Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Serbia/EduWiki Conference 2023
vikimedija.org / Filip Maljković• User:Bojan Cvetanović / bojan.cvetanovicvikimedija.org / Bojan CvetanovićEvent overview[edit]
Purpose and vision
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?
Wikipedia & Education User Group is an affiliate that is global in nature and has a large sphere of interest. We have ambitious goals, but limited resources, and we see value in holding an annual international conference with education as its central topic. We believe we have the capacity to organize such events in the future, but seeing as we’re still a small community without a formal body, we plan on cooperating with incorporated geographical affiliates, in order to make particular events possible. This year, we are partnering with Wikimedia Serbia, as a chapter with a long and rich history in organizing both education program activities, but also in organizing conferences.
Our first attempt at organizing this conference was halted due to Covid-19 pandemic, but we are firm believers in the value of this proposed conference, so we'd like to use the efforts from 2019/20 to our advantage and continue with organizing this conference in spring 2023 (dates likely to be in May, to be determined soon with the hotel/venue). The event venue is going to be Hotel M, the same venue used for successfully organizing CEE Meeting 2019.
With a full three day program encompassing keynotes, presentations, panels, workshops and discussion groups, we plan to provide an immersive experience for all participants. We hope to have a broad representation from around the world, with many experiences to be shared. As education programmatic work in the Wikimedia movement ranges from one individual Wikimedian instructor working with their class to large-scale programs with tens of thousands of students each year, we also want to facilitate connections and mentorship opportunities for collaboration between education program leaders with similar programs across the globe.
From the survey results, we saw a decent connection between expectations, gaps in skills, and expertise in skills. The three day program, in addition to satisfying the expectations, would also focus on connecting people with expertise in a certain area to those having a skill-gap in the same. This will ensure that we have stronger bonds and cross-community connections in the movement. We will also offer technical training in existing software tools (e.g., the Program & Events Dashboard or Petscan, mentioned by many survey respondents), hold discussions relating to coping with Covid-19 in educational setting, and use this conference as an opportunity to catalyze growth in our user group’s working groups.
The survey is evidently pointing towards aligning and thinking about the EduWiki work across the movement to be connected and be aligned with Wikimedia 2030 Movement Strategy Process, and also in terms of advocacy with other stakeholder systems and groups in mind, such as OERs and MOOCs. We would like to have a program that would be open about talking about these things.
In conjunction with the Wikimedia Foundation’s Education team, we would like this conference to move sessions beyond simply “here’s what I’ve done” and into “here’s what I’ve learned, and here’s how this learning is applicable to others in the movement.” We want our user group to foster a network of people within the Wikimedia and education movement who are better at documenting and disseminating learnings so we aren’t recreating the wheel every time we start a new program.
Do you consider this to be a Regional; Thematic or Growth event? You can read more about each category.
Thematic
Is it a Remote, or in-person event?
In-person event, with remote presence
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) | May 2023 |
| Proposed location | Belgrade, Serbia |
| Number of participants | 120 |
| Event page | EduWiki Conference 2023 |
| Primary contact person | User:Dungodung |
Visa requirements
Please see the following link (Wikipedia) to find the information on visa regime of the Republic of Serbia with regards to many other countries. In most cases, visa procedure takes 15 days from the date of application. In exceptional cases and for justified reasons, the procedure may take up to 30 days.
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 in the table below, if any of the questions are not relevant leave it blank.
- Main article: Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Serbia/EduWiki Conference 2023/Community Engagement Survey Report
| Description | Priority | |
|---|---|---|
| Strategic discussions:
What are the top issues affecting your community that need to be discussed in person? |
|
High |
| Capacity development:
Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn? |
|
High |
| Working groups:
Are there joint projects that need to be planned in person? |
|
Medium |
| Community building:
Are there other in-person activities that important for community building? |
|
High |
Survey analysis:
- How many people did you send the survey to? How many people responded to the survey?
- The survey had been widely promoted across various channels used by EduWiki community, including the two mailing lists, Facebook groups and through personal contacts. A total of 81 people took part in the survey
- 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?
- Connecting Wikimedia Education and the 2030 Wikimedia Movement Strategy implementation, particularly in terms of considering wiki education within the framework of knowledge equity and knowledge as a service
- Designing, planning, scaling and outreaching Wikimedia Education programs and campaigns
- Based on survey responses, what are the most important things your community should do at the conference to achieve those goals?
- Focus on capacity building of the participants in the requested areas, so as to align the community with the strategic direction. For this learning, there would be a push for the program to include more sessions for skill sharing rather than a generic format of presentations. Respondents have also indicated the relevance of community sharing, particularly as a means of establishing a learning culture within the EduWiki movement.
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?
- We at Wikipedia & Education User Group were inspired by the similar event organized in 2019 by the Basque User Group, but also by previous such occasions in less recent history. We believe that Wikipedia and Education go hand in hand and a growing number of edits to Wikipedia in recent years comes from education program activities from affiliates around the world. We think this is fertile ground for cooperation, exchanging of ideas and learning from other peoples’ experiences, so a conference is a natural choice.
- 2. How does this event relate to other activities that your community is working on?
- Wikipedia & Education User Group has been working on enhancing and scaling local and global educational efforts, advocating for the use of Wikimedia projects in education, and elevating the narrative outside our movement. We see a conference with education as its central theme as a natural continuation of our efforts in building bridges, fostering a community of sharing, learning from experience and co-creating. We started a very popular mentorship program last year, and we're eager to grow this program and some of our other working groups. We would like to use this conference as a springboard to discuss these working groups’ connections to the Movement Strategy, create plans of action, and energize our members to continue engaging in these efforts after the conference.
- 3. Do you have any Thematic or Regional committee or group? (Such as WISCom, CEE, Iberocoop, etc.)
- We are the thematic group for education. :)
Plan[edit]
Venue and Logistics[edit]
- 1. Do you have any proposed venue for the event? If so, please share details (such as: how far is it from the airport or transportation hub, how close is it to the hotel, do you anticipate any challenges with using the space for the event you are planning?)
- The venue is located 21km away from the Belgrade Airport. It is 25 minutes from the airport (the only one) by taxi and approximately 30-45 minutes by public transport. The event venue is within the main hotel, so no additional logistics is necessary.
- 2. Is the event venue and hotel accessible for people with physical disabilities?
- Yes, there are two rooms with full accessibility options and most conference rooms are accessible by wheelchairs.
- 3. Are you planning to outsource some of the services? For example - a travel agency, an event production service?
- We don’t anticipate any major challenges, seeing as Wikimedia Serbia used the same scheme for the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2019.
Friendly space policy[edit]
Please link to the friendly space policy that your community will be using for this event.
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.
- The target audience will certainly be all people who are involved in Education and Wikipedia on any level. We expect many Wikipedians and Wikimedians, but we’ll also focus on bringing in educators who have been using Wikipedia and its sister projects as teaching tools. Partners from local and global organizations like UNESCO, governments, NGOs, and others who are already involved in the Wikimedia and education movement are also encouraged to attend. We see this first conference as an opportunity to coalesce our strategy as a user group, and we hope to be able to use it as an opportunity to bring new people into our movement in future conferences.
- 2. If your conference has an outreach component to also target non-wikimedian individuals or mission aligned institutions, can you explain your intention for this outreach (for example: how will you ensure engagement with these participants after the conference, and what impact do you see them having on the projects)?
- Connections between partners are key for success in the education program. Without educational partners, the program can't even begin. Growing education programs, though, requires additional partnerships, and we think providing an opportunity to collaborate with external partners will provide an opportunity for them and our Wikimedian participants to identify mutual synergy points.
- 3. Are you thinking about collaborating with potential partners? Such as national; educational or thematic groups and organizations? If so, will this partnership be a financial one (such as sponsorship), or a visionary one (to collaborate in regards to the content of the event)? Please share some details if you have any.
- As described above, we expect it to be more visionary, with a goal for having future programmatic collaborations.
- 4. In which ways can Wikimedia Foundation staff support your event onsite? If you would like support, please list the different capacities in which we can support, or describe how you would like Wikimedia Foundation staff to be involved in the event. (Some examples of Wikimedia Foundation support or involvement might be: for outreach and communication efforts; to lead specific sessions; for legal or safety reasons, etc).
- We collaborate with the Wikimedia Foundation's Education team (Nichole Saad, Melissa Guadalupe, Vasanthi Hargyono and Sailesh Patnaik) regularly, so we'd expect them to naturally participate in the program. Other staff directly related to the education program's efforts could also attend, but we expect the vast majority of the organizing work and session leads will be done by education program leaders. We will look to guidance from Wikimedia Foundation staff around any public health guidelines we should be implementing for the conference.
Scholarships[edit]
- 1. How many scholarships would you like to offer and what expenses will the scholarship cover?
- 70. The scholarships will cover 4 nights (with breakfast) in a double room at the hotel (a limited number of single rooms will be available for people requesting them), travel costs to Belgrade Airport from the origin (not including local ground transport) and lunch and dinner for the three days of conference.
- 2. How will scholarship recipients be selected?
- We will form a Scholarship Committee (SC), comprised of various people from our community with experiences in such processes, that would be tasked with selecting the people. The process would roughly go like this: the SC would create a Scholarship form, and they would announce the call for scholarships; once all applications are collected, each SC member will rank the candidates’ applications by a number of predetermined criteria and based on an average rank, a final list of people will be provided to the organizing team.
- 3. Do you plan to target or prioritize specific communities or participants?
- Whereas the Scholarship Committee will use their discretion for selecting particular scholarship recipients based on merit, we will provide the SC members with instructions to give precedence to geographic areas with a lively education program and previously underrepresented communities.
- 4. How will you insure diversity and inclusion in your scholarship process?
- By selecting a diverse and inclusive Scholarship Committee, we expect to have positive results in terms of selecting a diverse group of people, in terms of geography, gender identity, types of education activities, etc.
Resources and risks[edit]
Describe the resource potential for successfully executing this project and the key risks/threats.
Resources[edit]
Organizing team[edit]
| Team | User Names |
|---|---|
| Wikimedia Foundation Liaison | Dungodung (W&E UG, WMRS) |
| Logistics | Bojan Cvetanović (WMRS) |
| Conference Program | Joalpe (W&E UG), Ziko (W&E UG) |
| Scholarships | Dungodung (W&E UG, WMRS) |
| Communications | LiAnna (W&E UG) |
| Volunteer Coordinators | IvanaMadzarevic (WMRS) |
| Other team members | Esh77 (W&E UG), WikiTatik (W&E UG), Neboysha87 (WMRS), Gorana Gomirac (WMRS), Mickey Mystique (WMRS) |
Risks[edit]
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 Wikimedia Foundation Learning & Evaluation Team to develop an appropriate measurement and evaluation plan.
- New collaborators working together for the first time: Our User Group’s board is all involved in the planning of this conference. Many of us have experience organizing events based on our other affiliations in the Wikimedia movement, and we’ve all been working together on the board. But the group of us has never collaborated together on a conference before. Organizing an event like this will be a test of the relationships we’ve built, and we are confident that the open communication and trust we already have with each other will serve us well. We have regularly scheduled meetings and will increase their frequency the closer we get to the event to ensure clear communication among team members continues.
- Badly prepared speakers: The Wikimedia Foundation Education Team has flagged to us that preparing external speakers for this event is something we should spend time on. They have offered their expertise in helping us on this task, and we look forward to working with them to help prepare speakers.
- Lack of volunteers in the organization team: We have good volunteer base that will help us coordinate activities before and during the conference. Wikimedia Serbia will open call for volunteers in order to form bigger team and will create specific tasks for each of them. Since Wikipedians and Wikimedians like to help, we are counting on them to help at the event as well, if needed.
- Problems with internet connection: The hotel will provide a special high-speed internet connection for participants of the conference that will be sufficient.
- Insufficient number of rooms for self-funded participants: Organizers will provide information about nearby hotels in walking distance.
- Taxi scams: Taxi scams are an occasional occurrence in Belgrade, so we’ll try to avoid this by giving participants information about prices and alternative safer app they can use (CarGo).
- Global health situation: It will be important to ensure our participants are safe, given the Covid-19 pandemic. We'll follow all health and safety guidelines from the Wikimedia Foundation about global events, as well as those in place locally in Serbia.
Budget[edit]
Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to this template. (sheet 2)
You can find all past proposals, you can use these for inspiration and reference but you are required to do your own local research and come up with your own budget numbers. Keep in mind that each event is different, has local context and needs, and there is not a one-size-fits all for our communities events. While making decisions on what to fund we will consider the local context and community needs for each event.
- Event budget table
The budget value is in euros. We used the exchange rate on 20/09/2022: 1 EUR = 1.00001 USD.
Travel[edit]
| Nr. | Item description | Unit | Quantity | Cost per unit | Total cost | USD | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1. | Travel costs | 49,200.00 | 49,200.49 | ||||
| 1.1. | International travel | participant | 60 | 815.00 | 48,900.00 | 48,900.49 | Based on estimates from travel sites with 1 checked bag per person. |
| 1.2. | Domestic travel | participant | 10 | 30.00 | 300.00 | 300.00 | Local participants from other cities of Serbia. |
Accommodation[edit]
| Nr. | Item description | Unit | Quantity | Cost per unit | Total cost | USD | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2. | Accommodation costs | 23,940.00 | 23,940.24 | ||||
| 2.1. | Single rooms | rooms*nights | 40 | 75 | 3,000.00 | 3,000.03 | 10 single rooms, four nights (breakfast is included). |
| 2.2. | Twin rooms | rooms*nights | 120 | 90.00 | 10,800.00 | 10,800.11 | 30 twin rooms, four nights (breakfast is included). |
| 2.3. | Tourist tax | participant*nights | 280 | 1.50 | 420.00 | 420.00 | 70 participants, four nights. |
| 2.4. | Catering | participant | 120 | 81.00 | 9,720.00 | 9,720.10 | Lunch and dinner on the conference venue during 3 days (except Saturday dinner). |
Venue[edit]
| Nr. | Item description | Unit | Quantity | Cost per unit | Total cost | USD | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3. | Venue costs | 6,930.00 | 6,930.07 | ||||
| 3.1. | Rent | day | 3 | 1,050.00 | 3,150.00 | 3,150.03 | The hotel will give a 52,38% discount from the full price. |
| 3.2. | Coffee breaks | participants*breaks | 720 | 5.25 | 3,780.00 | 3,780.04 | Coffee, water, juice and snacks for all participants. Two breaks per day. |
| 3.3. | Technical support | day | 3 | 0.00 | 0.00 | 0.00 | It is included in the venue costs. |
Other income / expenses[edit]
| Nr. | Item description | Unit | Quantity | Cost per unit | Total cost | USD | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 4. | Other expenses | 7,080.00 | 7,080.07 | ||||
| 4.1. | Video recording service | day | 3 | 310.00 | 930.00 | 930.01 | |
| 4.2. | Promo packet for participants | participant | 120 | 7.00 | 840.00 | 840.01 | Bags, folders, pens, badges, stickers, magnets. |
| 4.3. | Saturday dinner | participant | 120 | 20.00 | 2,400.00 | 2,400.02 | Dinner in Bohemian district of the city - meal + drinks |
| 4.4. | Downtown city tour | tour | 1 | 1,000.00 | 1,000.00 | 1,000.01 | Donation of Wikimedia Serbia. |
| 4.5. | Working material | 600.00 | 600.01 | Name tags, roll up, posters, banners, papers, markers, stickers. | |||
| 4.6. | Bank fees | 410.00 | 410.00 | ||||
| 4.7. | Unforeseen expenses | 900.00 | 900.01 | ||||
| Nr. | Item description | Unit | Quantity | Cost per unit | Total cost | USD | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5. | Income (inc. in-kind) | 2,650.00 | 2,650.03 | ||||
| 5.1. | Rent of venue | day | 3 | 550.00 | 1,650.00 | 1,650.02 | Discount approved by Hotel M. |
| 5.2. | Downtown city tour | tour | 1 | 1,000.00 | 1,000.00 | 1,000.01 | Donation of Wikimedia Serbia. |
- Total cost of event
- 87,150.00 EUR = 87,150.87 USD
- Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program
- 84,500.00 EUR = 84,500.84 USD
- Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this event, and amounts funded
- Hotel M discount for the rent of venues: 1,650.00 EUR = 1,650.02 USD
- WMRS in-kind donation for the downtown city tour: 1,000.00 EUR = 1,000.01 EUR USD
- Please confirm that you are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.
- YES
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.
