Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/Wikimedia and Libraries Conference 2024 (WIkiLibCon24) - Understanding our roles as collaborators and knowledge service providers; Disinformation as a threat

WMF review and feedback

Hi @Windblown29 and the Wikimedia and Libraries User Group.

Thank you very much for this proposal and for your initiative in organizing the second Wikimedia and Libraries Conference. I highly appreciate the time and effort you put into this proposal. I have reviewed your proposal and have some comments and follow up questions:

• What will the pre-conference training for newbies include? Will it be mainly for local participants, or do you intend to invite international participants who will actually be new to the movement? How many people will participate in this training and will they be selected?

Conference participants will be library workers and/or information professionals. The pre-conference will include dedicated training tracks on basic Wikimedia skill building for projects such as Wikidata, Wikipedia and Wikibase in order to assist conference participants be on the same page during the conference. Our theme is combatting disinformation, so having everyone understand terms and conditions available will help us proceed with our plans. The pre-conference is both for local newbies and invited participants. Newbies will still come from the pool of librarians and information professionals.

One method of selection might be the number of edits over a period of time (determined using the edit counter tool : https://xtools.wmcloud.org/ec). Another would be suggestions from participants, perhaps they have a “buddy” that would benefit from pre-training. There may be up to 35 persons at the pre-conference. Also, helping the participants and librarians learn about the Movement pre-conference will be a goal. We intend to have the Movement “kiosk” available during pre-conference.

• Thank you for being very clear with some of the objectives and the questions; challenges the Wikibrarians communitie are struggling or interested in.
• I understand that skill and capacity building is a major need, and that you would also like to welcome librarians and information professionals that are not necessarily heavily engaged in the movement, in order to get them closer to the mission. How will you balance those 2 elements? How will you secure a basic level of understanding and wiki skills that are required to participate successfully in the discussions? And how will you make sure that the ‘newbies’ you are inviting, will remain engaged (as bringing international guests who are newcomers is quite a risky investment)?

The purpose of the pre-conference is exactly to address this imbalance so that workshops will appeal to all participants with a fuller exchange of information. The proportion of international participants will follow our criteria for motivation and engagement with Wiki projects. One of our attendance goals is to provide a bridge between experienced Wikibrarians / Wikimedians and newly engaged librarians. We hope to be an example for future conferences to have integrated strategies to bridge experienced and new / future Wikimedians. We have projected several workshops around our core theme, fighting disinformation as only information professionals and librarians can. We also plan informal mingle sessions for more relaxed cross-communications.

• What will be some of the criteria for selecting those ‘non-wiki’ participants?

For the most part, all participants will be already engaged with Wikimedia. One of the criteria will be if newer Wikibrarians have committed to a specific project within the Wikiverse, or have demonstrated initial collaboration with more learned colleagues.

Proposals for participation from library-oriented individuals with less Wiki experience will be highly welcomed as long as they demonstrate motivation, enthusiasm, and interest through a collaborative proposal with some element of the Wiki world.

• As a centralized hub, do you have a strategy on how you work on the local scale with local affiliates that are collaborating with local librarians and information professionals? Is there a plan on how to partner with the local/regional affiliates to track and follow up?

Yes, we do. We will work very closely with the Mexican team and user group, as described in our proposal. We will seek to have at least one track in Spanish with translation to English (and possibly French).

The local affiliate will be the Wikimedia Mexico chapter and will share an integral part of the organizing committee. With proximity to North and Central America, we plan to continue follow up and collaborative exchange starting with where the conference is located. Identifying key persons for continued dialogue will be one of our goals and, additionally, continue network weaving with our participants in the Global South. Growth begins locally and we will follow the best practices for WLUG growth as exhibited by R-Ladies.

• 35 (to 55) scholarships out of 110 in total - it means you are expecting the other half to be local participants? Or do you anticipate those will be self funded participants?

In the previous WikiLib Con edition, the proportion of funded participants varied. The WikiLibCon22 was also in proximity to the IFLA conference with many participants already on the way. While the majority could partially finance the total cost of their trip or lodging, some received full funding. For this second conference, we would like to offer more full and partial scholarships and we will seek to develop the overall scholarship plan based on percentages from local, North and Central America and International requests.

• Scholarship criteria - I think that ‘Any active contributor to a Wikimedia project’ is quite a wide definition. If active contributions is what you are looking for, I suggest you set a threshold for this criteria. Identify what you consider as an ‘active contributor’.

Agreed. The conference is specifically to address librarians and information professionals eager to improve Wikimedia skills and have the opportunity to learn more about the Movement. An active contributor would be one working with Wikimedia projects within their libraries or highly motivated to do so.

We are looking to meet and collaborate with our invested colleagues and want to differentiate between this conference and general Wikimedia conferences. The application of the scholarship will include reference to Wiki project either personally involved with or motivated to learn and put into practice, particularly as it relates to the conference theme. We may also request of scholarship recipients that they take notes in their mother tongue and share.We see this event as a good chance to cross-train between Wiki projects for library professionals.

• I’m interested in understanding what has happened since the last conference in 2022. Were you able to track the engagement of the participants from 2022 until now? Are there any learnings from the past conference you would like to follow up on or to implement? Are there any achievements or learnings you are building your strategy and program on top of?

Half of the current planning group attended the first WikiLibCon. One of the best lessons learned was the need to continue gathering together in conference. Another is the need to include substantive methods to follow up with participants. For this conference, we intend to create a variety of avenues to continue communication and collaboration. Such activities might include a post-conference survey and then initiate and plan quarterly surveys. We intend to assign point persons for gathering post-conference data. We have qualitative and anecdotal data and want to supplement with quantitative data to help analyze the needs of our community. One of our outcomes is to further create and develop a collaborative global community to speak for not only the present conditions of our profession but prepare for future Wikilibrarianism. Specifically for this conference, how we can truly assist when evaluating information and data.

One of the main things we’ve learned is that we have to build a tracking mechanism and we are planning a variation of the buddy system to help implement. We also want folks to operationalize their project ideas. As we request proposals for the program, we may add questions to check in with members of the first conference and how they have progressed.

We intend to focus the conference programs on our theme, and this will help eliminate multiple simultaneous programs choices which we understand was a slight frustration for the first group. We also will seek guidance on proper travel arrangements for participants. We understand this was a difficult challenge for the earlier planning committee.

The 2022 WikiLibCon was a spur for librarians in Africa, and we wish to continue embracing our African librarians. Two important lessons were taken away by African participants at the 2022 Maynooth, Ireland conference: incorporating Wikimedia projects in their daily lives and the importance of communities and collaborations. Learning and building on what was shared at the first WikiLibCon was essential. The conversation about a proposed project by AfLIA on how to build semantic authority control through Wikibase in African National libraries started at the conference in 2022. AfLIA is planning a series of continent-wide conversations between Wikimedia communities and librarians to help embed the library sector in the African continent more into the WIkimedia Movement.

With these proposed post-conference initiatives and concrete examples of how librarians can become catalysts for Wikimedia communities, the conference would help promote this model while engaging within the lens of our theme, combatting disinformation worldwide.

Budget:

• No need to budget for insurance for scholarship recipients, as all participants who are traveling outside their home country, funded by the conference grant, are covered by the WMF health insurance.
• I don’t see breakfast costs for scholarship recipients - please make sure this is included in the accommodation costs for scholarships.

We have added breakfast costs.

• I appreciate the balanced cost per person for the giveaways. This is very much aligned with our policy in SWAG and our intention to be more mindful of our environmental footprint.
• In which languages would you like to provide translation services in? I think this might be a real need for this conference.

Spanish and English, and French (depending)

• Who are some of the keynote speakers you were thinking about?

Bunty Avieson, University of Sydney and Alan Ang, Wikimedia Deutschland

• Overall, the budget seems very balanced and reasonable. I also very much appreciate your efforts with raising in kind donations (the hotel deal). The only thing is that I would consider awarding a bit more scholarships.

It is our goal to include more scholarship opportunities.

Thank you very much for a well written proposal! When you're able, please respond to the questions on meta and revise the proposal on Fluxx if needed (I have sent the application back on Fluxx so you can edit it, just don't forget to re-submit when you are done). These revisions will be due by March 5, 2024 after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal to make the funding decisions.

Best, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 11:21, 28 February 2024 (UTC)