Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Portugal/Wikidata Days 2020

Sharing data and contents is what librarians, archivists, curators and academics have in common with Wikimedia’s mission: empowering people with knowledge. Data can be reinterpreted, remixed and reused into new pieces of information creating new knowledge. Only participatory and collaborative culture can make this happen.

In the recent years, Wikidata has been gaining a special interest from librarians and scholars. It’s flexibility, scalability, and it’s data modelling data system are very well aligned with their working practices.

The general vision for WikiData Days initiatives is Share, Collaborate, Transform: Shaping data in a changing world. For the 2020 edition we chose the general theme: Open Data for Digital Humanities. The GLAM sector and Academia have the right tools and sources to become strong actors on Wikimedia projects. We plan to run a Regional Conference, where we expect to share experiences, show best-practices, collaborate with several actors in society and institutions and find partnerships in a regional scale. This will also be an important mark for the creation of new projects, gaining new editors, and scale-up dormant projects. Portugal and Spain share not only a lot of history and a similar culture but also similar problems and issues. We believe that increasing the ties between the Iberian Peninsula Wikimedia community could be reinforced after an event like this. We also received significant interest from Wikimedia Affiliates from Brazil (same language and Wikidata skills and specialization), the Maghreb, West Africa extending to the rest of Africa, if possible (vicinity and opportunity for exchange experiences and capacity building).

Please give a brief description of the event you are planning. What do you hope to accomplish during the event? Why is this event important for your community?

2-day conference + 1-day walking edit-a-thon.

We will open calls for communications and project proposals. These proposals will be evaluated by a designated Scientific Committee. We plan this event to be credited in academic terms.

In the first two days, we intend to host communications, presentations, panels and eventually a round table with topics covering Wikidata and Wikipedia; open knowledge; diversity and gender gap; mapping data; and Wikidata related ongoing projects. On the program, we expect to have a number of workshops on Wikidata and Wikidata tools, ranging from beginners to intermediate users hoping to increase the numbers and capacities of editors and consolidate the existing community.

The third day will consist of a brief workshop on creating and uploading items to Wikidata through mobile phones and Wikimedia Commons, as well as filling missing information. We plan to host a walking edit-a-thon, that also will serve as a participatory social/cultural event by visiting places in the vicinity of the campus (Lisbon or Cascais) and, at the same time, contributing to upload new items and data to the Wikimedia projects, especially Wikidata and Commons.

If we have a significant number of users new to Wikidata attending the conference, we plan to adapt the program to include or expand beginner sessions. New users attending the conference will be guided through and supported more closely by experienced volunteers. The edit-a-thon session could also be an opportunity to break the ice and encourage people to become active on Wikimedia projects.

Important details

Please add key information to the table below. The dates, location and number of participants can be estimates and do not need to be finalized at this time.

Proposed date(s)	2-4 July
Proposed location	Nova School of Business and Economics, Carcavelos
Number of participants	50 expected, maximum 100
Event page	meta / and eventually a dedicated webpage
Primary contact person	Miguelmcorreia, CatarinaMReis, DarwIn

Background[edit]

Community input[edit]

Use the results from the community engagement survey to fill in the table below. Since you cannot cover all topics or meet all needs at one event, prioritisation is important. Please rank the priority of each topic, skill, project or problem as high, medium or low. Finally, please answer the questions below the table.

	Description	Priority
Strategic discussions: What are the top issues affecting your community that need to be discussed in person?	Improve community engagement in Wikidata and strategic planning	High
Capacity development: Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn?	Wikidata and Wikidata tools training and digital literacy	High
Working groups: Are there joint projects that need to be planned in person?	Partnerships with GLAM institutions and the Academy. New user training	High
Community building: Are there other in-person activities are important for community building?	Building network, consolidate community, and sharing experiences and projects.	High

Survey analysis:

1 How many people did you send the survey to? How many people responded to the survey?

The survey was sent to Wikimedia Portugal mailing-list and to the participants of WikiData Days 2019, other members of the Portuguese speaking community, key people at the Iberian affiliates and other members of the target communities. We had a total of 10 responses to the google doc survey. However, direct contacts were made to some community members in Spain and Brazil who showed interest in this kind of event.

2 Did you see consensus around shared goals that this community wants to focus on in the next 12 months? What were the top 2 goals?

We did. Most concerns are related to community growth, wiki literacy and sustainability.

3 Based on survey responses, what are the most important things your community should do at the conference to achieve those goals?

Participants should provide a safe and productive learning environment, networking and sharing experiences, specially welcoming newcomers and engage them to be part of the community. They should also motivate the GLAM sector and the Academy to become important players in Wikimedia projects.

Context[edit]

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?

In June 2019 took place at Nova School of Business and Economics (Nova SBE), in Carcavelos (Lisbon), the first edition of WikiData Days. Attendees, from academics to librarians and data-oriented people, (such as people related do OpenStreetMap, VOST, etc.) expressed the need for another edition of this event but on a larger scale. Wikimedia Portugal and Nova SBE Library stepped up to look the necessary resources to make this possible.

In the past years, there were a couple of Wiki related initiatives in Portugal that helped to revitalize the Wikimedian community and bring new elements to it, but there’s still a long way to establish a wiki culture in our country. The GLAM sector, people working on Digital Humanities and the Academy are important partners that we feel that should be more active in Wikimedia projects, therefore we need to engage those communities to work with us, mainly by using more effectively Wikidata. We think this is the right time to take advantage of the momentum created by Wikidata Days 2019, and the year before that, in 2018 on the GLAM Days, hosted by the National Library of Portugal.

2. How does this event relate to other activities that your community is working on?

This event is in line with the activities Nova SBE Library is undergoing, using Wikidata and Scholia for scholarly communication. Several other academic librarians showed interest to learn more about Scholia and how they could get the academia involved in Wikidata projects. At the same time, Nova SBE Library is aligned with Wikimedia Portugal activities and events: e.g. the National Library of Portugal GLAM, the Wikimedia/Education programs at a number of Universities, and the strategic decision we have been taking of adopting Wikidata as a focus project, including using it as the base for Wiki Loves/Wiki Takes activities, as well as connecting to communities outside of Wikimedia which share the same goals and mission.

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

Scale-up the Wikidatians community: We are reaching out to increasingly greater numbers of volunteers from the OpenStreetMap, Mapillary, Here, etc. communities, which are now contributing regularly to Wikidata (and Wikimedians to those projects), also helping interconnecting them - and leading to more awareness and reaching out.
Keep diagnosing necessities in terms of tools and capacities.
Improve documentation: We have developed a number of new resources and help files, though there is still a lot of work to do in this area.
Improve access, visualization and edition on Wikidata through mobile phone: We have made contacts with a number of developer teams and individuals scouting for the possibilities of doing a joint development project on those.
The Nova SBE Library Scholia project was presented at the 4th national conference of academic libraries in Portugal and we were asked to give more information to librarians about the theme.
As a result, we’re going to host, next October, at the Portuguese Association of Librarians, Archivists and Documentalists a webinar on this topic, which will hope to raise awareness for Wikidata for academic librarians.

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

In 2018, the GLAM Days, organized by the National Library of Portugal and WMPT which received good participation from librarians and the general public.

On 7-10 June 2019, Wikidata Days 2019 took place at the Nova SBE. Despite having a very short time to prepare and promote the event due to a delay with the funding, more than 30 people attended the event. A significant number of people, including from Wikimedia Spain, the Basque Country affiliate and Amical, reported that they were very interested in participating if they knew about it with a little more anticipation. Despite these constraints, the event was very well received by the community and they voiced that it needed to scale up.

For a bigger scale event, we require some time of preparation and enough time to promote it. If we know ahead what resources we can allocate to the event we can properly promote it and increase the degree of success of the event.

We also need to continue to develop strategies for transmitting skills to new editors and bet on more advanced capacities to intermediate editors.

Plan[edit]

Venue and Logistics[edit]

1. If the venue is more than 1 hour away from a major airport or transportation hub, how will participants travel to the event venue?

Carcavelos is 25 km away from the Lisbon Airport. Travel to NovaSBE campus is very easy using the subway and train and takes about 1 hour. In the airport the subway system can commute people to Cais do Sodré where there's a direct train to Carcavelos. From there it takes 10 minutes walk from the campus, but there are direct buses from there that drop people right at the school.

2. Is the event venue within walking distance from the hotel? If not, how will people travel between the two locations?

There are a number of affordable hotels and hostels in Oeiras and Cascais, and Lisbon is 30 minutes away by train.

3. Is the event venue and hotel accessible for people with physical disabilities?

Yes, Nova SBE is disabled-accessible and most of the hotels are too.

4. Do you anticipate any challenges with using the space for the event you are planning?

Nova SBE has a brand new campus with medium size rooms and several auditoriums well equipped with projectors, computers and Internet. The school is used to host a lot of events and we don’t anticipate any issues on logistics. There’s a service used to work closely with events and we’re trying to get them board.

Friendly space policy[edit]

Please link to the friendly space policy that your community will be using for this event.

We found the Creative Commons Code of Conduct to be very appropriate to our Friendly Space expectations on this event, and plan to use it here: The Creative Commons Code of Conduct

Participation[edit]

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.

Portuguese and Iberian Wikimedia community, Wikimedists from other communities (Brazil, Maghreb, West Africa extending to the rest of Africa, if possible), GLAM sector - especially librarians and archivists, Digital, Open Culture, and Open Data Activists (regardless of being beginners or intermediate users).

2. 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?

Nova SBE library is also interested in creating regular events during the school year related to Wikimedia projects, such as edit-a-thons and hackathons.

We expect to continue contact through email and social networks, inviting the participants and engaging them in future Wikimedia activities. Also, an online survey will be distributed after the event in order to collect the impressions, further expectations, and suggestions from the participants.

3. 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 would like to invite as keynote speakers/trainers Asaf Bartov, Sandra Fauconier and Leila Zia.

Scholarships[edit]

1. How many scholarships would you like to offer?

We would like to give scholarships to:

Selected members of the Portuguese community requiring travel/accommodation support to attend (Wikimedians, but not necessarily limited to members of Wikimedia Portugal)
Keynote speakers: Merrilee Profitt (OCLC / EUA), Mike Peel (Wikidata modules and tool development), Amador Álvarez (Wikipédia integration / Amical), Susanna Anas (Wikimedia Finland), Jason Evans (National Library of Wales), Shani Evenstein (University of Tel Aviv/Israel) and João Alexandre Peschanski (Neuromat/Brazil), someone from WikiCite, Jake Orlowitz (EUA) for Wikidata and libraries
Selected members of the Iberian affiliates: Wikimedia Spain, Amical, Basque Country UG, WikiMujeres and Wikiesfera, plus WikiDonne, as we have a special focus on Wikidata as valuable tool to fight gender gap on Wikimedia and elsewhere
Selected members of Wiki Movimento Brazil, which is doing a great job on Wikidata with the Wikidata labs and Wikidata related Educational and GLAM projects
Selected members of the Maghreb communities: Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia, which can easily reach Lisbon and improve their capacities for the same reason
Selected members of West Africa affiliates, mainly Ghana and Nigeria, for the same reason, extending to the rest of Africa, if possible.

2. What expenses will the scholarship cover?

Travelling, accommodation and stay expenses. Scholarships can be full or partial. We will work to get special prices or offers from lodging providers in the region, in order to lower the costs.

3. How will scholarship recipients be selected?

A selection committee will be designated to supervise the selection process. An application form will be designed, collecting information about the possible attendees. Based on the information collected, the committee will decide who would be the receivers of the scholarships.

We will greatly appreciate if the Wikimedia Foundation could help us with the selection process.

Resources and risks[edit]

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

Resources[edit]

Organizing team

Team	User Names
WMF Liaison
Logistics	NOVA SBE
Conference Program	Miguelmcorreia, CatarinaMReis, DarwIn
Scholarships	WMF, other eventual sponsors and supporters we manage to get
Communications	Miguelmcorreia
Volunteer Coordinators	CatarinaMReis
Other team members	Ana Cravo, Walter Lippold, Jorge Gomes

Risks[edit]

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

Not having enough people interested in joining: ask for help from chapters to provide travel grants, call for participation.
Not having a balanced gender representation: Gender is an important factor when evaluating scholarships; special care in the invitation of gender related affiliates.
Not receiving enough proposals/presentations: We will work to have a number of spare theme-related communications that we could appeal to in case of need.
Limited outreach on the Portuguese community: Start promotion and advertising of the event with plenty of time, once the grant decision is made, so that information could go to the right proper circuits.
Components of the measurement process could be hard to quantify: Working with the WMF Learning & Evaluation Team to develop an appropriate measurement and evaluation plan.

Budget[edit]

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

Event budget table

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Cost per unit	Total cost	Currency	Notes
1	Accomodation	Hotel and breakfast	Rooms / days	11 / 3	100 (110.425)	3300 (3,644.02)	EUR USD	Prices according to Hotel Riviera Carcavelos
2	Travel	Scholarships for Overseas participants (Flights to Lisbon from Africa and South America)	Participants	8	1.000 (1,104.25)	8.000 (8,833.99)	EUR USD	Estimate based on previous experience
3	Travel	Scholarships for participants from Europe (except Iberian peninsula) (Flights/trains/buses to Lisbon from European countries)	Participants	4	400 (441.700)	1,600 (1,766.80)	EUR USD	Estimate based on previous experience
4	Travel	Scholarships for participants from the Iberian peninsula (except Portugal) (Flights/trains/buses to Lisbon from cities in the Iberian Peninsula)	Participants	5	200 (220.850)	1,000 (1,104.25)	EUR USD	Estimate based on previous experience
6	Travel	Scholarships for participants from Portugal (Flights/trains/buses to Lisbon from cities in Portugal)	Participants	5	100 (110.425)	500 (552.125)	EUR USD	Estimate based on previous experience
7	Travel	Additional scholarship travels (Public transport in Lisbon/Oeiras/Cascais for three days, including to and from the airport)	Persons	22	15 (16.5637)	330 (363.695)	EUR	Estimate based on previous experience
8	Travel	Visa costs for scholarship holders	Participants	4	200 (220.850)	800 (883.399)	EUR USD	From previous experience
9	Food and beverages	Lunch at venue (buffet)	Persons / days	50 / 2	20 (22.0850)	2,000 (2,208.50)	EUR USD	Based on communication with Azure Restaurant
10	Food and beverages	Dinner 1st Day (buffet)	Persons / days	50 / 1	20 (22.0850)	1.000 (1,104.25)	EUR USD	Based on communication with Azure Restaurant
11	Food and beverages	Catering for 2 days		1	500 (552.125)	500 (552.125)	EUR USD	Estimate based on previous experience
12	Food and beverages (included on scholarships)	Covers dinner 2nd day, and lunch and dinner 3rd day	Persons / days	22 / 1	60 (66.2550)	1,320 (1,457.61)	EUR USD	Estimate based on previous experience
13	Outreach and material	Printing material and gifts, T-shirt or similar	Name tags, poster, roll ups etc	1	500 (552.125)	500 (552.125)	EUR USD	Estimate based on previous experience
18	Unforeseen			1	500 (552.125)	500 (552.125)	EUR USD

Total cost of event: 21,365= 23,592.3 USD
Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program: 21,365= 23,592.3 USD; (This comprises the conference costs without travel costs of the so-called self-paying participants. These are participants who will have their travel costs paid by their local chapters or interested other (GLAM) institutions which we assume will mainly be from Portugal/Iberian peninsula. The community survey showed that there are also interested participants from Europe, Africa and Brazil, including emerging communities where there are no chapters/organizations with budgets that can support these volunteers. For these participants, we calculated 23 scholarships (8 overseas, 4 Europe, 5 Iberian Peninsula, 5 Portugal)

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

NOVA SBE Library will make arrangements to provide the venue at NOVA SBE Campus and the necessary equipment at no cost.
We expect that a number of chapters will support their participants or representatives' flight tickets and visa (if needed).
We have contact with the Cascais Municipality and will try to secure a sponsorship/additional funding.
We will try to negotiate reduced prices and further sponsorships for accommodation and food.
We will work to arrange goodies and additional offers (e.g.: museum tickets) to the participants at no cost.
We will work to get additional funding for additional scholarships/travel support, especially for people from the Portuguese/Iberian community.

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

Discussion[edit]

Endorsements[edit]

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 will be an interesting project that will allow a greater integration in the Wikimedia communities in the Iberian region, and also it will increase the awareness and Capacity Building related with Wikidata. I believe in the aim of the organizators of organizing an event with a useful programme. TaronjaSatsuma
(as co-organizer) - A regional event on Wikidata, Libraries and Education is an extraordinary opportunity to improve knowledge and capabilities at a regional level, and exchange gathered experience, especially those more particular to these communities, languages and realities. The event was proposed by a major partner of Wikimedia Portugal, the NOVA SBE Library, and has the full support of our community. Furthermore, Lisbon is easy to reach at quite affordable prices from pretty much the entire world, and is among the safest cities of the planet, with an excellent cultural offer, making it a perfect place for this event. This event follows the quite successful previous events with GLAM Days 2018 and Wikidata Days 2019, and I expect that the next edition will provide key experiences and information exchange, including handling and development of Wikidata related tools, especially those related to GLAMs, education and mobile. - Darwin ^Ahoy! 21:52, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

I think this event will be an incredible opportunity both to increase the growth of the lusophone community on Wikidata and to strengthen and expand opportunities for local partnerships and sharing of experiences within the Iberian community. This will benefit not only the Iberian community, but the Wikidata, GLAM and education communities as a whole. Ederporto (talk) 15:31, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

This definitely sounds like a necessary event. I believe, more than anything else, it would foster growth within the Portuguese community and would encourage partnerships, both within the community and with aligned organizations. I look forward to seeing this come to fruition.--Jamie Tubers (talk) 22:05, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

The project comes at a time when many community are struglling with the application of Wikidata as a tool for driving statics of numerous inputs to Wipedia and its sister project. I strionly believe that the project should be extended to Africa where Wikidata is at very basic state.
This a very laudable project because of its potential to enhance the existing knowledge in the application of Wikidata as querying tool and all the relevant third parties tools. Numerous knowledge gaps will be bridged with the understanding of the application of WIkidata and I am sure this project will help in this regards Olaniyan Olushola (talk) 16:37, 16 September 2019 (UTC).

I'd like to highlight that language should always be taken into account while discussing Wikidata. The initiative of a conference for the iberic community that includes the lusophone community in general will be a great opportunity for sharing advances and challenges on the activities we've been developing with Wikidata and GLAM and for streghtening connections. The location seems strategic and I believe logistics should work fine for participantes from the proposed countries. EricaAzzellini (talk) 20:47, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

I was at the 2019 event and I saw its potential. It was focused on key practical aspects and analyzing specific gaps, which is what we need to engage more communities. This event is a necessary and natural evolution.--Alexmar983 (talk) 21:39, 29 September 2019 (UTC)