Grants talk:Conference/Wikimedians of the Caribbean User Group / The Wiki Caribean Forum

WMF Feedback[edit]

Responses here represent discussion by the Wiki Caribbean Working group. Shanluan (talk)

Thank you for submitting this grant proposal! We are happy and excited for the opportunity to collaborate again and take part in your efforts to increase participation and development of the wiki Caribbean community.

I enjoyed reading your proposal and I think that an online conference for the Caribbean community makes a lot of sense and can bring much more visibility, contributors and quality content to the movement. Although these are hard times to convene as a community, they also provide us with a unique opportunity to focus more heavily on local challenges. So we thank you for leading community efforts and being creative and initiative! I especially liked your approach for inclusion by focusing on translation, interpretation and accessibility.

I reviewed your proposal and had some questions and comments to share.

Scope of the event -

My main challenge with the proposal is the scope of the event. Among others, as part of the event goals you mentioned the following: WikiData, Wikipedia, Wiki Commons as part of the train the trainers program; Adding information on the Caribbean during COVID19, public health, and meteorology to create more content; Introductions to wider community and attracting local and regional Caribbean participation as part of the engagement efforts; Strategic discussions and the future of the Caribbean community; Education, Pedagogical measurement, Wiki Dashboards, Teaching WikiCode.

Unfortunately, those are way too many focus areas. In general, and especially for a remote event. For the event to be successful and impactful, I strongly encourage you to scope down the topics you would like to address. I suggest you would identify and prioritize the most relevant topics that will get you closer to the impact you are trying to achieve now. This does not mean you won't be able to tackle others in future activities, but as a relatively new affiliate, we want to be mindful of your capacity and growth potential. I think a few possible framing suitable to the stage you are at as a community might be (2 focus areas for now will be ideal): - Capacity and skill building (including train the trainers) - Outreach and welcoming newcomers - Sharing knowledge and best practices within the community (GLAM, Education, Gender gap etc). - Strategic discussions (movement strategy; the future of the Wiki Caribbean community; how to implement strategy etc) - Editathon or other formats of content creation to address local knowledge gaps.

Another way to go about it can be to focus on 2-3 tracks or goals, and to design smaller satellite events (remote or in person) before or after the conference. For example, if you would like to focus on outreach and welcoming newcomers, you can host an introduction to wiki meetup a few weeks before the conference so people would know what to expect, and will already be relatively familiar with the ‘wiki language’ and your top projects. Same for strategy discussions. It’s very hard to conduct such discussions with a large crowd so I would actually recommend you start with smaller well facilitated group discussions. We have special funding programs for local strategy meetups and our strategy team will be happy to help and think about the best way for your community to discuss. Another option is to have a very hands on, active learning conference with training sessions and working groups focusing on skills building and content creation. On a pre-conference meetup or online discussion the community can prioritize the main areas for improvement to work on at the event.

Each one of those ideas require a different format, platform and facilitation. Please go back and identify your key focus areas and revise your proposal accordingly.

Thank you for these suggestions. After discussion, members of the working group would like the focus of the conference be scaled down to primarily outreach and capacity building. We want to continue our efforts to connect with current and potential Wikimedians in the Caribbean and grow the Wikimedia communities we had begun in our prior year of activity. We hope this conference forum will continue our outreach and capcity building efforts in the Caribbean and in participation with the partners and especially universities on several islands where we already have either held events or have developed organizational relationships.

We ambitiously hoped to also include movement strategy discussions in the conference, but in consideration of your advice are opting to drastically scale plans down. As such, we would like to have a smaller local strategy meetup event leading up to the main conference featuring movement strategy discussion.

Please note that these updates are reflected in the grant proposal application as requested. Shanluan (talk)

A few other comments and questions around the scope of the event:

4 days for a remote event seems a bit long, many participants have trouble staring at a screen for that amount of time and drop out mid way through. Do you have thoughts or plans for addressing that / making it easier?

We plan to use the attraction of having a keynote speaker for each day to make it easier to keep the attention of the audience. Shanluan (talk)

Also, if the event starts on the 19th but the opening session is on the 20th, what happens on the 19th? Can you please clarify?

We plan to have a learning day for new editors on the 19th modeled after other Wikimedia conferences like WIkimania.Shanluan (talk)

I am not clear on the number of participants you would like to host. Is it 50-80, or 500?

50-80 (this has been updated in the grant proposal). Shanluan (talk)

Welcoming Newcomers -

Newcomers make up 50% of the event, but this has a main stated focus on “train the trainers”. Will you have multiple simultaneous tracks?

Much like an in person conference, we plan to have rooms with plenary sessions. Since the event is remote, we don’t plan to have more than 3 rooms with tracks of interest happening at once. We plan to keep the main room open for keynote speakers and as a point of entrance for latecomers or those newly entering the conference forum before we send them to the appropriate track.Shanluan (talk)

What do ½ the participants do during the more advanced sessions such as the discussions on movement strategy? Etc.

Similar to an in person conference, we will reserve a room for items of interest for newer editors. During the summer, Wikimedians of the Caribbean partnered with AfroCROWD for a Juneteenth conference on Civil Rights which was attended by approximately 50% new editors and 50% experienced editors and this method worked well over the weekend long event.Shanluan (talk)

For the event to be engaging and impactful for newcomers, you would have to intentionally design the program to welcome newcomers and accommodate different levels of experience.

How would you welcome and support newcomers at the event?

We plan to hold a learning day ahead of the conference opener on May 19th that is specifically tailored to newcomers. Throughout the event, we will reserve a Zoom room for those wanting to learn how to edit and we will have Wiki coaches (experienced volunteer Wikimedians) available for those participants much like the Juneteenth edit-a-thon which was mentioned earlier. Shanluan (talk)

How do you plan to ‘introduce them to the wider community’?

Our keynotes, which will be held in the main Zoom room of the conference will bring the larger community together where, as we did during the Wiki Caribbean remote Festival in September, we will have representatives of different projects cameo to talk briefly about their projects and opportunities to join them. This worked very well during the festival and opened opportunities for engagement beyond the event, widening participation in the larger movement.Shanluan (talk)

Logistical questions -

Engagement survey - is it the survey you conducted a year ago? If not- when and how did you send the survey? Were there any event specific/remote participation questions in it?

The survey was conducted in November, so we believe that since it has been less than a year that the information is still relevant. While the survey was not specifically remote focused, we believe the information can be used with remote participation in mind.Shanluan (talk)

CRM platform - I'm interested to know what is the purpose of using a CRM system. What are you trying to accomplish? I’m asking because there are some privacy concerns here. We find it problematic to onboard newcomers with a platform that violates our privacy and free knowledge values and goes against community norms. But if there are other reasons I haven’t thought about, I’ll be happy to know and to think it through with you. If it’s for tracking members, or for registration, we have other non-violating solutions I can share.

In any case, please make sure your privacy statement is clear around what you are doing with participant data and if you are keeping it after the event in a CRM.

We plan to use a voluntary mailing list instead and this has been updated in the grant proposal. We also plan to use Dashboard and on-wiki sign up where appropriate. We plan, none the less to be sure our privacy statement is clear around what we are doing with the participant data. Shanluan (talk)

How will scholarship recipients be selected? Meaning what will be the criteria and process you will follow. How will you choose them? I encourage you to think about criteria that take diversity and inclusion into consideration.

A focus of the conference is to expand knowledge of the Wikimedia Movement to interested participants within the Caribbean. In doing so it also brings underrepresented groups in the global south in the movement and fosters new or nascent groups. Diversity and inclusion are a main thrust of the user group and we aim to drive participation in specific geographies and underrepresented groups. Scholarships will focus on both need and diversity in representation and inclusion. We also along with gender, race/ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, and culture, but we also plan to consider technological access, general access and disability in our scholarship application.Shanluan (talk)

Friendly Space Policy - please make sure to adapt some additional attention to privacy / friendly space for remote events. You can take a look at the Celtic Knot privacy policy for a good example of how to approach this from a remote event perspective.

We plan to adopt the Celtic Knot privacy policy. (Please note the update in the grant application).Shanluan (talk)

It’s great to see many team members involved! But just to make sure - do you have the capacity for all the post-event documentation and communication you mentioned?

As experienced technical writers, communications specialists, and non-profit leaders (and Wikipedians!), we have the capacity within the core team to do this. We also plan to use the planning process to expand our pool of skilled participants and build capacity within the group.Shanluan (talk)

Just a note regarding the WMF liaison - this should be someone from the organizing committee to be the point of contact for the WMF program officer. I assume User:Shanluan maybe?

Yes. Shanluan, is lead organizer/ point of contact.Shanluan (talk)

Translation and Interpretation - this is really great! We appreciate you thinking about the wider sense of accessibility and inclusion to support more non-english speaking communities and we would be happy to experiment with this also. Can you please tell us more about your thoughts on how to facilitate this during a live streaming?

As modeled in a previous remote conference with our partner, AfroCROWD, we plan to use separate Zoom Channels depending on the language participants request.Shanluan (talk)

Budget -

In terms of eligibility for a grant, because you are a new grantee and given the size of the funding request, we ask that you provide confirmation of an eligible sponsor who can accept grant funds on your behalf.

We are working with a group and are sending along this information.Shanluan (talk)

Can you please clarify why you need 5 kits? For who?

We plan to work with 5 Universities on 5 separate islands (Puerto Rico, Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica, the Bahamas, and newly the Barbados) and one in the United States, New York University. The kits would be for each University. We want to work with professors and students we have connected with on these islands in the past to gain a greater perspective of their island.Shanluan (talk)

I’m interested to know how you intend to use VR goggles, VR cameras and Cardboard VR goggles for an online event? How can you include all participants in this?

In any case, for equipment to facilitate one time remote events (and also for in-person) we ask it to be a rental.

We plan to use the VR cameras and Google Cardboard VR goggles to 360 degree images from the islands to enable a more 3 dimensional live learning experience for the participants of the conference and those who may watch recordings of the conference later. It also opens up wider opportunities for innovation in a remote setting. These can certainly be rentals. Shanluan (talk)

Who would be the speakers that will require an honorarium?

We plan to have 4 keynote speakers from the academic community especially, though not exclusively. For an example of past speakers, Rubadiri Victor was our Keynote speaker at the Wiki Caribbean Festival in September.Shanluan (talk)

What kind of Web streaming producer will you use and what is the purpose? Is it only for the remote event? From our previous experience, a Web streaming service is usually around 100-150 USD per hour, and the $10,000 quota is above the max high end. Can you please share the detailed quota?

The original quote was for a Web streaming professional servicer who would handle streaming both on the ground at the various locations and handle the quality of streaming over all. We have decided to drop this, and use Zoom as our streaming tool, but we would still need to have someone dedicated to ensuring participants go to the right rooms and the quality of the feed is handled well. We have noticed that the WIkimedia Foundation uses such people in larger scale planning discussions (the 2030 Transition Design meetings had such a person who did impressive work). Can we look into having the help of the Foundation for this item? (Please also note the update in the grant proposal).Shanluan (talk)

Planning and production help is not a part of the producer work? If not, what are they producing?

Please note that the event production help and the video producer represent different roles. We plan to create quality videos from the event for use by the larger community and for ongoing educational and informational use during and beyond the forum conference. Event production refers to planning, organization and administration of the event itself.Shanluan (talk)

I appreciate your efforts on in-kind donations! Through those you can generate long term partnerships and collaborations and that is a major catalyst for sustainability.

Thank you!Shanluan (talk)

To conclude, it seems like you have many good ideas, initiatives and motivation! And I really look forward to working with you and seeing how can you facilitate the best platform for community development. But the main concern is that when an event is not well defined, it can really harm the potential impact. So if we want to maximize the benefits for both the community and also for all individual participants, we need to scale down a bit and to start smaller. There is no limit to the potential events and activities you can lead, so I recommend to plan ahead and to do it step by step.

We have taken this advice, which as you can see is reflected in the marked cost drop of the conference and updates to suggested areas of the grant proposal. Thank you for this advice. Shanluan (talk)

Please reach out if you have questions or concerns. Thank you again for engaging in this process with us and for taking the time and efforts to write this detailed proposal! Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 01:13, 17 October 2020 (UTC)[reply]