Grants talk:Conference/WikiConference India 2020

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Some budget questions[edit]

Compared to the previous conference, this conference's budget is more than twice as large. A couple things probably deserve some explanation:

  • The amount being requested for "Accommodation and Food" is more than twice that of the equivalent category for the last conference (and, if I am not mistaken, this does not even include local transport expenses). This section definitely needs to be elaborated on in a manner similar to the detailed break-up for "Food, Accommodation and Local Transport" given in the previous conference. Was food a problem in Chandigarh?
  • The categories of "other incidentals" (A7/A8) in the "Travel" section also need some elaboration, as this section was absent from the last conference's budget and it increases the total travel expenses by around 50%. Did people run into situations getting to Chandigarh such that having such funds would have been helpful?
  • There was a hackathon on the first day of the last conference to which funds weren't explicitly allotted then. Was that not successful with funding absent? Can that be broken up in detail?
  • The team meeting's (D4) expenses definitely need to be elaborated on à la the detailed break-up given for the previous conference.

I'll follow up if I have more questions about this. Thanks! Mahir256 (talk) 22:47, 3 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Mahir256: Hi Mahir, thanks for the questions. Some of the questions you have posted here are something which community members might commonly have, so we have drafted a set of FAQs which we will be adding under the budget in the next few hours, which is also the reason why we haven't notified the mailing list about the proposal. I will get back to you after we publish the FAQs, which might answer some of your questions. KCVelaga (talk) 02:35, 4 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mahir256: Hi Mahir, we have added an initial set of FAQs, however, we are working to improve them, and also adding more details to the budget table for a few items. I will get back to your specific comments within in the next 24-hrs. Sorry for the delay, KCVelaga (talk) 04:53, 6 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Mahir256: replying to your questions;
  • There are several reasons for this particular budget category having a high figure; food wasn't a problem in Chandigarh, but the accommodation was. As it has been mentioned in the proposal and also the FAQs, accommodation was taken in the university and people were stranded. This has been expressed by community members as well and also in previous report. Since it is in a hotel and a 4-day conference (2016 was for 3 days), this is cost is high.
  • This expense is for reimbursements people may have for example, airport transfer in their city and also Hyderabad, food during travel etc. However, after you have flagged this and one more community member to me privately, we rethought about this and the amount per until will be reduced to ₹2,500.00, and we will change it. Budget item (A7) will come down from ₹490,000.00 to ₹350,000.
  • There was hackathon, that is first day of the three days during 2016, but 2020's it is a 4-day conference, which includes one pre-conference day. In addition, we would like to organise a mini-hackathon a month before the conference days. The reason for this is, we will be doing a needs survey later after grant funding decision, which will also look at the technological needs. A few these will be prioritized and worked as a part of building and leading towards conference. This will ensure that we have concrete output to present at the end. In this regard, mini-event will help for few developers to come together and speed their work.
  • The budget breakdown for organisers' meeting goes this way;
Serial Item description Cost per unit No. of units Total cost (INR)
G1 Travel fares (mostly flights) 8000 20 ₹160,000.00
G2 Accommodation and conference venue for two days 1500 40 ₹60,000.00
G3 Food and snacks for two days 1500 40 ₹60,000.00
G4 Local travel and reimbursement 2000 20 ₹40,000.00
G5 Post physical meeting (Zoom subscriotion) n/a n/a ₹7,500.00
G6 Miscellaneous / Unforeseen n/a n/a ₹10,000.00
Total ₹337,500.00
We will updating the budget table accordingly. Budget item (D4) will be changed from ₹350,000.00 to ₹337,500.00. Also we are thinking the need of this particular expense. We might do a smaller one or significantly reduce this. Also, since the review period is still going we will be making changes to the main table after 14th only, as we are expecting comments until then. Sorry for the delay, hope these answer your questions, at least to an extent. I would also like you to direct to the updated FAQ section. Regards, KCVelaga (talk) 06:55, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

doubts[edit]

Hi, I have few doubts and raising it without any order. These are questions only to improve my understanding and clarity.

  1. I see the conference is run with institutional partner CIS and CIS is charging around 7L as fee for institutional development fee. CIS has many employees for organising t he event. So what is the need to recruit one person as conference as conference manager. Cant the employees of CIS can be organised?
  2. If the answer is 'no' to the above question with detailed justification, 50k per month for the conference conference manager doesnt it seem on the higher side?
  3. I couldnt see any income from the registration fee. How much is the estimated registration fee ?
  4. I couldnt see the scholarship people are 123. some wmf staff etc 10. Total 133.
  5. The total participants expected is 250-300. supported people on the higher side 150. so around 100-150 numbers are expected to join by paying registration fee. That is a good number. The details of paid people is vague. Because of the wordings such as partial scholarships, volunteer, etc. We need to define these to estimate the cost.
  6. "Internet + WiFi Routers:₹30,000.00" doesn't it seem on the higher side for the 3 day event. Most of the users have 1 gb or 1.5 gb per day plan in their mobile. The event organisers need to have high speed no doubt. because for opening their online slides for presentation, video streaming etc. But is it necessary to give free wife for all participants for 3 days at this cost?
  7. can you please explain A7. around 5L for other incidentals i couldnt understand.
  8. D5, can you explain the requirement of rs. 1250 per unit for training.

Regards, -- Balajijagadesh (talk) 06:20, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Balajijagadesh: Hi Balaji, thanks for your comments and questions. Please find my replies below;
  1. Yes your point is valid, yes CIS is the institutional partner, thought some of their staff time might be allocated for this, as they are charging fee, especially for managing the finances. Part of the CIS Finance Officer's staff will be spent for the conference. However, there are certain tasks which they might not be able to support, because close to the conference dates, the tasks get too heavy and will need a dedicated person for it. These include tasks such as booking travel for about 120 people, handling their queries, rooming plans, local arrangements etc. This even happened last time as well where a person was hired for a period of 3-4 months.
  2. I hope the above that helps to answer your question. After private conversation yesterday, I have discussed the salary bit with others, and we will be paying ₹35,000.00 per for a period of six months. We might actually try to hire for ₹30,000.00, but we would like to keep ₹5000.00 to be on the safe side. That will bring that budget item (D1) from ₹300,000.00 to ₹210,000.00.
  3. Registration fee would be around ₹2,500.00 for an external person. We want to subsidize the cost for Wikimedians, which is budget item B4. This is price includes food for three days during the conference, lunch+refreshments and swag. This is will be on no loss or no profit basis -- the registration fee would only be the price that we actually spend on that person.
  4. 123 scholarships + 20 organisers (who won't separately for scholarships) + 10 special invitees (depending on the program, if we need invite subject experts for keynote sessions etc.) = 153.
  5. Above the 150 mentioned above, other categories whom can expect now are WMF and CIS staff, which can come to around 30. However, we are expecting to have 100-150 registrations. But as I have mentioned in the above point, we are not planning to generate revenue out of it. The reason is that if we increase the fee above ₹2,500.00 might hinder the number of people who want to register. For clarification, volunteers will mostly be students from an educational institute in Hyderabad, whom will have to guide participants during the conference, handle the registration and help desk etc. We won't be paying them, but will bear their food and local transport.
  6. It is a general practice to provide WiFi to the participants, in general to the whole venue or where sessions take place. This is because if there are training sessions which would need the participants to connect their laptops to internet, we will need WiFi then. Though people can use their mobile hotspots, it is better to provide WiFi for such cases. Considering the fact that data packs prices are significantly low in India over the past couple years, we will be downsizing this cost (C3) from ₹30,000.00 to ₹15,000.00.
  7. (as mentioned in the reply above) This expense is for reimbursements people may have for example, airport transfer in their city and also Hyderabad, food during travel etc. However, after you have flagged this and one more community member to me privately, we rethought about this and the amount per until will be reduced to ₹2,500.00, and we will change it. That budget item will come down from ₹490,000.00 to ₹350,000.
  8. As mentioned in point 5, we will be having volunteers during the main dates. For them to help others during the conference, they will need some form of training or Wiki-orientation kind of to be inline with the conference proceedings and support the working of it. We will having 2 day training for them at the venue, ₹1,250.00 includes their lunch for those two days, and local travel.
Also, since the review period is still going we will be making changes to the main table after 14th only, as we are expecting comments until then. I hope these responses help in addressing your questions and making your understanding better. Please let me know if there is anything else. KCVelaga (talk) 10:06, 7 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@KCVelaga: Thanks for the detailed reply -- Balajijagadesh (talk) 12:58, 16 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Concerns[edit]

  • Most Wikimedia conference today happen with Sustainability in mind but I cannot see any plan here. So much budget is being spent, does it mean more carbon footprints - wastage of paper, plastic etc ? Someone please explain and come up with a plan.
  • There is no women in the organising committee. Is it because there is a seperate Women conference. This is not how Gender gap has to be reduced. This is India Conference and women participation should be there. Can you please explain
  • Earlier it was told that volunteers will be asked which sub-organsing team they would like to join but now everything is decided leaving scholarship and safety? Why is this so ?
  • Advisory Team has two Wikimedia Foundation people and one from Germany Chapter. Why only one volunteers to support on this pannel.
  • Some Grantee are not volunteers but work with Wikimedia Foundation or CIS or had worked. Can all three grantee in public interest inform their association with Wikimedia Foundation or CIS. Whatever they had in past or in present, whether part-time (contractor) or full time etc. This would improve transparency.
  • Same Grantee had also previously done other conferences before with CIS help and community objected to CIS staff given scholarship over community and unprofessional planning. Check here. Even during Bootcamp community raised questions on high budget. What have organisers learnt from both events ?
  • If both conference budget (Women conference) are taken together it is much more than CIS Annual budget. Can CIS demonstate it has the capacity and plan to execute both the events. During WCI 2016 so many late payments were made which affected the smooth flow.

--Nikhil.kawale (talk) 07:06, 7 February 2020 (UTC) Thanks.[reply]

@Nikhil.kawale: Hello Nikhil, Thanks for the questions. Here are my responses:
  • As on event planning goes forward post-funding, specifics of the event will be planned. But, to start with, are going to keep sustainability as an important factor in planning the event.
  • WikiWomenCamp 2020 (I assume you are referring to this event when you say "a seperate Women conference", correct me if it is not so) that is being planned in India. That is completely unrelated to Wiki Conference India and has different Goals & objectives. I would like to clear that India being a host of WikiWomenCamp 2020 is no excuse for Wiki Conference India being Gender imbalance. I believe we never wanted to even passively give such an impression. Current organising team being filled up with only male members is a serious concern to us too. To clarify, we approached some female members of the community whom we thought best fit for some of the roles, but unfortunately nothing worked out till now. But, in the coming few days we are going to be joined by some female members which will start bridging the current Gender gap in this team.
  • There will be a call for organisers once grants get approved to go forward and everyone who is interested will be free to apply for different committees. As of now we invited and got on board few volunteers as committees' leads as it is necessary to fill those positions to go forward in the grant drafting phase and we are not going to form full committees without the above mentioned process. This is something that we have already mentioned in Grant page under sub section- Resources.
  • People with experience and expertise spread across the movement in various capacities. As that is the case, we had to invite people to be advisers from various corners of the movement based on requirements.
  • To make it clear, Satdeep is not one of the grantees and he is going to work on Conference program in his volunteer capacity. We now realized that this might create confusion and removed Satdeep's contact. To keep it simple, I would like to say both the grantees are not employed/associated with either WMF or any movement partner currently. Also, All the current and future Organising team members (Not advisers) will be contributing to the event in their volunteer capacity.
  • Public scrutiny is a norm in Wikimedia grants and in the same way some community members commented and got it clarified in those grants. Actually, in one of the above mentioned grants (Bootcamp), I could see grantee reworked on the plan based on comments from a community member which proves the case for public scrutiny process. But for specific learnings, I would like to suggest you to read detailed reports of the events written on meta. Links: Wikigraphists Bootcamp 2018 Report (Learning) and TWLCon India 2019 Report (Learning).
  • We are well aware of the issues WCI 2016 team faced regarding late payments in 2016. CIS-A2K, currently, have a Finance officer working full time for [team] while they do not have such exclusive support during 2016. Apart from that, we are also planning to hire event manager (Can see details in Grant Budget) who will also handle specific logistics and make travel and accommodation for required participants. This arrangement allows event manager to share the work to a larger extent and reduces risk of getting things late. Apart from those arrangements we made and resource I mentioned, the part of your question "Can CIS demonstate it has the capacity and plan to execute both the events." is something that I can not further comment upon or clarify, as I am currently not actively involved either in WikiWomenCamp 2020 (I assumed it from your phrase "Women conference", correct me if I am wrong) or in A2K team.
Thanks --Pavan santhosh.s (talk) 17:02, 9 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hello, let me try to give some information. We are continuosly trying to improve the payment and reimbursement process. Earlier we had cheque-based payment process. And our payment process goes through multiple layers of monitoring. However, monitoring is done in the similar way still by the finance team and directors what we have changed is: we now have NEFT-based payment process mostly. So, non-availibility or physical presence of a signatory (we need two directors to check and sign before a payment is made) is not an issue now. This has rapidly increased the payment speed. Recently we have seen payment being released in quickly also following the entire process. However, to be on the safer side, it is good to start the process as soon as possible, especially for larger payments. Thanks, --Tito (CIS-A2K) (talk) 03:51, 13 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  • I second Tito's clarification. CIS's payment process has significantly improved in the recent times, both in terms of the efficiency and the time. I am saying as I have personally experienced this. I am sure this will be of benefit to WCI. KCVelaga (talk) 06:32, 20 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Good wishes...[edit]

Hello, just wanted to drop a message as an individual. I believe this conference has the potential to nurture, think and bring new ideas. WikiConference India is definitely the largest Wikiconference in India for Wikimedians. In the last 4 years, we have seen some major positive changes in the Wikimedia projects in India. Strategy2030 is also an important topic at this moment. Wikisource and Wikidata are becoming more and more important in India. I am a positive optimist that this conference can become a place to think, plan, and work on these and/or other similar ideas. And that will be very helpful. Thanks for planning this. My good wishes to the conference and the organising team and thanks for the hard work. Regards. -- Tito Dutta (talk) 06:46, 14 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@Titodutta: Hi Tito, thanks for your well wishes. All the topics/projects you have mentioned, 2030 Movement Strategy, Wikisource and Wikidata, are a priority to the movement in India, and we have been increasing activity around these in the last couple of hours. Thanks for highlighting these. Yes, we as well believe that WCI2020 will contribute to the efforts of what community has been and will be doing. Regards, KCVelaga (talk) 03:40, 18 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Major concerns[edit]

  • Conference has India name in it - I am unable to see India representation in the team. More than that - grant is filed as individual grant, is there any reason behind it?
  • Conference is proposed in Hyderabad however - Individual grantee is based in Delhi which is more than hundred miles away from proposed venue.
  • India has more than 1.3 billion people and Wiki communities exist in 10+ languages. Why there is no representation in core team?
  • One individual taking huge responsibility is risky and it is better if a group of people submit grant proposal and sign the grant contract (Ideal team could be one person from South, North, East and West parts of India) - I am talking about these people signing grant agreement as a group and not just one individual for obvious reasons.
  • Kindly put up grant proposal in draft mode till you get 'India' representatives to sign as grantee as a group.

— The preceding unsigned comment was added by Nikhil.kawale (talk)

@Nikhil.kawale: Hi, thanks for your questions. Here follow the replies in the order asked above;
  • These are two different aspects. The team -- as Pavan already clarified in the above section, to one of your questions, the people listed as of now, don't comprise the whole team. We most obviously host this huge conference with such a small team. Again as already mentioned in the grant proposal, "we only have gotten a few individuals on board to help us draft the grant application ... Post the grant funding decision, there will be a call for organisers for Wikimedians from various language communities across the country to take part in organising the conference." Coming to the second part of the question, I am not sure if we will be able to answer it completely now, as it is more of legal/technical. We wanted it to be a group grant, however, the states of AP and Telangana, don't have any formal group/affiliate as of now. The header needs to be updated to add another individual and handled by a fiscal sponsor. We are speaking with the WMF Grants Administrator to decide the best way to go about this.
  • I am answering this assuming that you were referring me, please correct me if I am wrong. Firstly, I am afraid that you are not completely aware of my base location (if you learnt it from my userpage, I am sorry, it is not up to date). Again, referring to the above point, there is one more individual, who is a resident of the host city -- who along with the logistics and local organising team will handle the on-ground arrangements for the conference -- rest everything can be handled remotely. This is also how most of the teams work when we form the whole organizing structure. As it gets close the conference, at least weeks before, I will base myself in the host city. I can assure that this will hinder the organizing in any manner. Apart from that, I am not comfortable with comments on where I am staying, as it is a personal choice with regards to my personal life.
  • I tried to address this in the first point itself, please let me know the specifics if you need more clarity in this regard.
  • Again, a few admin tasks are pending, the proposal has to be updated to two individuals from the host community, administered by an organisation which has good experience with providing fiscal sponsorship for WMF grants in India and also financial auditing by a professional auditing service. Also, expect for reimbursements or short-hand payments, none of fund is being taken into any of the personal accounts, and as clarified in budget section, transparency will be maintained.
  • It is generally the host community which generally takes the responsibility. It is a standard practice not just for WCI 2016, but also for other regional conferences such as CEE, WikiIndaba etc. Community discussion and resolution have been done in this regard. It can be viewed at WikiConference India 2020: Initial conversations.
I hope these address your concerns, let us know if there is anything more. KCVelaga (talk) 06:29, 20 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

WMF comments[edit]

Dear @KCVelaga: and the WCI 2020 team, Thank you for submitting this proposal! We are very happy to explore the opportunity to support you in hosting the WikiConference India 2020.

Your proposal has many strengths to highlight. I especially appreciated you thoroughly defining the goals and action items to achieve for this conference, the survey analysis and research services provided by The Centre for Internet & Society - Access to Knowledge, and the role you have taken in advocating for the movement’s needs in India.

I reviewed your proposal, and have some follow up questions and comments to offer as a part of staff review:

Context

  • Thank you for the historic overview of past events activities.
  • What kind of challenges emerged from the growth and progress of the wider community?
  • You are indeed making a very valid point. Educational institutes are good partners and have a lot of advantages as being hosts to some activities, but that is not always the case, and those can definitely present some challenges that are best to avoid if possible.

Program

  • Can you please share what is the expected impact and outcomes of having a pre-conf learning day? Is it something the community expressed any desire in? As this conference already has some individual capacity building into it, I am wondering what is the need.
  • I really like the framing around ‘point of peak engagement’ and I strongly agree. In order for this event to be a platform for development and growth, there needs to be something to catalyze the progress. So also coming to the event with a clear agenda/project in hand, will go a long way. My only concern is - do you have the capacity to follow up on the progress after the conference. In this regard, if communicated and coordinated early during the process, this is something that the WMF Learning and Evaluation team can definitely support and help with.
  • I’m really happy and appreciate the fact that you are having a Diversity & Inclusion team within the organizing team. I’m interested to see how you will tackle the gender imbalance that we see quite often in movement events.

Scholarship

  • 123 scholarships, but 250-300 participants. I understand there will be around 140 people including the organizing team and special invitees, but who will be the rest? Are those all expected to be locals and representatives of partner organizations?
  • Do you have any indications for such a turnout? My concern is that you are budgeting for a very large scale event, without indications that you can really ensure such a participation rate.

Risks

  • Great idea to have dedicated team members to make sure the program is designed in a way that welcomes newcomers and external stakeholders. This will make a big difference.
  • I really appreciate the thorough work you have done outlining the risks and challenges, and they way to mitigate those.

Budget

  • Pre-conference budget - do you expect all 153 to also attend the pre-conf day?
  • What will be done with the recordings? And how will you share and publish the live streaming to the wider community?
  • What will the Team meeting (before the conference) expense cover?
  • What is your Fundraising strategy? Are you going to hire a professional fundraiser to do that?
  • When it comes to swag, we ask to be environmentally mindful and we suggest only providing stickers and maybe one other item (like t-shirt or bag or folder or notebook). Please consider reducing this.
  • The discussion page indicates that there will also be registration fees charged, but I couldn’t find those on the proposal. If you do intend to charge registration fees, please add it as an estimated revenue.

This was a great proposal! Very thorough, focusing on the details needed and leaving no room for doubts. It is very clear that you spent a significant amount of time, thought and effort into writing the proposal, and planning the event. Thank you very much.

When you're able, please respond to the questions above and revise the proposal as needed. These revisions will be due by 28 February 2020, after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal.

Thank you again for your important role in supporting your community! Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 22:58, 21 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]

@CAlmog (WMF): Hi Chen, thanks for your encouraging comments and follow-up questions. Here follow our replies point-wise under each section;
Context
  • Thank you!
  • I do not have a definitive answer for that as now, but that is a very good question. It should have been a part of the Community Engagement Survey, nevertheless, we will make sure to include for the Program Needs Survey, which we plan to do post the grant-funding decision. However, from my experience with the community and interactions with other community members, a few challenges that have been consistent are; lack of sharing of learnt knowledge, experience and expertise, between community members and communities as whole. Even though there are community members who have a specific expertise, it is not always known to a newbie or a new organiser about the resource person. In addition, communities and affiliates in India now stand dispersed without any collaborative platform where such connections can happen. More specifics of these will be understood before planning the program.
  • Yes, especially considering the scale of the event, we have decided not to opt for institutes for accommodation and primary conference area. However, we will partner with such organisations in other areas, wherever necessary and possible.
Program
  • As it is evident from the proposal, one of the main priorities and as we consider the most important of all, is "capacity development" -- there are two main reasons for having a learning day before the conference. Firstly, learning day allows us to curate capacity building, in the areas most required. In the conference program, this may not completely flexible. Again, based on the Program Needs Survey, we will be prioritizing two to three days that are most required and will need extra time and space, which will be dealt during the learning day. Also, since a national conference in happening after 4 years, we are expecting that community would be eager to share a lot of things, experiences and learning. Though capacity development is a priority, we want to give good amount of time for storytelling and knowledge transfer. Having a learning day might help to reduce some clutter for the main conference program. We will working with the Community Development team at WMF to design this. With regards to the expected impact/outcomes, we will only be able to define them after we decide on what areas we would be dealing for the learning day, which will be based on the planned needs survey. However, we this as the key for cross-community connections. We are planning to do expertise and needs mapping of various communities and community members, and we expect all the scholarship recipients to take part in it, as a participant or a trainer or a facilitator.
  • Yes, follow-up is something which even we are apprehensive about and have been thinking of various way possible ways in which we do it. We will definitely reach out to WMF Learning and Evaluation team for support in this regard.
  • Thank you!
Scholarship
  • 123 scholarships + 20 organisers + 10 special invitees, which makes it a total of 153, who will be directly and completely supported from the conference budget. The rest 100-150 people will include WMF staff, CIS staff, volunteers, representatives from partner organisations and people who are at-large interested.
  • We do have a certain base for that calculation. Apart from 153 people who will be taken care of from this budget, WMF staff, CIS staff, volunteers, and representatives from partner organisations, will add upto a 50, which makes the total 203. The Indian community is huge and there are definitely a lot of many people than 150 scholarship recipients who would want to take part in the conference. This was even observed during 2016, there were at least 50 Wikimedians who attended the conference on their own expense. Considering the same, we assume at least 50 more would definitely be there, and if someone is a Wikimedia user with a certain basic criteria, or a from an allied organisation or group with significant demonstrated interest, we would like to waive-off/subsidise the registration fee for them, which is item B4 in the budget table. Now, above this we can't be sure of how will be attending, so the least to expect would be 250, and we would like to limit at 300, as we will not able to handle the proceedings more than that.
Risks
  • Yes, we are hopeful of it.
  • Thank you!
Budget
  • We expect all the scholarship recipients to attend 123, and organisers are needed. So expect 10 of the special invitees of 153, we expect rest others to attend the learning day.
  • We got a recommendation from a community member who attend WikidataCon last year, to use this platform/service (https://media.ccc.de/) for video streaming and recording for later use. If this works, we will be live streaming all the five conference rooms through this platform. All the recorded sessions will be uploaded to both WCommons and YouTbe (under CC license) with appropriate names and descriptions.
  • The team meeting budget will cover travel, food, accommodation, and other incidentals, for 15-20 members for a 2-day event.
  • No we will won't be hiring any specific fundraising expert, however, we will have a dedicated fundraising team, without community members having releivant experience. We have been talking with PDas (WMF) in this regard. Our strategy is initially reach out of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry's Indian Language Internet Alliance, get them onboard and then connect further via their contacts for potential sponsors.
  • We have reduced it to two items, and adjust the budget and the totals accordingly.
  • As mentioned in one of above points, we will be subsidising the registration fee for 50 registrations, and that is item B4 in the budget table. The registrations above that will be on no-profit and no loss basis. Since we are not sure of how many of these, we haven't added it to the table, as it would cancel out even a if a certain thing is assumed.
Thanks for review. Some of these questions, especially the ones related to program and scholarship, helped us to think about these things in detail and which will help the event. Please let me know if you have a more questions. Regards, KCVelaga (talk) 05:39, 28 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]