Grants:PEG/WM Fr/Hackathon Lyon 2015

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statusFunded
WM FR/ Hackathon Lyon 2015
This grant demand us submitted to get more funds for planning the european Hackathon in Lyon. It shows why we need the funds and how they'll be used. This european Hackathon will gather more than 200 coders who will improve Wikimedia's projects
targetWikimedia's projects
strategic priorityImprove quality
start dateMarch 11
start year2015
end dateMay 25
end year2015
budget (local currency)25,783.1 €
budget (USD)29,162.80 USD
grant typeOrganization
non-profit statusYes
creatorAlex.cella
contact(s)• alexandre.cella@wikimedia.fr• cyrille.bertin@wikimedia.fr
organization• Wikimedia France
created on11:15, 12 February 2015 (UTC)

Goal[edit]

Hackathon Lyon 2015 is a major event that gather more than 200 coders coming from more than 20 countries. They work for a couple of day in order to improve Wikimedia's projects. Moreover, a hackathon is a great opportunity to develop a local community, to contact public administrations and to highlight the activities of Wikimedia in a region.

The Wikimedia Hackathon model promotes community mingling giving opportunities to professionals, volunteers, and newcomers to work together. It facilitates team collaboration to develop demo-able projects during the event. It is a very good occasion to reach out to new technical contributors, and to improve the personal connections that are maintained mostly online during the rest of the year.

In Lyon we will experiment with some new concepts in our events: demo-able projects, pairing buddies, and welcoming newcomers.

History[edit]

Projects[edit]

The Hackathon, an annual meeting of coders working on projects linked to Wikimedia is planned since 2009, starting along Berlin's Wikiconference, then in an independent way. During last Zurich's Hackathon, projects which gathered at least 10 coders were :

Projects Names Wikimedia Tool Concerned Description
Production-like Vagrant MediaWiki The ultimate idea is to provide a uniform developer-focussed instance to Mediawiki engineers to facilitate better testing of new and existing code.
Maps integration All, especially Wikipedia The idea is to bring pin map templates, geohack, wikiminiatlas, openstreetmap, Extension:Maps, Special:NearBy, mobile, coordinates extension etc etc etc, more together in a way that works for mobile, desktop, micro and macro contributions.
Data & Developer Hub Tools for coders Building a Data & Developer Hub that can help inspire developers everywhere to build new things using data available from Wikimedia projects and be a central location with documentation that is clear and helpful.
Integration of Open Government Data in Wikidata and other Wikimedia projects All As a concrete task we will promote the integration of demographic data from the open data platform to wikidata for integrating the data in the specific articles of the districts.
Wikibase architecture overview Wikibase and Wikidata Wikibase is the software behind the Wikidata project. This session aims to give a high level overview of the wider wikibase codebase, which functionality can be found where, and how the different parts interact.
Clean Code Wikibase This covers basic design principles, effective use of tests, and many general best practices.
Mediawiki.ui for developers Mediawiki Mediawiki.ui implements the evolving "Agora" visual style for buttons and forms in MediaWiki software. Learn how to apply it in your extensions and gadgets to deliver attractive consistent appearance.
Flow for bot and tool developers Flow Flow is a modern discussion and collaboration system for WMF wikis.
How to help pywikibot Wikibot Pywikibot is the most popular framework for running bots.
Translate extension workshop Translate The aim is to fix people's most wanted (or hated) Translate bugs together or work on new features.
ContentHandler All Using the content handler facility for managing structured content on wikis. This is aimed mainly at extension developers who want to handle non-textual content on wiki pages.
Future of version control, bug reporting and other developer tools Phabricator Discussion about what we envision our ideal development environment to be and figure out what it would take to get us there.
Architecture discussion All A continuation of our past architecture meetings where we discuss the future of MediaWiki's internal design.
Tech People meeting Regular Users All A workshop to invite local users, beginners but also power users, who want to learn more about MediaWiki, our infrastructure and more. Kind of a "Ask the Developers" session but more informal.
Wikidata in 2020 Wikidata Let's talk about the long-term plans and ideas you have for Wikidata.

Some more details[edit]

Regarding Lila Tretikov, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation: “Some of the projects underway were the very embodiment of the Wikimedia movement: expanding the way we capture, structure, and share knowledge, and how we recognize and encourage contributions and participation in all projects.”

Hackathon is an essential event in the perpetual technological improvements and access to online services for all.

Except this European Hackathon gathering 150 to 200 contributors coming from more than 20 countries, another Hackathon is planned every year, alongside Wikimania (Mexico 2015).

Other major Hackathons are also held occasionally on other continents (especially in India) and small events also take place in Europe (between ten and thirty participants). Some Hackathons also occur in the headquarters of the Wikimedia Foundation in San Francisco.

A list of these events is available at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Events

Presentation[edit]

Frame[edit]

The European Hackathon follows a path which is now well defined :

  • An « unconference » model (participants are leaders) based on concrete work, formations and technical discussions.
  • A new location is selected every year with a local team backed up by a team « engineering community » of the Wikimedia Foundation and some experienced volunteer.
  • A feathery organization based on simplicity and efficiency , reducing cost as much as possible.
  • An organizational budget approved in advance and completed by transportation grants and a support of WMF and chapters
  • Local teams focused on the regional settlement. Global aspects such as transportation grants and planning can be delegated to the community. WMF helps whenever it's needed.
  • Objectives are measured regarding the satisfaction of attendants and concrete results. Number of coders attending isn't a target.

Wikimédia France will plan the next Hackathon, which is organized from the 23rd to the 25th of May 2015, following the model described as follows. It will be held in Lyon to meet the logistical requirements of a project of this magnitude. Moreover, it is a great opportunity to involve the Lyon's local group, which is rapidly developing in recent months.

Program will remain mainly flexible regarding attendants expectations, but we will focus on semantic projects, such as Wikidata (a collaboratively edited knowledge base operated by the Wikimedia Foundation) and Sémanticpédia (which aims to ease semantization and publication of data from French Wikimedia projects), Wikimédia France wishing to highlight the complementarity of this two projects. Organizations and people who have been implied in the installation of Semanticpédia in France (DGLFLF, Inria, Vocal Apps...) will then be invited to attend this Hackathon.

Proposed projects[edit]

Wikimedia Hackathons are events with a high degree of self-organization and ad-hoc collaboration. We are using a Phabricator project to identify tasks that participants are planning to work on, based on three types of activity: hacking, training, and meeting. For more details, check the Wikimedia Hackathon 2015 workbard in Phabricator.

Plan[edit]

22nd of May

Installation. The first coders arrive at Valpré.

23rd of May

Morning: Opening speech + full-day coding

24th of May

Full-day coding & BBQ night

25th of May

Full-day coding & Closing speech in the evening

26th of May

The last coders leave Valpré

Activities[edit]

The Hackathon follows the unconference model, which means that the whole planning will be defined the very first morning.

Impact[edit]

Expected impact, like every Hackathons, is the development of tools permitting to improve the content of Wikimedia projects and/or improve the consultation of these for readers. This event being totally opened to all type of coders, it is a great opportunity for beginners to make their first steps into MediaWiki's community, alongside more experienced coders.

There will be an interesting impact on local Wikimedian group of Lyon. This local group is one of the most important in France by its number of member. Yet, it isn't the most dynamic.

Through this event, we can encourage many members of Lyon's local group to invest themselves in diverse activities. Most of them have declared to be available and interested to giver a hand and help us in the daily planning of the event.

They'll also get very close from Wikimedians from all over the world with whom they will discuss and see how cool and how important they are for local patrimony.

Wikimédia France will also get a huge empowerment thanks to this Hackathon. We're very glad to held such an event and we'll do everything that we can to make it the most successful and productive of all Hackathons (until next year's one, of course!).

For the community, this Hackathon is a great opportunity to get in touch with the web community of Lyon which has a great growth. The French quality label 'French Tech' as been given to the city and that gives new development opportunity.

Fit with strategy[edit]

Hackathons answers directly to two of five points of Wikimedia Foundation's strategy :

  • The first priority (« Stabilize the infrastructure ») includes the point « Develop clear documentation and API's to enable developers to create applications that work easily with MediaWiki. » The Hackathon involves API's creators and documentation's creators but also reusers, permitting then to highlight the needs in documentation and possibilities of the different API.
  • The fifth priority (« Encourage Innovation ») also includes the aspects “Ensure access to computing resources and data” and “Continually improve social and technical systems” but this priority especially express a clear wish from WMF to plan events such as a Hackathon : “Organize meetings and events bringing together developers and researchers who are focused on Wikimedia-related projects with experienced Wikimedia volunteers and staff.”

Measures of success[edit]

The success of this Hackathon will be measured thank to two impacts of Wikimédia France internal quality approach, which are the impacts of the project but also for the association. New satisfaction indicators specific action will be added. They are listed below.

In a more global way, we've indicated the key factors of success, which are the objectives to reach and of which we target success.

Regarding expected and actual results of defined objectives, we will then be able to measure the success of this event.

Some expected impacts are here to, in the end, establish an inventory, the aim not only being to measure quantitative data to compare them with previous years' ones but to take advantage of these data in order to capitalize and improve innovation.

We also wish that these impacts and indicators can be shared with the whole Wikimedia movement to use and improve these same indicators during the next Hackathons. That will help to collect data, link them and then compare them.

Regarding the very particular aspect of this kind of event, we have wished this year to measure, for instance, the satisfaction rate of the beginners coders in regard to the improvement of their skills. Indeed, beginners are a necessary resource for software development and their satisfaction must be important in order to give them the motivation to keep learning. Therefore, some work sessions might also be lead for this specific public.

Here are the measurable impacts and defined indicators.

Community[edit]

  • How many participants?
  • Diversity of participation (origin, affiliation, sponsored, newcomers)
  • How many buddies?

Hacking[edit]

  • How many projects are showcased?
  • How many driven by volunteers?
  • Any projects that the WMF decides to support after the event?
  • Tasks resolved?

Training[edit]

  • Overview of Wikimedia tech priorities and ongoing projects welcoming contributors.
  • How many newcomers & welcomers in welcoming session?
  • Participation and results in other training sessions.

Meeting[edit]

  • Community decisions worth a face to face meeting.
  • Social meetings and events.

Organization[edit]

  • Costs and final balance.
  • How much funds pooled for volunteer travel sponsorship, and from whom.
  • Participants survey and summary report.


As indicators
  • Amsterdam 2013 : There were 149 attendees from 31 different countries. 12 Workshops were held on 3 days. This, in our opinion, might have been too much.
  • Zurich 2014 : There were 208 attendees in total, 26 female (12,5%). 3 Workshops on 3 days. Zurich's model seemed much more suitable to a hackathon because workshops were held but coding remained the main priority.

After this Hackathon, a satisfaction survey will be send to every attending in order to collect data to measure impacts but also to have a feedback that will be the most accurate possible regarding this Hackathon. Results will be shared with the movement to capitalize on the positive points and improve negative points on similar following events.

Qualitative and quantitative results will also be designed with infographics so that they can be efficiency used by other chapters.

Resources and risks[edit]

Needs[edit]

Human needs

For the realization of the event, human resources are essential. Part of the employees of Wikimedia France will be mobilized to raise capital, to prepare the event, and to conduct it, but the volunteers will also be critical to ensure at all times that all supply and comfort conditions are assured to allow coders to develop Wikimedia tools in the best conditions.

Material needs

Material needs are many, with Wi-Fi facilities that need to be set up in the place, but also shuttles to transport participants as well as communication tools such as a welcome kit, including a badge, a site map, pens, T-shirts and notepads.

Forces[edit]

  • The whole event will take place in the same location
  • Attendants will have a 24 hours access to working rooms and bedrooms
  • The menus will be adapted to various cultures and alimentary constraints.
  • The place includes a 71760yd² park open 24 hours
  • The place will be privatized for the event
  • Known event, part of popular wikimedians culture for years
  • Lyon's dynamic local group will be involved to help employees planning the event

Team Working on this Hackathon:

  • Sylvain: Coordinator/ Project Leader from Wikimédia France, registration
  • Rachel: Coordinator/ Project Leader from WMF, Scholarships
  • Jean Philippe: Event Logistics, Communication, Venue coordination, registration, Wikimédia France
  • Alex: Wikimédia France Intern, hackathon support and coordination
  • Cyrille: New fundraising, participation advisor, Wikimédia France
  • Quim: Schedule/Agenda planner, Scholarships, WMF

This team already has a lot of experience in planning event (and sometimes planning hackathons), some of them have already attended hackathons, and they already have local contacts to plan the event.

Weaknesses[edit]

  • The place is a bit distant from Lyon's city center (3,2 miles)
  • The costs of the place is slightly more important than last year's one in Switzerland
  • Among the French members of the planning team, only Sylvain has participated in a Hackathon

Opportunities[edit]

  • The event will permit us to sign some partnership which will be interesting for future development of Wikimedia
  • The international dimension of the event will strengthen the Wikimédia France credibility in a global French digital perspective.
  • Having a strong exchange with international coders from Wikimedia movement is a great opportunity for members to create bonds.

Threats[edit]

  • Not having the Grant to finance the event
  • Not finding financial support from companies
  • Weak implication from volunteers
  • Contributors not being satisfied by the Hackathon

Budget[edit]

Project budget table[edit]

Exchange rate: 1 USD = 0.88399 EUR (as of 12th of February 2015)

Number Item description Unit Qty Cost per unit EUR /USD Total cost USD WMF contribution (USD) Other sources (USD) Notes
1. Travel costs & visas 13,860.00 0.00
1.1 Scholarships 11500 0 delivering full scholarships to 10% of participants (50/50 Metropolitan France vs Rest of the World)
1.2 Visas 500 0
1.3 Transport for a keynote speaker 200 0 11500
1.4 Accomodation for a keynote speaker 80 0 11500
1.5 Childcare 1500 0 11500
2. Accommodation and meals 13,860.0
2.1 Lunchs Participant x day 200 x 3 19.50 EUR / 22.05 USD 13,235.70 13,235.70 Here are the prices for every lunch that has been negotiated with Valpré. Prices are settled and contract is signed. Theses are then not estimations but what we'll really pay. Being in France, we had to pay attention to the food! Bon Appetit!
2.2 Dinner Participant x day 200 x 2 19.50 EUR / 22.05 USD 9,706.16 9,706.16 Pretty much the same as for lunchs. Though, one special dinner has been planned and this is why this part only includes 2 dinners.
2.3 Breaks Participant x break 200 x 6 3.30 EUR / 3.73 USD 4,479.08 0.00 4,479.08 6 breaks (3 morning and 3 afternoon) per participant. Coffee breaks will include drinks (coffee, tea, juices) and snacks (cookies, fruits etc.). They will be covered by Wikimédia France.
2.4 Gala Dinner Per participant 200 27.50 EUR / 31.10 USD 6,220.94 6,220.94 A huge barbecue is planned. At Valpré, we have a huge park that allows us to eat outside without any problem. We do hope that on the end of May in the south of France we'll have a warm and sunny weather to make this dinner a huge success. Of course, for attendees who don't eat meat, another menu is planned.
2.5 Single B&B Rooms Rooms x Nights 68 x 4 + 6 (for friday evening) 58.00 EUR / 65.60 USD 18,238.5 0 18,238.5 We have booked several type of Rooms. Here are the single rooms. All rooms are already booked by Wikimédia France; they will then be chosen by attendees when the registration form will be posted. Reimbursement will be done either by coders or chapters.
2.6 Couple B&B Rooms Rooms x Nights 3 x 4 74.80 EUR / 84.60 USD 1,015.26 0 1,015.26 Answering to specific requests, we've booked 3 couple rooms
2.7 Double B&B Bedrooms Rooms x Nights 44 x 4 77.00 EUR / 87.09 USD 15,328.4 0 15,328.4 As the title says, we booked double rooms. Not much to add.
2.8 Triple B&B Bedrooms Rooms x Nights 5 x 4 93.50 EUR / 105.75 USD 2,115.12 0 2,115.12
2.9 Quadruple B&B Bedrooms Rooms x Nights 2 x 4 121.00 EUR / 136.86 USD 1,094.89 0 1,094.89
2.10 Hotel taxes Per nights 185 x 4 1.11 EUR / 1.25 USD 928.16 0 928.16 In France, every night booked in a hotel includes a tax raised by the city. You usually never see it, but it's included in the price.
2.11 Preparation team housing Per nights 9 100.00 EUR / 113.10 USD 1,017.97 0 1,017.97 The same as the preparation team transportations, a few nights are necessary to plan this hackathon. We most of the time book on Airbnb. It costs much less because we usually rent a flat with 2/3 bedrooms.
3. Venue 12,328.77 0.00 12,328.77
3.1 Room and Equipment Project 1 8,400.00 EUR / 9,501.07 USD 9,501.07 0.00 9,501.07 Valpré and every conference room with all equipment necessary for talks and workshops are already paid. Valpré lower its price by more than 6,000.00€ for us (Around 6,800.00 USD).
3.2 Wi-Fi Project 1 2,500.00 EUR / 2,827.70 USD 2,827.70 0 2,827.70 Valpré needed to upgrade their Internet connection, they are then paying a part of the bill. Still, it'll cost Wikimédia France 2,827.70 USD to have a 2x4Mo connection.
4. Materials and gifts 4,003.99 0.00 4,003.99
4.1 T-Shirts Per participant 200 10.00 EUR / 11.31 USD 2,262.16 0.00 2,262.16 Every participant will have at least one t-shirt of Hackthon Lyon 2015.
4.2 Maps Per participant 200 1.00 EUR / 1.13 USD 226.21 0.00 226.21 Every participant will get a map of the place in order to avoid lost sheeps.
4.3 Badges Per participant 200 2.00 EUR / 2.26 USD 452.42 0 452.42 Badges will be given so that we know who's who and who does what where.
4.4 Notebooks Per participant 200 3.50 EUR / 3.95 USD 791.75 0.00 791.75
4.5 Pens Per participant 200 1.20 EUR / 1.35 USD 271.45 0.00 271.45
5. Administrative expenses 11,917.56 0.00 11,917.56
5.1 Scholarships Per covered participant 20 350.00 EUR / 395.87 USD 7,917.56 0.00 7,917.56 Wikimédia France will help attendees up to 7,917.56 USD, which correspond to 20 attendees and around 180 USD for nights and 215 USD for transportation.
5.2 Unforseen Project 1 4,000.00 USD 4,000.00 0.00 4,000.00 10% of the total grant sum. This includes unforeseen events as exchange gain/loss, transportation problems (e.g. cancelled flights), weather conditions (e.g. additional heating), increase in air ticket fees (e.g. due to travel from remote airport insteaf of the one in capital), satisfying uncommon requirements (e.g. users with special needs attending) etc.
TOTAL 107,461.60 29,162.80 78,298.80

Total cost of project[edit]

107,461.60 USD

Total amount requested[edit]

29,162.80 USD

Additional sources of revenue[edit]

Housing Reimbursement[edit]

Every room will be paid back by attendees and chapters. WMFr will then collect 37,792.17 USD

Donations[edit]

We're also looking for financial partners that will support us in the planning of this Hackathon. We've contacted dozens of companies and persons in the Lyon neighborhood that could be interested by funding the Hackathon, because of their position on the Internet market. Some WMFr employees went to Lyon from the 4th to 6th of February and around the 20th to 22nd.

We're then negotiating with Foundations (such as the Free Foundation, which is very interested), Companies (such as Uber with whom we're negotiating a sponsorship for travels) and Public Administrations (Such as the city of Lyon).

The aim of such partnership is to find alternative ways of funding an event and also involve WMFr with more actors. We're targeting 17,000.00 USD.

Wikimédia France[edit]

Wikimédia France will pay the difference between the total cost minus housing reimbursement, minus grant from WMF, minus donations. That will represent around 23,500.00 USD

Wikimedia Foundation[edit]

The Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community team has budgeted $20,000 USD for travel sponsorship of volunteers.

Other chapters[edit]

Following the trend of the past two years, we expect other chapters to contribute funds to the budget for travel sponsorship of volunteers, with the requirement of sending volunteers from their regions. At this point we don't have numbers for the commitments of each chapter. For updates, you can check and subscribe to Pooling funds for Wikimedia Hackathon 2015 travel sponsorship budget in Phabricator.

Non-financial requirements[edit]

None.

Discussion[edit]

Community notification[edit]

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Endorsements[edit]

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  • I went to AMS Hackathon 2013. It was a great opportunity to learn and share ideas on WMF-related projects. We should continue this sucessful annual event. Taweethaも (talk) 00:32, 14 February 2015 (UTC)
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