Grants talk:Conference/Wikimedia User Group Nigeria/WikiIndaba Conference 2019

Comments from I JethroBT (WMF)

@Olaniyan Olushola: Hi Shola, thanks for your proposal for WikiIndaba 2019 in Abuja, Nigeria. I've had a chance to fully review the proposal, and have the following comments and question to offer as a part of staff review:

Comments/Observations

• Goals are growth-oriented and focusing on creating strong working relationships between communities in Africa.
• To that end, the themes of the conference are very focused on strategy. Other tracks include one specific to Partnerships and another for Capacity Building.
• This isn't material to the conference itself, but it might be good to consider other ways to look at improvements in capacity and skills building. Increased contributions on Wikidata may reflect a number of changes including people learning new skills. For instance, contributors may simply have become more productive
• Great reflections from last conference about payment issues, relationships with vendors, and logistics of running sessions at the conference. The challenges are clearly stated and are coupled with good ideas for solutions-- this is a good practice that leads to better conferences in terms of preparations and the experience for attendees. I am also glad that you've articulated places where our own team can improve as well. At this time, I can't offer any definitive responses regarding whether we can arrange for a system for emergency funds or send all of the requested funds at once, but I can understand why this would be convenient for you (and other event organizers). I would like to explore whether this is possible to arrange.
• Thank you for making good efforts to request and obtain discounts in accommodations and venue costs in your budget.

Questions/Requests

• For the community input table:
  • The descriptions of some topics under the Community input section are somewhat broad. For instance, one of the top issues under strategic discussions is "African language Wikipedia," but it's not clear what issues or ideas related to African language Wikipedias are of strategic interest. This is also true for "Mediawiki" and "Community Capacity Development skills" under Capacity development-- what specific aspects of these broader topics are relevant to survey respondents? Please provide more details about these on the proposal.

This has been fixed.

• • Please designate prioritizes (e.g. High/Medium/Low) for the overall conference topic areas (strategic discussions, capacity development, working groups, community building). If it is not practical to designate them in this way, this is fine, but please explain how you prioritizing programming based on community feedback.

These have been designated.

• Regarding the community survey, did 37 people took the survey, or were 37 people sent the survey? If the latter, how many responses did you gather?

We can't detertime the number of people reached as the survey was sent to all communication channels which includes African mailing list, official mailing list of affiliates in Africa and social media handles.

• In terms of progress on capacity / skill building, what other ways are you considering evaluating success? One idea Assessing the number of people in African communities / User Groups who can teach about a specific topic (e.g. Wikidata)

Other ways of measuring success includes determination of number of trainers after the conference
Percentage increase in the number of female contributors to wikimedia projects
Percentage in number of contributors to African Language Wikipedia
Improvement in grant making making and reporting by African Wikimedian Grantees.

• Final decisions about grants approval must be sent at least 5 months before the conference date. Currently, the conference is set to take place 18-20 January 2019, and the approval announcements are 19 October 2018. I apologize, but there is no way we can fulfill this request. If this is the case, does the conference date need to be moved? I am not aware of the circumstances around why payments were late last time, but if these same issues are expected for this conference, it may be better to change the date.

Apology for the error, we meant to write 3 months.This has been fixed.

• If expected attendance of the conference is about 60, how many WMF staff are you considering inviting?

Ten slots were reserved for WMF and Wikimedia Deutschland staff.

• What is happening at the conference that will help define an outreach plan to engage people after the conference? Does the organizing team have any initial ideas at this time?

Yes we do, for example we plan to constitute a Working Group that will focus on African Language Wikipedias.

• Is it likely that everyone will be able to stay at the hotel where the conference is taking place? If not, what other options are there?

Already we have hotels close to the conference hotel that can accomodate more guest incase the need arises.

• It appears there is a pre-conference period-- how many days is this period, and what ideas do you have for programming during these days?

When you're able, please respond to the questions above and revise the proposal as needed.

The allocated dates are meant to put finishing touches to the conference planning since all our meeting has been virtual.

These revisions will be due by 21 September 2018, after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal. Take care, I JethroBT (WMF) (talk) 00:08, 15 September 2018 (UTC)

Apology for the delay and thank you for the leading questions. Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 16:05, 28 September 2018 (UTC).

Endorsement

WikiIndaba Africa provides a platform and window opportunity for advocates of open access and free culture movement to feel inclusive and engaged in a larger world of engagement. Deliberate. Decide. Do. Let it come to stay. ArogundadeAI (talk) 21:10, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Endorsement

WikiIndaba has come to stay in Africa. Deliberate. Decide. Do ArogundadeAI (talk) 21:13, 14 October 2018 (UTC)

Update

The conference has been fixed for November 8th-10th 2019 in Abuja, Nigeria and the Open Foundation West Africa has been selected as the fiscal sponsor for the event.Wikimedia Nigeria (talk) 15:47, 5 August 2019 (UTC)