Grants:TPS/Sky Harbor/OpenSourceBridge13

This request was funded up to US$1950. Please see the discussion page for details.

User name: Sky Harbor
User location (country): Philippines
Event name: Open Source Bridge 2013
Event Web site: http://www.opensourcebridge.org (proposals here)
Event date(s): June 18-21, 2013
Event location (city): Portland, Oregon (United States)
Amount requested (remember to specify currency!): USD 2350
Endorsements

I believe Josh Lim would be the only speaker at OSB coming from East Asia. The OSB attendees who are aiming to increase FLOSS and open culture participation from East Asia -- especially English-speaking areas such as the Philippines -- will benefit from hearing and being able to speak with a representative from this region. I also think Josh and the Philippine open culture/open source community will benefit from his attendance at sessions on online dialogue and deliberation infrastructure, welcoming "average" volunteers, encouraging and nurturing volunteers in nonprofits,and empowering local communities with open hardware, how to ask for donations from individuals, good study design, starting sustainable in-person Git communities, and data journalism. Sharihareswara (WMF) (talk) 13:19, 8 May 2013 (UTC)
I'm one of the co-chairs of this year's Open Source Bridge conference. This talk proposal was well-received by our selection committee and we would very much like to hear about building open culture around the world. Reidab (talk) 21:35, 8 May 2013 (UTC)

Budget breakdown

Travel: USD 1900
- This is for a round-trip economy class ticket from Manila (MNL) to Portland (PDX) and back. The figure quoted here includes an overhead buffer of 15% (the original quoted price as of submission is USD 1650) in order to accommodate fluctuations in ticket cost. The buffer figure used is the standard used by the Affiliations Committee, of which I am a member.
- Should I be permitted to visit the Foundation's office in San Francisco (as explained further below), this will pay for a ticket from Manila to Portland, then from Portland to San Francisco, then from San Francisco back to Manila. As of the time of submission, this also costs roughly the same price as a round-trip ticket from Manila to Portland and back.
Accommodation: USD 450
- This presumes an average of USD 70 per night for six nights (from June 16-22, the duration of the conference), plus an overhead buffer of around 5%. This may change depending on actual arrangements, and the final figure may be lower than this estimate.
- Should I be permitted to visit the Foundation's office in San Francisco (as explained further below), I will be personally shouldering the costs of accommodation for the duration of my stay there.

I do not intend to request for funds to cover incidental expenses (transportation, food, etc.). Instead, I intend to seek reimbursement for these expenses through the grants program offered by the Sanggunian ng mga Mag-aaral ng mga Paaralang Loyola ng Ateneo de Manila (the Student Council of the Ateneo de Manila University Loyola Schools), as my participation in the conference involves the presentation of an academic paper submitted for credit, as I will elaborate on further below. Please note that this grants program does not have enough funds to adequately cover expenses indicated in this request and accommodate potential requests from other students who may also wish to avail of funds, which is why I am specifically requesting only for the reimbursement of incidental expenses from that particular program.

Proposed Participation

My participation at Open Source Bridge 2013 involves the presentation of a paper entitled "Sharing Beyond 'Sharing': Fostering an Open Sharing Culture in the Philippines" (Filipino: "Paglalampas sa Konsepto ng 'Pagpapamahagi': Ang Pagpapausbong ng Isang Kultura ng Bukas na Pagpapamahagi sa Pilipinas"), an academic essay which I submitted as a final requirement for my Philosophy 102 (Philosophy of the Human Person II) class at the Ateneo de Manila University. While the original submission is in Filipino, for this conference I will be presenting an expanded English version of the essay, which seeks to answer from a philosophical perspective the question of whether or not the cultural disposition of the Filipino people towards sharing (social media, hospitality, etc.) could necessarily translate into Filipinos readily embracing the open-source movement. This essay also discusses the concept of bayanihan, the Filipino concept of mutual aid which, in this context, refers to people working together in order to achieve a shared goal. In the case of the open-source movement, the shared goal is not only the realization of a finished product, but also the propagation of the beliefs embodied by the movement in general.

To highlight my experience with respect to writing this essay, I have been an active Wikipedian since April 2005, mostly editing about articles related to the Philippines. I am also involved in the local open-source community at large, having been one of the founders of Wikimedia Philippines, the Philippine Wikimedia chapter. Since around late 2010, when I was a sophomore at the Ateneo de Manila University taking up political science, I have taken an interest in analyzing the system of social relations on Wikipedia—a topic which still fascinates me today—and have produced academic work to that effect (the immediate effort from that interest is an essay called "The Wikipedian Condition", which is a submission for Wikimania 2013 in Hong Kong). My continued interest in social relations and Wikipedia has made it (Wikipedia) a focal point of my own academic endeavors, to the extent that I have decided to continue writing about open-source (and Wikipedia) in subsequent academic work, including this paper.

It would also be of great benefit if, should it be allowed, I be able to also visit the Foundation's office in San Francisco after the conference, as it will also give me some greater perspective as to how the Foundation seeks to engage with editors and the movement at large, which will also help in my further research.

Goal and Expected Impact

As a result of my presentation, it is my hope that I will be able to make participants aware as to how the open-source movement interacts with the intricacies of Filipino culture, and in particular, understand how people from a different culture may respond to the movement, including how Filipinos respond to the call of Wikipedia to contribute to it. In addition, I also hope to bring back to the Philippines new ideas and perspectives as to how we can make the open-source movement more effective here at home.