Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/WikiConference India 2025

Ensuring Community Involvement in WCI 2025 Planning

Greetings community members,

The current WikiConference India 2025 proposal has been submitted under CIS-A2K without the names of community members due to time constraints. However, moving forward, we are committed to involving community members in decision-making processes and ensuring that they play a key role in leading the conference. We believe this approach will strengthen the event and better represent the diversity of our community.

Thank you for your understanding and support.

Sincerely,

CIS-A2K team

Updates in South Asia Open Community call

CIS-A2K participated in the South Asia Open Community Call on 23 September 2024 and provided the update. The summary is as follows:

During the previous call and through the email some new members were interested in supporting WCI along with a couple of members from the previous COT and supported by CIS-A2K. We are pleased to share that the proposal was submitted in accordance with the application process and to honour the deadline and had an initial consultation with the interested community members.

We are now actively engaging with those who expressed interest, along with other community members. The community will be leading efforts to involve more participants and manage the planning and organisation of the event. You can expect more updates on this soon. --Pavan (CIS-A2K) (talk) 15:45. 24 September 2024 (IST)

Feedback on your proposal

Dear @Nivas (CIS-A2K), Pavan (CIS-A2K), and Nitesh (CIS-A2K):, dear organizers,

Thank you very much for submitting your proposal for the "WikiCon India 2025." It’s great to see that there’s renewed energy for hosting another edition of this event, following the success of the 2023 edition.

Overall, the proposal is very thorough, and I appreciate the effort you’ve invested in preparing it. I’ve consulted with a few WMF colleagues and have incorporated their feedback into this response.

The proposal appears substantial overall. The main objectives, focus, and target group outlined for the event are quite broad, which makes sense given the size and scope of the event. Using WikiCon India 2025 to “foster cross-community collaboration, allowing volunteers from diverse linguistic and geographical backgrounds to share experiences and challenges” is highly meaningful and valuable for the entire region.

We believe that your team is well-positioned to organize an event of this scale, especially given your experience from 2023. You seem to have a clear understanding of what organizing this conference entails. However, you might be well aware how challenging it is to organize such an event only with volunteers. Would you be able to share more details about the COT’s structure? Will there be (paid) staff involved? If so, it would be helpful to know how much time and effort staff can dedicate to the event, and how much the conference organization will rely on volunteers.

Program-wise, the proposal looks good so far. I suggest starting the program design process early and managing it in a transparent and inclusive manner so that the many diverse voices are represented in the program. As an example, the current WikiIndaba will host a pre-conference day, where speakers will be trained in speaking and presentation skills. Maybe that’s an interesting approach for your conference as well, to lower the barrier for “newbies” to present. Also, if you plan (or it becomes clearer over time) to have a stronger focus on “tech”, involving WMF staff early will be important.

Related to WMF staff: Thanks for being so welcoming toward WMF staff at your event and for naming the specific teams you would like to see present at the conference. More importantly than naming different teams, we would like to understand what specific needs you would like them to address and what challenges you want them to help solve. This would greatly assist us in identifying the right staff members (especially from the Product & Tech department). I’m well aware that you might not be able to answer this right now – let’s keep in touch about this during your planning process.

One challenge that my colleagues and I identified is ensuring a clear pathway for your participants to transition their excitement from the event into ongoing involvement with Wikimedia projects. Without a structured follow-up plan, there’s a risk that the enthusiasm generated by the event may not lead to sustained engagement in the movement. This could result in missed opportunities to build long-term connections with your contributors and strengthen their involvement in Wikimedia initiatives. Although it’s challenging to plan this in advance of the conference, it can be very helpful in maintaining momentum. Ideally, there could be a dedicated space within the conference program to discuss how structures could (further) develop to keep Wikimedians engaged between your conferences.

In terms of logistics and budget, the proposal looks very promising, and I don’t have any specific feedback at the moment. Erin, from WMF’s Travel team, is still working on the travel component for your budget.

Once again, I want to commend your great proposal! It would be wonderful if you could add some details and elaborate on the points mentioned above, and resubmit your proposal with these updates on Fluxx (the proposal is now open for editing). The deadline for submission is September 30, after which it will be reviewed by the volunteer Conference Fund Committee, with a final decision expected by mid to late October.

Best regards, --Cornelius Kibelka (WMF) (talk to me) 18:33, 20 September 2024 (UTC)

Greetings @Cornelius Kibelka (WMF), Thank you for your valuable suggestion and your feedback. This will help us create a more effective and collaborative experience, and we are committed to applying these principles as we move forward in organising the event. We have incorporated the changes to the proposal as per the suggestions received. The larger organising team is working on the venue city and might require some additional time. We will keep you posted about the updates on venue in the coming week. If you have any further questions, feel free to reach out to us. Thank you once again! Sincerely, On behalf of organiser of WCI 2025 - 30 September 2024 (UTC)