Wikimedia Summit 2022/FAQ

On April 6 and April 7, we hosted two Questions and Answer sessions on Zoom. Here are the notes / questions, ordered by topic:

Wikimedia Summit 2022

Program

• Program Outline
• Schedule
• Onboarding
• Regional Meetups
• Sightseeing

Registration & Participants

• Application and Registration Information
• Eligibility Criteria and Deadlines
• All applications
• Participants' List
• Data privacy policy

Location

• Venue

Logistics

• Travel and Booking Information
• Online platform guide

Contact

• Team
• FAQ

Documentation, Reports, Reviews

• Documentation
• Event report

Participant list

• Can people who haven't been invited participate in the Summit if they pay for their travel to Berlin?
  • No, only affiliates that have been selected via the application process can send representatives to the Wikimedia Summit. Allowing participants to ‘buy’ their participation would invalidate the application process and give unfair advantage to those with financial resources to pay for travel by themselves and to those living geographically closer to Berlin.

• Is there a waiting list?
  • No, there is no waiting list, as affiliates (organizations and groups) have applied, and not individuals. In case an affiliate’s representative has to cancel their participation, they can nominate someone else to attend, as long as time allows for visa and travel management.
• Where did you draw the line for on-site attendance?
  • In-person participation slots were allocated based on availability of slots, that is 80 slots for affiliate’s representatives. Six reviewers reviewed all answers and rated them according to their quality, guided by the question what (added) value the affialite’s in-person participation would bring to the Wikimedia Summit. Based on the average of the reviewers’ points, the 80 best applications were considered. Affiliates included among the 80 best applicants who have a paid Executive Director received a second seat for this person.

• Why did affiliates with ED receive two seats?
  • This has been common practice at all previous Wikimedia Summits / Wikimedia Conference (check the participants list of previous conferences). We think that affiliate executive directors bring a very important, “on-hand” perspective to this affiliate conference, and their experiences and points of view are especially relevant to the questions around Implementation of Movement Strategy.

• Will the review committee provide individual feedback on applications?
  • No, we won’t share individual feedback on applications. While each reviewer reviewed the applications individually, all six reviewers decided and agreed collectively on the final ranking of applicants. We have published all answers of all applicants on Meta, and we recommend reading them to understand how affiliates have engaged on Movement Strategy in the past, and what each of them is planning to do in the future.

Travel

• Question: Is participation from the communities in the Russian Federation possible and advisable?
  • Yes, Having people from the Russian Federation is important to build the free knowledge together.
• Question: Would it be possible to attend physically?
  • Fill in the application form to assess the application.
  • There needs to be rationale for being in attendance
• Question: Many members of Kurdish community are from Iraq. Is it possible for these people to join? What documentation is needed?
  • Trying to do the application process quickly to understand who will come to the event in-person.
  • Particular problems with the Iraqi citizens need to be specified later.
  • Hypothetical number of participants is dependent on the venue and their access rules.
• Who will book the travels?
  • WMDE books all travels for affiliates.
• Will there be a shared room policy for the hotel?
  • We can't answer this, we have no hotel yet.

Language support

• Question: There are not too many English-speakers in our communities. Will Russian language support be provided?
• Questions: Are there any expectations of language proficiency?
  • After careful consideration and discussion of technical complexities with regards to session design in the hybrid space (as well as budget questions), unfortunately it was necessary to take the decision to not provide interpretation support, neither for onsite nor online participants. Nevertheless, we will try to support non English native speakers by other means, as providing translations of documents, as well as eventually breakout grouping by language.
• Question: Can people write the responses for the applications in their own language?
  • It is unclear how it is exactly managed at the conference, but in the application form people can definitely answer in their own language.
  • There will be a dedicated person to work with people to verify their eligibility to enter Germany.

Program

• Question: Program question. What will the program be like? Will there be parallel tracks? Will there be more working sessions?
  • There will be one main session.
  • Then it will be probably 2 different tracks: movement governance and general MS implementation
  • There will be points of convergence ne
• Question from chat: Does it make sense for affiliates to send people who are not already insiders to one of the tracks?
  • Yes, please. This is why in the application there is a question of involvement in the past, as well as questions about past barriers and contributing to movement strategy in the future.
  • In the heart of the movement strategy there is inclusion of new voices.
  • We would need to think about this also in programming. Work prior to the conference with the attendees.
  • There will also be onboarding efforts to support the participants.
• Why don't we do a fully online event?
  • After 2 years of digital events people need to meet again to move towards the implementation of movement strategy initiatives.
• Did we think of regional satellites events?
  • Yes, we did. It's the last year that the Summit will be organized by us in this way.

Eligibility criteria / Attendance

• Question: Does it need to be report compliant for those who want to attend online only?
  • Yes.
• Can affiliates who have been recognized after March 21, but have been working on MS before this date apply?
  • Unfortunately no, to be fair to everyone. Rules are based on the current affiliation model.
• Question: How will there be diversity in the participation? Movement Strategy mostly belongs to the Wikimedia languages project in my region. I mean the community from the Wikipedia-like project is heavily involved in that. So, how will there be diversity for the technical user group?
  • The conference is more organization based, so the focus is not on the project part.
  • We have had, for example, Mediawiki Stakeholders User Group joining the Summit, yet the overall participation of technical groups has been low.
  • diversity of user groups will be assured by function of each user group sending at least one representative.
• Question: Are applications for people in-person or also virtual people?
  • Applications are for both online and offline.
  • It would be good if the User Group decides who will come - both on and offline
• Question: Regarding the inclusion, it would be good to have younger inspiring people to take part at the conference. There are 2-4 language specific user groups where it can be of high value among the UGs of languages of Russia. If we send one leader, other voices from user groups may not be represented.
  • Comment from chat: As for different aspects of diversities it would be important to have at least online representatives be of different profiles.
• Question: Some affiliates didn't receive the announcement of the the WM Summit yet
  • The organization team sent email to all affiliates, asking them to spread the information within their communities
• Can we open the summit to non affiliates? If we want to advance the governance reform, how would we tackle difficulties around transparency and participation? We need to give the possibility of feedback to people who cannot attend the event.
  • We heard this feedback but didn't make a final decision yet. So far, the Summit has been a conference of affiliates.
• What are the reasons for limitations?
  • Venue restriction and COVID rules.
• Do Chapters with ED have to fill up two application forms?
  • No they don't. Please fill one application per affiliates, Chapters with ED will be considered with a +1 invitation (but include second name in application).
• Can we extend the invitation to other committees working on movement strategy? (e.g regional committees)
  • We hear this feedback, we cannot make a final decision here since on site participation is restricted due to venue limitations. We might consider online participation.

Other

• Why can't we postpone the event?
  • We expect September to be the last time in the year to host a safe in person event, due to COVID restrictions being strengthened in the winter.