Grants talk:PEG/Wikimedia Ireland Community/Wiki Loves Monuments Ireland 2014

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC Members who oppose this grant request

1. MADe (talk) 12:00, 22 June 2014 (UTC) See comments
2. Tony (talk) 01:08, 28 June 2014 (UTC) Before I even read it: start date has already passed; measures of success are vague.

GAC Comments

Comments MADe

Nice to see activitity in Ireland!

What strikes me (I'm possibly not the only one) is the high management costs: 76% of the total project. I would urge you to compare this with GAC support for WLM in other countries. Even countries like South Africa, which have less experience with community volunteering, approach it very differently.

I don't oppose paying wages. But then I would expect a truly marvellous proposal. Which this proposal is not.

I would propose to reshape the proposal by going back to the core of the WLM. What do you want to achieve? Which local organisations will support you? Who will help with volunteering? I would only consider wages for the 2015 edition if this project goes well.

You can contact me for support with reshaping this bid (send private message). MADe (talk) 21:56, 19 June 2014 (UTC)

I also would like to second my concern about the wages cost. I'm not opposed to paying wages if a good case can be made that it's necessary, but I'm not sure that's been outlined specifically here. What I do approve of is going bilingual, not just because I love ga.wp, but because this will allow the project to get good buy in with cultural organisations and the like, which can be fiercely parochial, but who will also show a lot of goodwill if you go as Gaeilge. Craig Franklin (talk) 09:53, 20 June 2014 (UTC).

Similar concerns. Having co-organized WLM for several years, in my opinion the project management is too high. I know that this would help to organize a good contest, but I think that the community engagement should start earlier in the organization because the aim is not the contest itself, but the community engagement. --Ilario (talk) 11:36, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Yup, it awesome to see Irish activity around here. On the other hand, in the same line of my fellow GAC members, it inmediately called my attention what I consider to be an extremely high "Project Management Costs" (75,39% of the total grant request). I've organized at least two times this contest, and even thoug it requires time, meetings and coordination, I could hardly see how can it take up to 1 manager working 4 days a week (equal to two managers working two days a week) for 26 weeks (that's half a year's work or 6,5 months). Probably the most consuming effort is to build the momunents list, but that could be achivied through the collaboratino of the community of editors. You can read other WLM grant requests to get a flavour of what you might be aiming for, specially in your first time.--3BRBS (talk) 17:12, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you all for taking the time to read through our proposal and give us feedback. I hope to clarify the rationale for the management costs we are seeking. (Apologies in advance for the length of the comment!) As was stated in the grant proposal this is the first event organised by a newly constituted Wikimedia Ireland Community. At the moment the Community consists of eight active members working not only on the Wiki Loves Monuments event but on our strategy for the remainder of this year and beyond. Though we have over 300 editors listed as Irish Wikipedians every effort at reaching out to them has met with limited success. Essentially, we are building this Community from the ground up. Which is why we need dedicated project managers to ensure a successful event and a successful future for the Community.

The project managers funded to plan and carry out the Wiki Loves Monuments contest will become the core of the Wikimedia Ireland Community. The contacts that are made through this event are essential for the Community to be successful. Though we are reaching out to other volunteer groups to help with our endeavour, we do not have a large volunteer community to fall back on. With a successful launch of the Wikimedia Ireland Community through this event we will be able to create a vibrant volunteer community around Wikimedia Ireland.

What will the project managers do? There is much they are already doing. They meet weekly with the eight active members for an update on not only the Wiki Loves Monuments planning but on other aspects of Community growth including Edit-a-Thons and Editor engagement. The project managers have also been pursuing funding and support for the contest from other institutions including the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, the Heritage Council, and the Office of Public Works. They have reached out to Wikimedia UK for support and guidance as well as to local groups including Open Knowledge Ireland and Open Data Ireland for assistance with data mining and organisation for the monuments list. The planning of the launch event in August, which will also introduce the newly formed Wikimedia Ireland Community to the wider public, and the Awards Event in November is well under way. The project managers are in the process of contacting several potential sites, including several national monuments for both events. They have had meetings with members of the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht to gain access to the list of National Monuments and permission to use and post data previously under government control, opening up valuable data to the wider community. They have arranged to have several members attend "Train the Trainer" training in the UK this summer and plan to have a presence at Wikimania 2014 in London to further promote the new Community. We have edited the grant proposal to more specifically address the role of the Project Management team.

Just a note on how we determined the amount of the project management fees. According to PayScale [1] the median salary for a Project Manager in Dublin is €58,000. According to the Brightwater 2014 Salary Survey [2] the salary for an Events Manager is in the range of €40,000-€65,000. That would give a range of €20-€33 per hour. The funds we are requesting break down to just over €31 per hour. That assumes the managers are only working 16 hours a week when in reality by the end of the project they will have put in more hours than that. Sameichel (talk) 17:25, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Hey Sameichel, thanks for the clarification. My problem with this application are threefold:

1. After our comments you added a list of activities. In other WLM countries these have been done by volunteers. I believe that Ireland has a thriving volunteering scene and don't see the necessity to pay wages to get this done (have you checked grant proposals from other WLM organisers?);
2. As touched on in my previous comments. I would have expected much more from the project as, apparantly, the two future project managers have already been working on it. Just check the limited information on Commons page or own website, the limited information regarding goals or measures of success in the grant request, the lack of collaboration with other organisations, and simply the fact that this grant proposal comes much too late;
3. Lastly, for 'corporate governance' reasons, I would like to give the community more control on the selection of the two people that will recieve a wages of 25.800€ (!). This is not possible anymore.

I hope you can understand my issues with your proposal. MADe (talk) 12:00, 22 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi MADe, thanks for your feedback. I respect that you have concerns regarding the management costs and I can understand those concerns from your point of view...we’re not an organised chapter yet with a proven track record and you don’t know us. But you also don’t know the situation here in Ireland like we do. I’ll address your three concerns as succinctly as possible:

1. The list I created was to clarify the tasks we feel the project managers have to complete in order to have a successful event and to justify the cost of paying them for that service. We have attempted to reach out to the wider community for volunteers. We posted several messages to an old Wikimedia Ireland mailing list, we posted a geonotice on Wikipedia, and we put out a call for volunteers on Twitter. All of this we did more than a month ago and we received a very poor response. We need this project to be a huge success to generate excitement in the press and in the wider community so we can recruit more volunteers for future projects. This is why we need paid project managers. (Of course I looked at other WLM proposals, including one for WM US-DC for which funds were granted for a project manager. I believe in the discussion for that grant it was argued that the manager should receive more funds than what was requested. There is a precedence for it)
2. Of course the project management team has begun working on it...there’s a lot to be done. I can understand your concern with the limited goals we have set. As this is our first project it’s hard to quantify those goals. Most of the work we have been doing is finding partners, getting permission to use the government’s monument list and trying to recruit volunteers. Since we only really started working on this in mid-May, I think we have gotten a lot done.
3. We discussed, as a group, the project management fees. Though our group is small (currently 8 members), it was agreed by everyone in the group that the two who were doing the bulk of the leg work for the project (meetings, phone calls, emails, recruitment) should be compensated. It was not a unilateral decision. It was made by the group that exists at the moment.

I hope this helps you to understand where we are coming from. At the beginning of this process you offered support in reshaping this bid...is that offer still available? Sameichel (talk) 11:32, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi Sameichel and MADe. Hope you won't mind my intervention here but I thought of giving a suggestion to Sameichel. Sameichel, I'm the lead organiser of WLM Pakistan and recently, we able to get our grant request approved from GAC and WMF for which we're very grateful. I agree that when you introduce something new, response from local community is sometimes poor but it doesn't mean you start hiring people in order to run your project. This is your first time so you shouldn't take a risk asking for such a huge amount for hiring people. Lets hope for good but who knows the outcome of WLM Ireland? What if you fail to achieve your target at the end? For instance, we're only three working to organise WLM in Pakistan. In the past, even we too requested many times our local Wikipedia community members to help us in expanding the lists on-wiki but nobody ever gave positive response so we decided to take all the burden on our shoulders and somehow we managed to prepare long lists of sites to be photographed. Anyways, recently, we decided to do small scale edit-a-thon where precipitants will be asked to start articles of sites and in return, the top 3 contributors will be given Wikipedia merchandise such as t-shirt etc. I suggest you to do something like this and I hope your community members will definitely respond positively. Good luck! --Saqib (talk) 15:57, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

Secondly, on this grant request page, you mentioned second contact name "Sabina Bonnici". What's their username? User:Sabbon? You both seems to be recently registered so I'm wondering whether you both can be trusted enough to receive grant funds. --Saqib (talk) 16:11, 24 June 2014 (UTC)

I read your explanation and this seems to be one of the moments that all of us that have organized events, and particularly on our first time, have lived through. Believe me, Ireland is not alone in many of the problems you describe. Said this, I think you might need to make a choice, and, supporting what I consider wise words from Saqib, you will either, need to "take all the burden on our shoulders and somehow [...] manage to prepare long lists of sites to be photographed", or start small, proove that you can do fine, and then grow, this would be from my point of view, to request a minimal amount of money that will help you to put the contest togheter and then checking after the results what is the next step to take. Sorry if I sound rough, but at its present state, I honestly believe that the managing costs are simply too high.--3BRBS (talk) 04:52, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, I think that you made a good decisition about this. Anyways, I was cecking it again and the total sum of the project needs to be updated :]

Comments 3BRBS

Yup me again! Hope to welcome you well! I have some minor questions about items 9, 10 and 13.

Item 9: Awards Ceremony. I believe that as stated it is very important to look for a partner and see if they can offer, as support a place to held the ceremony, so no rental for the venue is needed. It is also possible to estimate separate the costs of the refreshments and the audio/visual equipment, to get an idea what goes for the venue rental if you cannot find a partner?

Item 10: Jury Compensation. I might be lost here, and if I am, please correct me, but I've seen fairly low cost airplane tickets within europe in alternative airplane companies. Taking this into consideration, what are you considering under "Compensation and travel costs for jurors"? Could you separte both costs to be able to see how much goes to "compensation" and how much to "travel costs"?

Item 13: Photo Shoot. Could you tell me what is the idea behind the photo shoot? and/or which is the purpose of the photo shoot?

I love the idea of using the tool for "Gaeilge", fairly inexpensive, and I believe with good return in terms of outreach for you guys! Congrats!!!--3BRBS (talk) 17:21, 20 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments and encouragement!! We are definitely dedicated to the Gaeilge translation and bringing the Gaelgoir (Irish speaking) community into the process. To address your questions:

Item 9: Awards Ceremony. I definitely agree that we should seek a partner to donate a place for the ceremony. That is something that the management team is actively working on. They are in talks with the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht as well as the Office of Public Works which handle the care of most of the National Monuments in Dublin to donate a suitable venue. There is also the possibility of approaching a small art gallery that would be willing to donate their space for the publicity we can generate. If we can secure either of those options then the cost of the Awards Ceremony would greatly decrease. We requested the funds just in case we had to pay market price for a venue in Dublin.

Item 10: Jury Compensation. Almost all travel around Ireland is done by train or bus. We based our transportation costs on taking the train. The travel/accommodation budget for each juror is €250. This includes train ticket (at the high end €75), 1 night hotel in Dublin (average €130-€140), and €50 for food/drinks. We then allocated €150 compensation for each juror. I can divide the two items on the budget table if you think that's advisable.

Item 13: Photo Shoot. This one is probably the more difficult one to explain. In order to generate press we felt we would need some really quality photos to accompany our press releases. This of course was before we gained provisional support of the Department of Arts, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht and the Heritage Council. The probability that a minister form the Irish Oireachtas (Parliament) will attend our launch and awards events could make this line item unnecessary.

Please let me know if you have any further questions or concerns Sameichel (talk) 17:25, 21 June 2014 (UTC)

Hi, thank for your replies and yes, I've more questions.

Item 9: About this one I think it got peniding this portion: It is also possible to estimate separate the costs of the refreshments and the audio/visual equipment, to get an idea what goes for the venue rental if you cannot find a partner?

Item 10: Thanks for separating the costs for me, and yes again... I think it would be helpfull to create to separate items here, I believe. Anyways, after you explanation I think the costs are too high for many reasons. It seems that every jury is not coming from Dublin, eventhough Dublin is the most populated city in Ireland, I believe it could be presumable then, that at least one of the three juror (if not more) will already be in Dublin for the Jury ceremony, and therefore would not need transportation or accomodation. You probably don't know where the jurors are coming from yet, but the costs tend to seem over estimated here. I also don't understand what does the "compensation" stands for, it's some sort of salary? or is a fee to pay for day costs? If the latter, why pay for the food and drinks then? Also, I believe that with some coordination, a trip and a juror ceremony could be held in the same day, maybe I'm on the edge here, but you might be able to save €420. Overall, if this item could be narrowed down, making an estimate from where the jurors might come, lowering the costs according to that, and expanding the chances of an alternative coordination for the ceremony, I believe it could go on.

Item 11: Ok, I get it. I think you should get your photos from Wikimedia Commons, and not pay for this one. I made a quick browse in the category in Commons, and found at least 8 featured and quality images of buildings, and there are others really good out there, after a couple of clicks found a good one of "Maynooth St. Patrick's College" as an example [3].--3BRBS (talk) 04:33, 25 June 2014 (UTC) As of removed from the grant request --3BRBS (talk) 17:53, 27 June 2014 (UTC)

Hey 3BRBS, sorry it took me so long to respond to your questions. There has been a lot of juggling going on here! We have removed the photo shoot line and the jury compensation so the only thing left is a break down of the costs for the events.To determine our venue costs we spoke with a few event planners who gave us estimates of costs based on several different types of venues. Our vision for the launch is to have it at a National Monument site. If we have to pay to rent the venue the cost would be between 300-500. Most sites would not have AV equipment on hand so we would have to rent that at a cost of 150-200. If we offered refreshments we estimated the cost for 30 people would be 100. For the awards ceremony we wanted it to be an art exhibition. We would like to display the images in a Dublin gallery for a week prior to the ceremony. For a larger gallery the price would be between 800-1000 depending on whether we did a day/night event. Most of these venues would have audio visual equipment which is included in the price. If we went with a smaller gallery the cost of the venue would be smaller, 500-900 but many smaller venue would not have AV so we would have the additional costs of 150-200 for that. We would expect a higher turnout for the awards ceremony so refreshments for 70 people would cost 200-300 (some venues would require we use their in house service which would increase the cost). We initially thought we might serve food as well, but we’ve ruled that out.

We are currently working with contacts in the Office Public Works to get the site free of charge, meaning we would only have AV and refreshment costs for the launch event. For the Awards Ceremony we are waiting on quotes for several smaller galleries in Dublin. I don’t anticipate us being able to get that venue at no cost, but we can significantly lower our budget for that event. I have adjusted the budget lines to reflect this change. 46.7.214.34 11:56, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi Sameichel, thanks for your responses, and good luck with the execution of the project, I'm glad it got approved!--3BRBS (talk) 03:12, 16 July 2014 (UTC)

Comments by ProtoplasmaKid

Hi friends of Wikimedia Ireland community! Good luck in Wiki Loves Monuments. I read all your grant proposal and all the answers you made to my GAC colleagues. My general concern is about you are choosing get money rather than search local support. This is not desirable for community that begins. It will be much better for you in the long run to try to initiate partnerships with these institutions. This will give you greater institutional confidence and maturity to handle issues that may not necessarily solve with money. This is my comments:

• 6. Postage. The people need to understand that WLM is a highly depending volunteer and a good faith initiative. Is desirable that the people receive the prizes in their doors, but you can choose either people assume their own shipping costs (you can explain that in the call for the contest) or make some logistical somehow that people can pickup their prizes in Dublin. In the case of Mexico, what we did was that close friends of the winners received the award in the capital and then made ​​them come to winners. Two participants traveled to Mexico City just to pick up their awards with their own funds. You could also try this.
• 8 and 9. About the costs named "Catering". Do you attempt previously to get some public, educational or governmental venue for the ceremonies? Can you split in your proposal the cost of each item (venue rental, refreshments, audio/visual equipment)? I strongly recommend search options before disburse this amount of money useful for other things.
• 10. In my point of view, is not advisable to pay for the activity of the jury. What do you mean by "compensation"?.

Regards, --ProtoplasmaKid (WM-MX) (talk) 16:44, 4 July 2014 (UTC)

Hi ProtoplasmaKid. Thank you for your feedback. To address your questions:

• 6 Postage-I understand what you mean about prizes being delivered. While we would expect the winners to attend the awards ceremony in Dublin, that just may not be possible for everyone. We wanted to have funds in place as a contingency. The postage funds will also be used to send flyers promoting the event to organisation around the country. While it would be preferable to have a large volunteer community who would be able to hand deliver the flyers, that is not something we have at the moment.
• 8 and 9 Catering-We are working the The Office of Public Works to get a venue at no cost for the launch event. For the awards ceremony we are in contact with a few small galleries, but we don't anticipate getting that venue at no cost. I have adjusted the total cost of the Awards Ceremony and split the cost into venue rental, refreshments, AV rental.
• 10 Jury Compensation-This item has been removed from the budget.

Please let me know if you have any further questions. 46.7.214.34 11:56, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

WMF Comments

Thank you Sameichel, for your engagement with the GAC. Many thanks to the GAC for their time and sound advice on this grant request. While we are excited about the possibility of more activity in Ireland, we cannot accept this proposal as it stands due to the reasons raised above.

We encourage the Wikimedia Ireland community to think about reworking the proposal, eliminating the budget for project management and the photoshoot. We are happy to support volunteer outreach activities, prizes, and event costs. Please let us know if you have any questions. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:40, 25 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your feedback and support Alex. I have adjusted the grant, removing the management and photo shoot items.

Additional WMF comments

Thank you for removing the project management and professional photo line items. We have a few remaining comments/questions and would appreciate your response:

• Please respond to the remaining GAC questions above, specifically from 3BRBS.
• Please update the start date of the project to a date in the future. We do not fund retrospective projects except in unusual circumstances.
• What kind of support do you have for this project from the Irish Wikimedia community? There does not seem to be much activity on the WLM community page.
• Considering the project managers seem to be relatively new wiki project contributors, we will also want evidence that some experienced editors, including veteran Commons contributors and at least one experienced Gaelic editor (if you plan to keep this component), are involved.
• We are similarly concerned with the idea of compensating jury members. We are fine with supporting their domestic travel to attend the award ceremony, but hope that the Irish community can find jury members who are excited about the project and will volunteer their time. If you cannot find jury members who will participate for free, please let us know and we can connect you with international members of the Wikimedia community who can participate.
• While we realize this is the first time Ireland will be hosting WLM and therefore it is difficult to set quantitative measures of success, you can get a good idea of baselines from this WLM evaluation report. There are additional resources for photo competitions here. We encourage you to come up with metrics based on these resources. Please note your project will not be considered a failure if the metrics are not met! If you have questions about appropriate measures of success, please let us know and we can set up a time to discuss.
• We encourage you to explore finding sponsors/partnerships for the venue!
• In terms of printing the winning images, I would suggest also looking into foamcore and gatorboard mounting options. They are just as nice as canvas printing, but much less expensive.

Please let us know if you have any questions on the above. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:08, 2 July 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Alex for your assistance and patience. Here are the changes I have made:

• The start date has been amended to 1 August 2014
• To address your question on support: Support from the Wikimedia community in Ireland has been lackluster. We’ve put out notifications on the mailing lists, several geonotices, and calls for support on social media. At the moment our core team is taking on the bulk of the planning and implementation for this event. With a successful Wiki Loves Monuments event would should be able to grow our Wikimedia community.
• The members of our core team are:

1 Tóraí

2 Sabina Bonnici

3 Shannon Eichelberger

4 Eugene Eichelberger

5 RashersTierney

6 Rebecca O'Neill

7 Alison Cassidy

Eugene, Oliver, and Alison are all experienced editors. Alison is also our Gaelic Editor. You can find more information on our group page: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Ireland_Community

• We have removed the budget line for Jury Compensation
• After perusing the evaluation and goal links you provided we have listed specific numeric goals for the contest
• As I said in comments above, we are working with the Office of Public Works to obtain a venue, free of charge, for our launch event. The venue for the Awards Ceremony is less likely to be free of charge, but we have made changes to the content of that event and were able to lower the budget, as you will see reflected in the budget table.
• We will go with your suggestion to have the images printed on foamcore which significantly lowers the cost. This change is also reflected in the budget table.

Again, thank you for your guidance and patience. Please let me know if I can provide any additional information. 46.7.214.34 11:56, 6 July 2014 (UTC)

Request approved

Thank you User:Sameichel for your work on this grant request and to the GAC for their helpful guidance. We are excited to support the Irish community and believe the revised proposal is a solid starting point for activities in Ireland. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 22:22, 7 July 2014 (UTC)