for all the Visa needs? Please be sure to include any associated costs.
• Is the $251 budget enough for the additional network support? It is an important components and it seems a bit on the low end (but I'm not familiar with network costs in India).

Thank you again for your thought out proposal and initiative! We look forward to support the WikiConference India 2023.

Best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 05:02, 17 October 2022 (UTC)

Response for the feedback

Greetings CAlmog (WMF),

Thank you for the feedback. Here is our responses to your questions. Please let us know if you have any questions in regards to this.

• 58 people to answer the survey given you are targeting 200-250 participants is not a lot. How can you be positive this is a good representation of the community needs?
  • We did not have much time to collect the surveys or feedback from the Wikimedians. In a short time, we approached communities or Wikimedians via mailing lists and VPs to fill out the form and got only 58 responses within 20 days. We found the common concerns, needs and responses in those filled forms and analysed basic and crucial factors which were always discussed in calls, meetings and events. We reopened the form after the submission and got a total of 63 responses. We plan to engage a larger number of people during the scholarship application process.
  • The mode of engagement is not limited to the Google form. There are other channels where we have been interacting with the volunteers and there is positive support for the event.

• I see you are planning 120/140 scholarships, but you also indicated there will be 200-250 total participants. Will the others be self funded attendees?
• Here is the estimated number of non-scholarship attendees:

• • Foundation staff - 10 to 20
  • Self-registered or partially funded - 50
  • Organising team - ~ 20

• Overall, it seems like you have many issues you would like to address, including governance, strategy, content creation, skills and community development. I think it's too much to do, especially as the main intention for the gathering is to enhance community bonds and connections. This is something that you can do as you move forward with the planing and maybe also considering opening the survey again to get mote inputs, but in general, I think you should better prioritize the issues you would like to tackle at the event.
  • Thank you for the suggestion, the initial survey was to identify interest among the community members regarding priority topics. We understand that we would not be able to tackle all of the themes in the upcoming conference. Some of the above mentioned themes will be prioritized and showcased in the main event, (we will arrive at these priorities by holding discussions across communities). For other topics we hope to arrange online conversations, learning days kind of engagement activities.
  • We agree with your suggestion to gather further input and we plan to gather that during the scholarship application process.

• Probably my biggest concern is around the capacity of the organizing team. This is a relatively large scale event and I am also aware of the fact that some of the core organizing team members will be also involved in the organization of the 2nd Wikimedia Technology Summit. As I understand, the core organizing team (non-WMF) is around 4-5 people and I'm very worried of the bandwidth and capacity.
  • The organizing team was initially formed with a few members to start the initial work necessary for the conference and is currently expanding. While conducting the community engagement survey, we asked the community members for their interest to join the organizing team of the conference and received a good number of interests. We will start onboarding more people and form the final team by the end of mid November. Below table shows number of interested people for each team.

Team	No of Interested Wikimedians
Program	11
Finance	5
Coordination	27
Trust and Safety	5
Misc (Logistics, Comms)	8

• I know you are planning to hire an event manager, but for that scale, I think it's still not enough. My first recommendation on that will be to budget for a separate travel booking service, that will not be handled by the event manager. The booking and back and forth communication with so many attendees will be a lot of work and shouldn't be owned by the same person. Travel arrangements is one of the simpler tasks to outsource and is worth the extra budget. I would think about more outsourcing services and also about a plan to recruit more volunteers (or paid staff) for different roles.
  • Thank you for your suggestion we are considering it, and we will update the budget sheet accordingly by tomorrow.

• Is $628 enough for all the Visa needs? Please be sure to include any associated costs
  • We have budgeted scholarships for ten Wikimedians residing in Nepal(4 members), Bangladesh(3 members), and Sri Lanka(3 members). The visa processing fees are applicable in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka only where the average cost per application is below $60. We believe the quoted amount for visa processing in the budget will suffice the need.

• Is the $251 budget enough for the additional network support? It is an important components and it seems a bit on the low end (but I'm not familiar with network costs in India).
  • As already mentioned in the budget, the hotels will be able to provide internet for the conference. But, sometimes the bandwidth might not be sufficient to fulfil the conference needs. We would like to increase the amount from $251 to $566 (~Rs. 45,000) as this will be the maximum fee charged by dedicated internet services for conferences.

Thank you so much!

On behalf of WCI 2023 Core organizing team, Nitesh Gill (talk) 17:16, 21 October 2022 (UTC)

Conference proposal approved

Hi WikiConference India 2023 team,

Thank you for your work on the funding request and responding to our comments.

On behalf of the Conference Fund committee, I’m happy to tell you that we've reviewed the final proposal for the WikiConference India 2023 and will be happy to support the event in the amount of 9,562,351 INR.

In the coming weeks, I will contact you to set up our first meeting. This will be followed by a regular monthly meeting.

Looking forward to working together! CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 18:04, 7 November 2022 (UTC)

Requesting additional budget for WikiConference India 2023

Greetings @CAlmog (WMF),

Given the current situation and the rise in the number of CoVID cases, we have dropped the option of a resort and chose a hotel that has the capacity to accommodate all the participants and has the ability to conduct the entire conference at the same place. This will help us to ensure the safety and sanity of the participants and ease the work of logistics and coordination. With the new decision, the option of mitigating a few budget components is not possible. For conducting the conference smoothly, we would like to request some additional funds for the below-mentioned categories.

Detailed Request:

Category	Item description	Cost per unit	No. of units	Total cost (INR)	Total cost (USD)	Notes
Category A: Travel	Increment in Bus/train/flight charges for Wikimedians (scholarship recipients) residing in India	₹2,000.00	80	₹160,000.00	$1,932.80	With the increasing number of CoVID cases, we are anticipating an increase in the flight charges
	Additional charges by Travel agent booking	₹17,500.00	n/a	₹17,500.00	$211.40
Category B: Food & Accommodation	Increase in the accommodation charges	₹1,500.00	280	₹420,000.00	$5,073.60	We have chosen a hotel which has the capacity to increase which requires an additional Rs.1,500 cost per room (for 70 rooms and 4 nights)
	Increase in food charges	₹2,000.00	400	₹800,000.00	$9,664.00	Since we are going with a new accommodation place which has better security, facilities and availability, the cost of food per plate has also increased. We are also planning to have a social dinner for one of the days of the conference outside the venue. This is mainly to build social interaction among the participants.
Category C: Event Logistics	Staging: 8x6 Screen with 10x10 Black Masking	₹13,000.00	6	₹78,000.00	$942.24	Since we need 2 units for 3 days we are requesting more budget for this.
	Increase in AV unit cost	₹3,000.00	4	₹12,000.00	$144.96	We need to procure it from external vendor. One day would be required to try out the the system.
Category D: Event Management	Support services for Communications team	₹67,800.00	1	₹67,800.00	$819.02
	Second pre event meet-up for the organisers	₹225,000.00	1	₹225,000.00	$2,718.00	This meeting will mainly focus on the on ground planning for the event and have quick check on food, venue, stays with the hotel
Category E: Goodies	Increase in the budget for SWAGS	₹450.00	225	₹101,250.00	$1,223.10	We have increased the budget for this in order to give a better quality product. We are estimating the cost to be around Rs. 1250 per head.
T1 = (Cat A+ Cat B+ Cat C+ Cat D+ Cat E)	Total of above listed expenses			₹1,881,550.00	$22,729.12
UE	Unforeseen Expenses			₹94,077.50	$1,136.46	5% of above listed experineces T1
T2 = T1 + UE	Total			₹1,975,627.50	$23,865.58
X1 = 10% of T2	Institution Developement Fee			₹197,562.75	$2,386.56	10% of Total T2
X2 = T2 + X1	Required additional amount			₹2,173,190.25	$26,252.14

Summarised request (including tax):

Category	Item description	Total cost (INR)	Total cost (USD)
X2	Required additional amount	₹2,173,190.25	$26,252.14
P0	Previously received fund	₹9,562,351.00	$115,513.20
P1 = P0 + X2	Total budget for the event	₹11,735,541.25	$141,765.34
G1	GST - 18%	₹2,112,397.43	$25,517.76
O1 = X2 + G1	Overall to be requested	₹4,285,587.68	$51,769.90

We would like to request a total of ₹4,285,587.68 ($51,769.90 in USD) which will help us to plan and organize a safe and wonderful conference. The above-mentioned amount includes the Goods and Service Tax (GST) for the previously received amount.

Thank you for taking your time and going through the request. Please let us know if you have any questions.

Regards, Nivas10798 (talk) 16:16, 5 January 2023 (UTC)

Hi@Nivas10798, Thank you for this request and for the clarifications via email.

your request for a ₹4,285,587.68 ($51,769.90 in USD) increase is approved. Our grant admins will follow up with you for next steps. CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 19:43, 23 January 2023 (UTC)