Wikimania 2022/Scholarships/Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group/Report

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Although we were not able to able to get the expected number of participants for the hackathon, we are happy with how the hackathon went. We were able to bring participants who are new to the Wikimedia movement. During the three-day event, we gave a brief introduction on Wikimedia movement, projects and affiliates to the new participants and worked on fixing bugs/issues and making improvements to the existing tools. The detailed program of the hackathon can be viewed at Indic Wikimania Hackathon 2022

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

The list of tasks on which the participants worked during the three-day event can be found here.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
17 participants + 3 organizers	12 participants + 3 organizers	We received 18 registrations for participating in the hackathon, but 6 people canceled their participation as they will not be able to attend the event for the whole three days
-	~ 22 tasks/projects were worked upon	There was no hard target for the number of tasks to work during the hackathon. However, we had a very productive event having work done on many issues related to the existing tools in various aspects like bug fixes and modifications to the tools.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

What worked well?

Nearly 50% of the participants who attended the event are new to the technical spaces and general Wikimedia movement.
Rachit’s session on Movement Communications has given a clear understanding of what Wikimedia as an organization does and its goal of providing a free knowledge to all.
The sessions like basic orientation on Wikitech and ways to access data across Wikimedia has given the opportunity to understand and explore the ways of contributing to Wikimedia projects from the technical side.
Presence of Sudhanshu at the event space has made us establish a new connection between tech and design as participants were able to make improvements to user experience of existing tools. Abijeeth had also been quite helpful in providing technical mentorship to the participants.
Satdeep as a resource person has given a better understanding of Wikisource projects and technical issues that are being faced by the community. His experience in connecting the technical and functional side of the project has helped the participants to understand the issues in the project better.
The session by Srishti on contributing to Wikitech after the event has opened new doors for participants to know ways to contribute to the technical side of Wikimedia. A joint brainstorming session by Krishna and Srishti was helpful to understand the best practices for contributing to the projects.

What did not work so well?

It was quite a challenging task to gather local participants for a three day event. Although we used some advertisements for promoting the event, it wasn’t of great use. We had a decent number of registration but most of them were not able to make it up for the whole three days.
There was a miscommunication with the event space manager regarding the internet connectivity during the event dates, but we were able to manage the situation using mobile hotspots.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

Expense category	Amount (INR)
Accommodation/ F&B/ Event space	₹ 115,776
Travel	₹ 73,964.34
Food	₹ 150,481
Reimbursements	₹ 42,331
SWAGS and Equipments	₹ 42,439
TOTAL	₹ 424,991.34

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

Yes. We are left with an amount of ₹ 36,756.66

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of 36,756.66 INR were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/amFOSS Hackathon + IMD Working Group Meeting - 2023 (ID: 22022902).

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?