Grants:Conference/Falanster/Wikicamp2017: Difference between revisions

Please list three to four priorities that the community has identified that they want to focus on at this conference. These should be specific and actionable.

1. Build connections between experienced and new participants of the wiki-movement.
2. Discuss future online and offline community self-governance.
3. Increase and foster technical and humanitarian knowledge of participants.

It is helpful to get an understanding of why this event is important to your community, and what experiences you have had in the past. Please answer the applicable questions below.

1. What inspired your community to begin planning this event?

Belarusian wiki community has no such meetups before for wikimedians from all Belarusian regions.

We prepared community for gathering and discussing of current issues, challenges and planning of future development.

2. How does this event tie into other activities that your group has done?

1. Falanster's wiki-activists with wiki-editors made about 5 wiki-expeditions and trainings for local and topic communities in Belarusian towns and villages in years 2015-2017, more than 15 workshops and lectures about Wikipedia and Wikimedia projects in different cities and towns of Belarus during 2015-2017. More than 300 people took part in these events. This activity warmed up wiki-movement in small local communities, spread news and widen people's knowledge about Wikipedia. So no only the capital - Minsk - has wiki-activity as of today.

2. Among participants of events named above there are people who began to edit Wikipedia or are ready to start. It is important to make the next step: connect these people with wiki-community.

3. This year Belarusian wiki-community is planning to participate in contests CEE-Spring and Wiki Loves Earth. Also we begin to make a regular meetups of wiki-club for beginners.

3. If your community has hosted a similar conference in the past, what outcomes and benefits have you seen from past conferences?

We are full of enthusiasm to organize in our country the first event of this kind.

4. Please list the focus priorities identified in the report from the last conference organized by this community. What progress have you made in those areas?

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5. If your community has hosted a similar conference in the past, what key lessons were learned, and what would you like to improve on?

Our community has never hosted similar events before. Nevertheless we (Falanster) had the experience in organizing other kinds of events and conferences and we want to take into account the following moments:

1. Engage new non-wiki-volunteers in preparation and organization process.

2. Motivate two Belarusian Wikipemedias (be and be-tarask) to collaborate during the preparation and organization process.

3. Offer some following events for wiki-beginners after Wikicamp to strengthen the result.

Please provide a list of both quantitative and qualitative criteria that will be used to determine how successful the project is. You are welcome to modify, delete or add to the metrics listed below so they reflect the goals of your event.

• The camp will take place 7-10 days in the mid of July, 2017.
• About 20 participants in total (about 10+ newbies, and 5 experienced) + wikimedian guests (about 5 people).
• Organizational team of 5 volunteers (logistics and economic management, exploration of participants (surveys, polls), project reporting, project coordinating, teacher-organizer, communications and PR).
• 70% of new projects initiated as a result of skills learned and ideas shared at the conference (during the summer-fall 2017). We will help with the project idea creation and planning.
• 70% of newbies begin to use tools learned at the conference, actively participate in wiki-community (traceability: outreachdashboard.wmlabs.org).
• Gender equality with 50% of female and 50% of male participants.
• About 10 participants will make a workshop or moderate sessions.
• Make a post-event survey and collect about 10-15 survey results.
• Experienced wiki-users will be mentors and supervisors for wiki-newbies and their projects.
• The topic of self-organizing inside the wiki-community will be discussed. New approaches will be offered and already used approaches will be improved.
• 1-5 of new tools (wikipedia pages) or communication channels created to better collaborative work participants and the greater community.

Friendly space policy

• Please link to the friendly space policy that your community will be using for this event.
• Do you need or want guidance on how to implement a friendly space policy?

We (Falanster) usually make events in a friendly way (as we considered it). It means that there is a tolerance atmosphere: no discrimination by gender, age, nationality, experience, religion and so on. It is an atmosphere with a positive way of speaking, using humor, supporting non-conflict and pro-creative communication.

Usually we make a detailed description of the event with requirements for participants (for example - all the participants should attend the prepared sessions not to spend time for non-camp activities). These requirements are interconnected with all activities and the program itself. So we unite those people who are ready to attend the event with this exact schedule and who are ready to participate actively.

We are looking for a place that corresponding the criteria:

• 20+ people
• About 2 hours distance from the capital (Minsk)
• Fast internet connection

Here is the place for the camp: http://www.z-seminar.by/

Please give a brief outline of the conference schedule or program and any events or activities you are planning for participants. The timing, topics and format of each session should be finalized and published on Meta six weeks before the event.

Collecting the best practices of wikicamps from Armenian wikimedians we are going to organize a 7-10 days wikicamp. The program will consist of an educational part and a part for active leisure time. Every day about half of the day there will be an educational part and the second half of the day there will be numerous community-building activities.

Educational (official) program will consist of the following topics (or similar):

• How to write a good (featured) article?
• Importance of small edits in Wikipedia.
• How to upload and categorize photos in Wikimedia Commons?
• Online and offline work in wiki-community.
• Computer literacy. 12 best practices for Wiki-projects.
• Belarusian language in wiki-technologies.
• How to organize a wiki- workshop, club or contest?
• Creation of wiki-templates and bots (essentials).
• What is open culture and why it is important?
• Lecture or workshop from the foreign guest.

We will ask the wiki-newbies to prepare their own project during the wikicamp, which will be implemented in local community during the three months period after the wikicamp. The project can be a wiki-club, a set of wiki-workshops, a wiki-lecture, a photo contest or any other related activity.

The rest of activities will be games for community building, art, music, sports activities and workshops. Also we are planning a small wiki-expedition around the hosting place.

Grant reviewers will be interested to read how the planning discussion developed and who was engaged. Please link below to all of the places where discussion about this conference are happening, i.e. talk pages, Facebook groups, meetup pages, notes from meetings. The most central, up to date, and relevant page should be highlighted in BOLD letters.

• The project description on the Wikipedia.
• A poll about topics that will be interesting to make on the wikicamp.
• A pad with minutes (notes) and Presentation (February, 2017) about the wikicamp points, organization process and so on. These notes describe this grant application (in belarusian).
• Organizational workflow on trello.com. The second column from the left. Here are wiki-volunteers who are ready to implement exact tasks.

It is crucial that most participants have a minimum level of Wikimedia experience so that they can engage actively in workshops and discussions. Please answer all applicable questions below.

1. Please describe the target audience for this conference or event.

1. Newbies in Wikipedia. People who already edited Wikipedia or Wikimedia Commons projects and want to learn more.

2. Experienced wiki-editors. Editors who can share their experience with newbies.

2. If you are requesting funds for travel scholarships, what criteria will be used to select scholarship recipients?

A participant should correspond minimum two criteria:

1. Pupils, university students, or non-working persons.

2. Contribution to wiki-projects (Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons and etc.).

3. Offering lecturers and workshops during the wikicamp.

4. Volunteering during the wikicamp and helping in the organizational process.

5. Camp teacher-organizer.

It could be a part-scholarship for several participants who can not stay during the whole wikicamp.

Also we are going to take a money-contribution: for secondary school students (20 BYN), for university students (30 BYN), for working people (40 BYN). All this sum we plan to use for further support of wiki projects for local communities.

3. If your conference has an outreach component, how will you ensure engagement with these participants after the conference, and what impact do you see them having on the projects?

1. Each wiki-newbie will develop his or her own idea (as a project) for implementation during the summer-fall 2017.

2. Each experienced user will supervise two newbies as mentor and helper.

3. The successfully implemented projects of wiki-newbies will be awarded in November 2017.

4. Are you thinking about inviting WMF staff to attend or participate in the event? If yes, please list individuals or teams who you may want to invite, or describe how you would like WMF staff to be involved in the event.

Yes we plan to invite 1-2 persons from WMF staff and now have sent them invitations. The most interest will be topic around community building and a source accumulation for it.

Please describe how you plan to follow up with event participants after the conference.

• Each wiki-newbie will sign up on https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/. (Also all participants will continue communication on wiki forum, on facebook(wiki group)).
• Each wiki-newbie will have a mentor and helper to implement his or her project and to participate in wiki-community actively.
• In November we will summarize the activity of every participant and will award the most active of them.

Describe the resource potential for successfully executing this project and the key risks/threats.

Organizing team

Also we consider as resources the following points:

• The intention of Belarusian wiki-community to have such meetup.
• Connections with the secondary school teachers from different Belarusian regions. This can help to find the teacher-organizator and to engage pupils and university students from small towns and villages.
• Good grant-history with Wikimedia Foundation.
• Detailed discussion of the wikicamp organizational process.

Examples of risks, along with how you would minimize or overcome them, are:

• Skill gaps in project leadership team (e.g. no financial management experience)
• Components of the measurement process that are hard to quantify

Examples of how to minimize these risks include:

• Recruiting volunteers with desired skills to project leadership team.
• Working with the WMF Learning & Evaluation Team to develop an appropriate measurement and evaluation plan.

1. Bad (slow) internet connection on the wikicamp place.

How to minimize the risk:

• Come to wikicamp place and check the internet connection in advance (before contract on a place).
• Take own 3g modems, routers.

2. Wiki-newbies will not implement their projects after the wikicamp.

How to minimize the risk:

• During the application process to define talents of each newcomers and focus on the talent.
• Motivate newbies to be active with their projects and Wikimedia projects starting from the camp days.
• Work with each of them on the project creation, use individual approach to find the idea and role that is interesting for the participant.
• To follow adequate criteria for their ideas in a scope of SMART (specific, measurable, attainable/assignable, realistic and time-bounded) approach for each project.

3. The team of organizers was tired and burned out.

How to minimize the risk:

• Make detailed tasks, track them and develop a clear time-table for preparation in order to other volunteers can continue any tasks in a case of some team-member burns out.
• Share core team responsibility with volunteer pool for non-urgent and non-important tasks (it is making warming up for new team members). Definitely, it is necessary to make a strong volunteers' call at the early stage of preparation.

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here. See Budget Guidelines.

Event budget table

Total cost of event

9400 USD

Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program

9100 USD

Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this event, and amounts funded

Please confirm that you are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

YES

Do you think this project should be selected for a Conference Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.

• It can be a good point for wikimedian community development in Belarus. So I strongly believe that is right time to do and community is ready for such kind of collaboration. Mr. Zabej (talk) 09:30, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
• This is a good initiative to attract potential editors Хомелка (talk) 10:52, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
• I think taking a wiki-team outside their normal surroundings and putting them into a new environment will force them to think outside the box.Consulina (talk) 14:22, 24 February 2017 (UTC)

• I suppose that this event will help potential and existing Belarusian editors to get and extend their knowledge. They will be able to meet each other in personal and generate new ideas working & communicating together. Helaku-88
• It's useful for communicate with new wiki-users. Hanylka (talk) 21:40, 24 February 2017 (UTC)
• In my opinion, it is crucial to create this camp because such events is core element in our community's development. I'm sure, it will play an enormous role in our local community's progress. Ihar Dorinel
• I believe that this will be a great meeting point for both newbies and experienced editors, as well as an opportunity for Belarusian community to gain publicity and motivate new volunteers. Hannabaradzina (talk) 15:19, 25 February 2017 (UTC)

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