Wikimania 2022/Scholarships/Wikimedia Sverige/Report

Goals

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

One main goal for the event was the ability to hold a true hybrid event of good quality, making it possible for participants to engage on equal terms both online and onsite. Thanks to the grants, we were able to buy the equipment necessary for this, and fully met our goal. From this aspect, we are very happy with how the project went. This also built us a strong platform for upcoming hybrid events in the future, where we already have one planned for December and another one for April.

We also wanted to have quality recording material for presentations, and these tools have been of value to the organization. The camera equipment has also been used in other activities, including being borrowed by volunteers to photograph events and upload the images to Wikimedia Commons.

The main event was great, where new and old community members shared their reflections in an open and inclusive environment. We are very grateful for everyone attending the event and their willingness to contribute.

However, we did not manage to hold the external event we had hoped for due to time restraints and this is of course not ideal. But instead, we had two different events where we included reflections and perspectives from Wikimania. Those events were successful and brought a deeper understanding for our way forwards.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Up to 50 new and old community members	17 + 15 + 18 = 50 participants	Due to the event taking place just as people were going back to work after the vacations, it was a bit difficult to attract participants. We also had a higher amount of drop-outs than expected, probably due to covid-19.
Holding a public event with highlights from the conference. We will invite representatives from partner organizations as well as members and individuals to listen to our highlights from the Wikimania sessions.	No such event held.	As we ran in to time restraints for the public event, we decided to hold two other meetings between staff and volunteers. The first one was with the volunteer board where we discussed strategic questions, including learnings from Wikimania and implementation of the 2030 Strategic Recommendations. The second was a members’ meeting, where we discussed how we can create more activities, focusing on increasing the diversity of the organization.
Participating in the official program of Wikimania (~50 participants for each of the 4-6 agenda points we directly contribute to).	Holding three presentations/workshops. Two of them have been seen by ~80 attendees and viewers respectively (~50 each live and ~30 viewers each on Youtube afterwards.) The third one had 32 participants and 10 viewers afterwards.	Five proposals were submitted, three were accepted. The number of attendees and viewers were higher than we had hoped for in two of the sessions, slightly lower in the third one. 200 participants and viewers is still a very good outcome for us.

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?

We have finally found a solution for how to create high-quality hybrid events, where the audio and video works for participants both online and onsite. This is thanks to the equipment we were able to buy through the grants for Wikimania.

Another thing that worked well was the fact that several entirely new attendees showed up at the events. These were people with only a little knowledge of Wikimedia Sverige who still chose to participate. One of them even brought their spouse the second day because they liked the first day very much.

We facilitated very interesting discussions where both new and old members participated and shared their reflections, thoughts and ideas. The conversations therefore were very rewarding, which the participants also mentioned.

• What did not work so well?

Due to time restraints, we were not able to hold an event for partners and other specially invited guests. Of course, it was also a let-down that we did not manage to get as many participants as we wanted to the event which did take place. As mentioned briefly above, it is a bit difficult to plan Wikimania events as the staff is generally on vacation for four or five weeks during July. This is during the time when we know whether or not our grants and our presentations will be accepted. It is therefore also difficult to change how we handle this in the future, as this is a recurring factor.

Another factor in this is that we did not have the Wikimania schedule when planning and communicating the event (in June), making it difficult to plan the program to fit live presentations as we met up at times more convenient to the Swedish time zone.

Finances

Grant funds spent

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

	Estimation	Actual costs SEK	Actual costs $
Venue	$800	10,938*	$991*
Travels and accomodation	$700	4,923	$446
Food and beverages	$700	3,893	$353
Swag	$200	2,145	$194
Video production support	$2,500	27,440	$2,485
Total	$4,900	49,339	$4,469**

* The estimated cost was calculated as the whole sum, but it turned out VAT (25%) was excluded. Therefore, the cost became significantly larger than estimated.

** Currency has fluctuated throughout the time period, now calculated on a ratio where $1 is 11 SEK. Our grant was paid out in SEK but the application was specified in dollars. Therefore, these figures are offered for convenience.

Remaining funds

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

No. The costs exceeded the grant by 339 SEK, the remainder is covered by WMSE.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?

Participants at in-house Wikimania event, including screen where remote participants showed up.