Grants:PEG/Alexandre Hannud Abdo - Grupo de Trabalho em Ciência Aberta/Encontro de Acadêmicos pelo Conhecimento Livre/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2012-13 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/Alexandre Hannud Abdo - Grupo de Trabalho em Ciência Aberta/Encontro de Acadêmicos pelo Conhecimento Livre.

• You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
• You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Compliance and completion

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?

Answer YES or NO.

YES

Is your project completed?

Answer YES or NO.

YES

Did you use any of the grant funds?

Answer YES or NO.

YES

Activities and lessons learned

This section describes what the grantee did, and what the grantee learned from implementing the project. This section should be useful to others implementing similar projects and is an opportunity for the grantee to reflect on the project's performance.

Activities

Provide a detailed list of activities performed to complete this project, descriptions of these activities, and the amount of time spent on each activity. This section should also include a list of participants, or a link to pictures, blog posts, or videos from the project or event.

Project consisted of a two day event that consolidated the organizing of an Open Science Working Group in Brazil. The first day of lectures by researchers practicing and advocating some form of open science was held at University of São Paulo. The second day of more technical workshops and discussion about the group was held at Casa Nexo. Researchers traveled from different parts of the country to participate.

The organizing of the group took about six months and involved several activities that won't be discussed here. We'll simply report on the event funded by WMF.

Several people contributed to the organization, led by the grantee, Solstag.

All contributors worked as volunteers, except for Everton who was partly engaged as an employee of the Open Knowledge Foundation, partly as volunteer.

Preparations for the event started in February, about four months ahead, even before we decided to request this grant.

Production is documented here at Portuguese language Wikiversity: Encontro de Acadêmicos pelo Conhecimento Livre

Solstag, Everton137 (as OKFn employee), Ewout, Raniere Silva, Sturm and Anneclinio contributed directly to the grant's activities.

Chores:

• Scavenge and contact interested researchers (Solstag: 10h)
• Produce briefings, invitations and welcome messages (Solstag: 4h)
• Set up a mailing list (Everton)
• Invite and welcome researchers to the mailing list (Solstag: 4h)
• Produce the grant application for Wikimedia (Solstag: 8h)
• Set up a domain and wordspress site (Everton)
• Produce content for the website (Solstag: 4h)
• Write and spread the call for proposals, including arranging and attending meetings with institutions (Solstag: 20h)
• Manage proposals and organize the program for the meeting (Solstag: 6h)
• Get Slack (Solstag: no time)
• Arrange with university to host first day (Ewout: 2h)
• Contract with caterer and organize for first day cofee breaks (Sturm: 2h)
• Contract with Casa Nexo to host second day (Solstag: 10h)
• Contract with film crew to record second day (done by Casa Nexo)
• Contract with servants to cook for second day (done by Casa Nexo)
• Update website content afterwards and write posts documenting the event (Raniere Silva: 2h, Solstag: 5h)
• Edit videos for the first day and publish them on Wikimedia Commons (Raniere Silva: 4h, Solstag: 2h, Thiandre: 30m)
• Produce a detailed report of the meeting's presentations and discussions (Anneclinio: 10h)
• Produce the grant report (Solstag: 10h)

Total volunteer time: Solstag 76h, Ewout 2h, Sturm 2h, Everton (?h as volunteer, ?h as OKFn employee), Anneclinio 10h.

Lessons learned

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects? Consider the following questions and respond with 1 - 2 paragraphs.

What went well?

By first getting support from many well positioned academics, we managed to get the event publicized in official channels, which brought a good number of attendants.

Nevertheless, we personally contacted enough people that, even if only them had showed up, the event would have been a success.

The live on-line transmission provided by the university worked fine and had a good audience, though the quality was a bit lacking even for real time multimedia standards.

The overall opinion was that the food was amazing on both days. We had a vegetarian menu, which was vegan-friendly and used fair-trade organic produce.

Casa Nexo made sure that everyone working to serve the event was paid a fair wage.

We held a meeting of São Paulo Wikipedians together with the second day of the event, at Casa Nexo, and some also participated in our workshops.

What did not go well?

In order to save money, we relied on the university to capture the first day's audio and video. That led to material of much lower quality than we expected, which is quite unfortunate since that was likely the more interesting day for recording purposes.

Due to lack of time, hardware and ability, we haven't managed to edit the footage for the second day at all.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Have everything captured by a professional crew with professional equipment. Do not accept offers of free audiovisual service unless you are entirely confident the quality is going to be great.

Include a line in the budget to pay for professional video editing of captured material.

Media

More media at commons:Category:Encontro nacional do Grupo de trabalho em Ciência Aberta em 2013

Promotional poster

First day

• 
  Preparing to receive the crowd
• 
  Solstag introducing the meeting
• 
  Coffee break
• 
  View of the audience

• Remote participation by WMF consultant Henrique "Crang"
• International remote participant Cameron Neylon, from PLoS
• Prof. Dr. Rafael Pezzi on his project of open hardware for science in schools
• Dr. Eduardo Oda on the projects from Garoa HC, a local hackerspace
• Prof. Dr. Artur Rozestraten on collaborative and libre content for research in architecture
• Prof. Dr. Fabio Kon talks on importance of Free Software in research
• Prof. Dr. Ewout ter Haar on ethical issues with open data in science
• Prof. Dr. Sueli Mara on open efforts by University of Sao Paulo's libraries

Second day

• 
  Breakfast
• 
  Workshop presentation
• 
  Lunch
• 
  Open air discussions
• 
  Workshop participants
• 
  Some of the participants by the end of the second day
• 
  The pro video team in action

Project goal and measures of success

This section should reference the project goals and measures of success described in the approved grant submission. See Grants:PEG/Alexandre Hannud Abdo - Grupo de Trabalho em Ciência Aberta/Encontro de Acadêmicos pelo Conhecimento Livre to review the goals and metrics listed in the approved submission.

Project goal

Provide the project goal here.

We will educate an influential group of scientists on the themes and practice of open collaboration through the use of open licenses, wikis, libre software and open repositories.

We will also hold a scientific meeting, targeting a larger audience, to discuss the scientific, ethical and economic aspects of open scientific practice.

We will provide cohesion to this group, allowing it to work more effectively to promote open science in Brazilian universities.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.

Yes! All goals of the event were reached with a higher attendance than expected, people gave us positive feedback about the meeting and joined the mailing list, and the consolidated group is fostering activities related to Open Science and Free Knowledge in the Brazilian academia. A next meeting for 2014 is already being set up with more institutional support.

One account of the meeting (first day) can be found: here and the videos here, both in Portuguese.

Measures of success

List the measures of success exactly as provided in the approved grant submission, and evaluate your project according to each measure listed there.

Number of people who participate in the meeting (first day): 50 people.

Number of people who participate in the workshops (second day): 20 people from at least 4 different cities in São Paulo state, and at least 4 other states.

Number of institutions represented in each: members (professors, researchers, graduate students, librarians) of at least 10 different institutions (universities, research centers) present in the meeting.

Commitment of the group after the workshop, by:

• Joining the mailing list (this might happen along the way to the meeting - a dozen people already joined)
• Inviting other researchers to the group
• Organizing similar local events
• Raising awareness of the steps a researcher can take in open science, beyond and in parallel to providing open access to publications
• Other ways of contributing to the group and the cause

These are measurable but I don't think I can provide individual targets, I'd rather say that there will be action in these areas by most of the members.

One of the purposes of the working group is precisely to map the practice and promotion of open science in Brazil, so these measures are all concrete and specific deliverables.

Measures in terms of Wikiversity usage:

At least 25% of the working group experiences editing Wikiversity.

At least 5% of the working group attempts to use it in some academic activity soon after the event.

Provide an overall assessment of how your project went according to these measures.

Over 70 people participated in the meeting (first day), from over 4 different states, and we had the virtual participation of an unanticipated international speaker, Cameron Neylon from PLoS.

Over 20 people from at least 4 different cities in São Paulo state participated in the workshops (second day). We did have people present from 3 different states, however we did not meet the diversity goal of 4 states, as three confirmed participants had health and family issues that prevented them from coming.

We had people from a number of institutions present in the meeting. At least 10 Brazilian universities, at least 10 institutes from the host university, 1 hackerspace, and some last minute surprises like Embrapa, the Brazilian Company for Agriculture and Livestock Research.

Besides the above numbers, we had 150 people from around the country watching the live feed for the first day.

The commitment of the group after the workshop has been good.

• We have now almost 90 members on the mailing list
• Not only researchers who were present joined, but also some who followed the event online or heard about it later.
• We already have a 2014 event in the planning, besides other activities for the following year such as Document Freedom Day.
• Members who gained exposure from, and whose understanding of and engagement with Open Science increased from, their participation in the group, such as Solstag, Raniere Silva and Rafael Pezzi, have been contributing to other related events and projects and been asked to speak elsewhere about the issue.
• One group participant, Anneclinio, who did not get to attend the event but watched it on-line after we posted the videos, produced a detailed report of each of the meeting's sessions, quality material that we're starting to reorganize, together with the audiovisual documentation, in an Open Science Manual for Brazilian researchers.
• Other researchers, such as Rodrigo Garcia and Veronique Hourcade, have volunteered and started to assist the group in other ways, from writing to the blog to summarizing news to the mailing list.
• At least two interviews to specialized media resulted from the exposure gained from the event.
• The map of open science in Brazil has significantly improved with contributions from the working group.

Regarding the measures specific to Wikiversity, I think it would be too optimistic to say 25% of the group edited it, but I can verify that at least 5 people in the group had previously edited it, and then 5 people who had never edited did so, though only a smaller number of those who had never used it, around 2, have tried to use it for some actual academic activity soon afterwards. That does roughly correspond to the fractions proposed if you consider the number of people who attended the workshop, during which we were more emphatic about the wikis, however, we were aiming for the group as a whole and so we fell short on these metrics.

On the other hand, we're continuously stimulating people in the group to use Wikiversity and Wikimedia Commons, and we do regularly get someone to try it out, even if only to edit something related to the working group. And with improvements coming that will help make Wikiversity more attractive to researchers, such as the visual editor and messaging system, people will likely experiment and contribute more.

If you were to plan a similar project, would you measure it differently? If yes, please explain how.

I don't think so, I think we did a good job regarding evaluation.

Impact

This section ties this project to Wikimedia's broader goals, and shows what the project accomplished.

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic goals? Please answer in 1 -2 paragraphs and include specific measures of impact such as the number of readers or editors reached by a particular project, or the number of articles edited or improved. (Stabilize infrastructure, Increase participation, Improve quality, Increase reach, Encourage innovation)

This project mostly increased medium to long term participation and quality of Wikimedia projects, by strengthening a network of researchers aligned with Wikimedia's mission which can now be targeted by Wikimedia outreach efforts and work together to collaborate with the Wikimedia Movement, providing social recognition and validation to researchers who choose to contribute.

In the short term, it has modestly contributed to the use of Wikiversity, having researchers acknowledge it as a platform for the organization and collaboration of research efforts, a few of them experimenting with it. By organizing the group within Wikiversity, we are steadily bringing these researchers to learn the wiki process and skills.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".

Not yet

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.

These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.

Note that variances in the project budget over 10% per expense category must be approved in advance by WMF Grants Program staff. For all other variances, please provide an explanation in the table below.

The table belows reflects the budget updated by all modifications requested and approved here. We ended up not using the approved reallocation for accommodations, as the people we thought would be interested got funds from their institutions or waived reimbursement as a contribution to the Wikimedia Movement.

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Actual cost per unit	Actual total	Budgeted total	Currency	Notes
X	Location	University auditorium	1 day	1	0	0	0	BRL
X	Location	Casa Nexo	1 day	1	1440	1440	1440	BRL	nota nexo.jpg
X	Equipment services	Casa Nexo	1 day	1	300	300	300	BRL	nota nexo.jpg
X	Location services	Casa Nexo	1 day	1	350	350	350	BRL	nota nexo.jpg
X	Catering services (Day 1)	Bakery	1 person	70	8.20	574.24	900	BRL	nota mercados.jpg, nota vegan e cafe.jpg
X	Catering services (Day 2)	Casa Nexo	1 person	40	31.37	1255	930	BRL	nota nexo.jpg
X	Audiovisual services	Casa Nexo	1 day	2	900	900	1800	BRL	nota captacao.jpg
X	Travel	Air	two way trip	0	0	0	3000	BRL	(of those people who traveled by air, 2 got funds from their local institutions, 2 decided to pay for it themselves as a contribution to the Wikimedia Movement, and 1 could not come due to health and family issues)
X	Travel	Land	two way trip	1	49.88	49.88	750	BRL	nota raniere.jpg (of those people who traveled by land, only one requested a refund)
X	Communication	Printing service	1 poster	30	7.16	215	0	BRL	nota posters.jpg
X	Communication	Website hosting and development	1 site	0	0	0	0	BRL	(done by volunteers with support from the Open Knowledge Foundation)

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission)

9320 BRL (but look in the observations for unaccounted contributions)

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if the WMF grant is your only funding source)

9320 BRL (plus transfer and conversion taxes, but I'm still trying to figure those out)

Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above)

5084.12 BRL (but look in the observations for unaccounted contributions)

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project (this total will be the same as the total amount spent if the WMF grant is your only funding source)

5084.12 BRL

Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.

Yes, but we cannot account for all of them:

• Universities that paid for researchers travel and accommodation
• Researchers who paid for their travel and accommodation themselves
• Website hosting and development provided by the Open Knowledge Foundation

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?

Answer YES or NO.

NO, because I did not receive any money up front.

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

0 BRL

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.

NO, because I did not receive any money up front.