Grants:Project/Rapid/Bay Area WikiSalon/Bay Area WikiSalon/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Rapid Grant approved in FY 2016-17 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

• To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:Project/Rapid/Bay Area WikiSalon/Bay Area WikiSalon.
• 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 rapidgrants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Goals

Did you meet your goals? Are you happy with how the project went?

Yes. See details below.

Outcome

Please report on your original project targets.

WikiSalons and events took place on the following dates:

• August 31, 2016
• September 28, 2016
• October 26, 2016
• November 30, 2016
• December 21, 2016
• January 15, 2017 (Wikipedia Day 16 sponsored/coordinated by BAWS)
• February 22, 2017
• March 29, 2017
• April 26, 2017
• May 31, 2017
• September 27, 2017
• November 29, 2017
• June 6, 2018
• July 25, 2018

Planned:

• September 26, 2018

Target outcome	Achieved outcome	Explanation
Socialize with community members	Yes.	We did not target explicit numbers, but we tried to track RSVPs and attendance, which ranged from 45 to 4 over the 12-month period. Our high-level monthly summaries (Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon) present the attendance of some months. In a lightning talk OpenOffice Impress presentation at Wikiconference USA in 2016, audience members reflected that attendance seemed relatively high in the scheme of U.S. Wikimedia meetups.
Recruit new editors	Yes.	Our high-level monthly summaries (Wikipedia:Bay Area WikiSalon) note 8 new editors personally made their first edits, as witnessed by the organizers.
Increase skills for existing editors	Yes.	Editors sometimes learned tricks from existing editors - for example, the Visual Editor tool and its automatic citation capability were frequently cited.
Add or improve content	Yes.	Content improvement was an explicit goal at only a couple of the meetups, with one general and another focused on basic income. But content improvement was a continuous topic of discussion.

Learning

Projects do not always go according to plan. Sharing what you learned can help you and others plan similar projects in the future. Help the movement learn from your experience by answering the following questions:

• What worked well?

The Wikimedia Foundation facilities staff was very supportive, and WMF staff sometimes showed up to make presentations on software updates or other things. Overall, people seemed to have fun and learn from each other.

• What did not work so well?

Planning engaging events is difficult, and sometimes organizers, who are freely volunteering their time, felt unrecognized and unrewarded. Also, efforts to organize can be tedious and seem less fun than editing articles.

We tried Mailchimp, to get more analytics on emails (possibly "growth hacking"). But it didn't seem to work as well as a simple plaintext email from a personal email account.

• What would you do differently next time?

We are continuing to organize these events and experimenting with different approaches. We have always used Trello to openly collaborate on tasks, but now we're experimenting with using Discourse instead of email or talk pages to discuss our plans.

Finances

Grant funds spent

Please describe how much grant money you spent for approved expenses, and tell us what you spent it on.

• Original grant award: $2000

• Spent: $1799.13

• Remaining balance: $200.87 (as of 2018-09-05)

Funds were spent on food, beverages, ice, food delivery fees, sales tax, serving vessels and utensils.

Spending breakdown

Posting date	WikiSalon date	Vendor	Items	Cost	Running total	Note
2016-08-23	NA	PSCU	Wire transfer fee	10.00	10.00	WMF deposit fee
2016-09-02	2016-08-31	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice	108.06	118.06	Delivery to WMF
2016-09-30	2016-09-28	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice	106.42	224.48	Delivery to WMF
2016-09-30	2016-09-28	Big Lots	Vegan/GF chips	1.90	226.38	Will call by Wayne
2017-10-28	2016-10-26	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice	107.08	333.46	Delivery to WMF
2016-12-02	2016-11-30	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice	89.94	423.40	Delivery to WMF
2016-12-23	2016-12-21	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice	126.13	549.53	Delivery to WMF
2017-01-17	2017-01-15	Dollar Tree	Utensils, plates, cups, party favors, etc.	53.04	602.57	Will call by Wayne - Wikipedia Day 16
2017-01-17	2017-01-15	Safeway	Cake for Wikipedia Day 16	64.97	667.54	Will call by Wayne - Wikipedia Day 16
2017-01-17	2017-01-15	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice, ice cream, toppings	218.98	886.52	Delivery to WMF - Wikipedia Day 16
2017-02-24	2017-02-22	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice	118.15	1004.67	Delivery to WMF
2017-03-29	2017-03-29	Dollar Tree	Utensils, plates, cups	16.01	1020.68	Will call by Wayne
2017-03-29	2017-03-29	Grocery Outlet	Food, deli, drinks, ice	49.89	1070.57	Will call by Wayne
2017-04-28	2017-04-26	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice	134.25	1204.82	Delivery to WMF
2017-05-30	2017-05-31	Big Lots	Vegan/GF chips	1.90	1206.72	Will call by Wayne
2017-05-31	2017-05-31	Grocery Outlet	Food, deli, drinks, ice	54.87	1261.59	Will call by Wayne
2017-05-31	2017-05-31	Dollar Tree	Utensils, plates, cups	13.65	1275.24	Will call by Wayne
2017-09-29	2017-09-27	Duc Loi Supermarket	Beer, wine	26.01	1301.25	Will call by Wayne
2017-12-01	2017-11-29	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice	115.28	1416.53	Delivery to WMF
2018-06-08	2018-06-06	Safeway	Food, deli, drinks, ice	117.53	1534.06	Delivery to WMF
2018-06-13	2018-06-06	Z Pizza	Pizza	116.50	1650.56	Delivery to WMF - via Uber Eats
2018-07-26	2018-07-25	Grocery Outlet	Food, deli, ice	53.63	1704.19	Will call by Wayne
2018-07-31	2018-07-25	Z Pizza	Pizza	94.94	1799.13	Delivery to WMF - via Uber Eats

Remaining funds

The funds remaining from this grant in the amount of US$200.87 were deducted from another grant payment for Grants:Project/Rapid/Bay Area WikiSalon Series II.

Do you have any remaining grant funds?

$200.87

We would like to spend the remaining funds on the next WikiSalon scheduled for September 26, 2018 at 6 p.m., while we apply for another Rapid grant. We expect to consume the entirety of the $200.87 on the September WikiSalon.

Anything else

Anything else you want to share about your project?