Grants talk:PEG/FF portal/Recommendations/Fotofahrt im Heißluftballon/Report

Comments by the Flow Funding coordinator

Dear Martina,

First, I'd like to thank you for your time and dedication to organize and report on the "Fotofahrt im Heißluftballon" project. The "lessons learned" section of your report will certainly be very helpful for everyone interested in replicating the initiative.

As you know, the Flow Funding process entrusts Wikimedia volunteers with decision-making power to fund projects aligned with the Wikimedia movement's strategic goals. In your case, the flow funder poupou decided to fund your project with USD1235 (EUR950). This amount was transferred to you directly from the Wikimedia Foundation in order to allow you to rent a hot air balloon for five passengers during 1,5 hours in Hamburg, Germany.

Now that you have published your own evaluation of the project, I'd like to use this discussion page to share some comments and to encourage the involvement of more Wikimedians. Everything, including the original proposal, discussions, and final report is publicly available for anyone to read and comment on (all languages are welcome!). TSB (talk) 14:51, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Sorry for the response delay. I discovered your questions right now. Please keep in mind that the project's end is 30. June and deadline for reporting is 30. August. The report is yet a draft. --Martina Nolte (talk) 11:23, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Impact results

Before the project started, the flow funder poupou estimated that "the project shall result in ca 1000 photographs of single buildings, landmarks etc of Hamburg as seen from above, as well as in close up pictures of hot air balloon technique which will be uploaded to Wikimedia Commons."

As of today (21 June, 2013), 521 pictures that have been uploaded to Wikimedia Commons under the category Projekt Heißluftballon and eight have been selected to illustrate other Wikimedia projects.

Martina, is there any effort to increase in the coming month the number of good quality images uploaded to commons and used in other wikimedia projects? TSB (talk) 14:51, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Sure, there are way more images coming up to Commons. Two participants uploaded parts of the images and are actually uploading more. One participant is ill; one is struggling with his software - I offered both to help them with processing and uploadig if they fear to not get it done til end of june. --Martina Nolte (talk) 11:23, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

As of today there are already 645 pictures in he category mentioned above.--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 14:00, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

670 1,041 (aerial views) + 68 69 (balloon technique) + 156 from the moored balloon and still more to come. Yes, the project is still in process. I.e., one of the participants reported today that he uploaded only half of his pictures yet. This was his first photo flight experience and he wrote that he completly underestimated the time consume that is needed by subject researching, getagging, processing, describing and categorizing.

I'd like to add that, as usual, we do not yet use the pictures in articles in bigger scale because we wait until the whole choice is visible. I conciously did not define a clear goal of usages in Wikimedia projects and did not expect a lot in this very short time of two weeks (three until project end) since we have flown. There even are a couple of subjects that first need an article. ;-) --Martina Nolte (talk) 16:29, 23 June 2013 (UTC)/21:18, 23 June 2013 (UTC)/22:29, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Alignement

The flow funder poupou estimated that the project would help "increase community cohesion and commitment to the projects through participation in the balloon flight. As the participants will learn from each other in order to improve their skills, the project will also support affiliation and excellence among Wikimedians."

As of today (21 June, 2013), there was no added content to the page you created for the participants to evaluate project.

Martina, could you please ask everyone directly and indirectly involved with the project to add here their testimonial and evaluation of the project instead? TSB (talk)

The participants agreed to give feedback until the report deadline, end of August. All participants except me took their photos as RAWs which needs additonal processing. They accord to Wikimedia Commons' recomendation to give each file the name of the photo subject. They prepare individual descriptions and add the categories before uploading. A way more time consuming process then I choosed but more accurate. I am clearly hesitating to put time pressure on volunteers that behave properly and yet according to all deadlines. --Martina Nolte (talk) 11:23, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

TSB: Please be aware that, despite Martina has already drafted her report, the project is still not completed. This is partly due to the fact that the balloon flight could take place only at a later date than originally planned, due to bad weather. This naturally causes some delay for the next steps such as uploading the photographs, reporting etc. Anyway I am alo aware that the flow funding project deadline is fast approaching and that you want to present the best possible results by this date. We have to find some sort of compromise between getting things done and presentable and letting the volunteers do their stuff in their own rhythm. To cut it short: let us not rush the volunteers who are currently doing their best to geht everything onto commons.

As far a I can judge from the project's page my impression is that my abovementioned estimations have been met to a great extent. There i even a successor project already on the way for a balloon flight in the Cologne area, which will receive funding from WMDE. Best,--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 13:58, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Comments by the Flow Funder

Poupou, the flow funder of this project, is required to write her own report on how the budget was spent and what impact was achieved. But, if possible, I'd like to invite her to add to this discussion page some comments on how this project helped raise awareness for the flow funding process and visibility of women within the Wikimedia projects.TSB (talk) 14:51, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

At the beginning the presentation of the flow funding project itself in the German ignpost equivalent Kurier has spawned lively debate about pros and cons of the flow funding idea. Despite some doubts concerning possible nepotism, the German community has generally reacted positively to the idea and was curious to see how it works in practice. The ballon project was similarly publicly announced and finally the results were also presented in an Kurier article by Martina. In her article she also discussed her experiences with flow funding. While the fast and professional handling were stressed as positive aspects, the amount of "paperwork" for actually receiving the money and the fact that, even though is was communicated that communication would generally be possible in all languages, the main procedures, communication and forms to fill in where in English only. In fact the idea that the flow funder "does all the paperwork" did not really work in practice, the handling of the grant was perceived as out of proportion when considering that we were not really talking about enormous sums.

I have been asked a lot about flow funding and have been talking to many people in various personal conversations about flow funding. Definitely both the flow funding project and the hot air balloon project were in themselves opportunities to make women visible - both the flow funder and the recipient of the grant are women. The whole thing offered numerous points of contact for other wikipedians and served as a chance to present women's impact and engagement for wikipedia as natural and normal (which it really should be in my view!!). In addition it was an example to demonstrate that in the Wikipedia environment it is easy for women to take leadership if they wish to do so.--Poupou l'quourouce (talk) 14:18, 23 June 2013 (UTC)

Further steps and news after the project's end

Time by time I will document the further steps and results of the balloon project. --Martina Nolte (talk) 09:55, 7 July 2013 (UTC)

• Announcement of images and "missing articles" on
  • de:Portal:Hamburg
  • en:WikiProject Germany (en:Portal:Hamburg is no longer active)
  • fr:Projet:Monde germanique (fr:Portail:Hambourg doen's exist any more)
• Further images have been assessed under the valued image criteria on Wikimedia Commons: Valued images from Projekt Heißluftballon
• Additional images meet the quality image guidelines on Wikimedia Commons: Quality images from Projekt Heißluftballon

Report received

This report has been received and receipts have been submitted to WMF. There are no grant funds remaining. Best regards, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 01:41, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for this clear and detailed report. We appreciate the discussion around impact and your feedback during the flow funding process. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 16:54, 12 March 2014 (UTC)