Grants talk:Project/Rapid/Lori Brown/Third Annual WikiD meetup

Dear Lori,

This event sounds interesting! It is great that you have the support and partnership of Wikimedia US-NYC for this initiative, and we appreciate the opportunity to partner with ArchiteXX. Thank you for taking the time to organize this. We are confident that you have the chops to pull this off successfully, especially with the help of the local chapter.

Your event is relatively expensive at over $1300 for an edit-a-thon including just 30 people and likely to result in 15 or so articles. I understand that the $350 allocated for childcare and the $100 for participant travel expenses will only be used if needed. We appreciate that your food budget is quite frugal at less than $7 per person. It seems like the bulk of your other expenses consists of AV rental at $475 and your travel from Syracuse at $180, so we have some additional questions about the event before making a decision.

1. Would you tell us more about why your travel from Syracuse is needed if this event is happening in New York City? We don't usually fund significant travel expenses for an event of this type and scale, especially where local volunteers are present in the event area. So we would like to better understand the value of your presence at the event so we can evaluate this aspect of the application. Is this event unlikely to happen without your presence, or are you bringing some specific skills to the event that will make it more successful?

   Although this is through ArchiteXX, a New York City based organization, I have been the sole representative both organizing and at the events. The other person who once participated has moved away. I have developed a relationship with many of the return women who write and i think, until i have trained someone else, I am the only person who can be there.

2. Would you please break down the type of expenses that are included in the $180 for travel. For example, is it a round trip flight or train ticket? Does it include accommodation? $180 seems like a normal amount for this, we just need this information in case we need to approve this expense.

   It is a round trip flight. I will be staying with a friend while there.

3. We would like to know more about the specific content and participants you are targeting through this event. Given the focus of ArchiteXX, we can imagine that an event like this would bring opportunities to add some needed content in architecture or design that requires specific expertise from participants. Or do you see the value of the event more in the particular group of participants who are targeted? It would be useful to articulate this, to show the special value of your event relative to the cost.

   Both the content and participants are mostly of and by women, an issue that wikimedia has publicly acknowledged needing to improve upon and has as funded efforts to do so. We received an earlier grant last year when gender representation was the focus of the grant cycle call. This is a continuation of that work. Our primary two goals are to write more content about women into wikipedia and to train more women architects to continue to write wikipedia entries.

4. Working with 25 new users will certainly be a challenge, but it sounds like you have the right people involved to pull it off. An official endorsement from the NYC chapter would strengthen your application. We're hoping this is simple to secure since you are already collaborating with them :)

Thank you for your responses, and we hope to have a decision soon! Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 18:03, 17 February 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your prompt responses, Lori. This grant is approved in full. As we've noted, funding significant travel expenses for a local event like this is unusual, but we understand your explanation about why it is important to have you at this event, considering your involvement in past workshops and your role as organizer. We also appreciate that you are covering your own travel expenses in part. Considering that this is an expensive request, your successful past work in this area was a major factor in our decision to move forward with funding this request. It would be good to work on securing venue donations in the future when possible, to bring down the cost of such events. Best, Winifred Olliff (WMF Program Officer) talk 19:37, 17 February 2017 (UTC)