Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/1st International Conference on Education, Wikimedia and Digital Cultures

Endorsements

•  Strong support. The proposal was shared in the Brazilian Wikimedia social channels and there is a lot of interest from our Wiki Education community. It is a very strong point that this event is being co-organized with the University of La Plata, as the benefits from this partnership as laid out in the proposal are great. Congratulations to WMAR! --Joalpe (talk) 11:50, 8 February 2023 (UTC)

WMF review and feedback

Hi @Anna Torres (WMAR), @Luisina Ferrante (WMAR), @Florencia Guastavino (WMAR) and @Patricio.lorente,

Thank you very much for submitting this proposal. It was well presented and the work and thought you have put into this is evident.

I specifically admire the way you are co-organizing with the University of la Plata as your academic partners. We are indeed looking to see more of such outreach efforts in movement projects and events. This collaborative approach and shared ownership is the strongest demonstration of your goals and impact for this conference.

I have reviewed your proposal and had a few question:

Did you targeted the survey mainly to local/regional education contributors, or was it more broadly distributed?

• Our audience has been local, regional and global. There are more responses at the local and regional level, less at the global level, but the survey was shared in Spanish and English.

if you do not require any minimum wiki skills (which is ok by itself), how will you determine who is eligible or a high priority to attend the conference and to receive a scholarship?

• There will be a call for papers and/or projects and educational experiences. An academic committee composed of specialists both from the movement and outside the movement will select the speakers and the recipients of the scholarships. The academic committee is in the process of being formed and one of its first tasks will be to put together the criteria for selection: the people who want to receive a scholarship must present a written paper, project or experience, according to the criteria defined by the committee.There will be no scholarships for those who only want to participate as listeners.

As an addition to the outreach strategies, you will also be able to use Wikimedia Foundation's social media channels that can also target specific communities and languages.

• Yes, we would like you to join us in spreading the word.

I am happy to hear that you have secured the venue as in-kind. This is great and also demonstrate the level of connections you have.

• Thanks for your comments! The Universidad Nacional de la Plata is a great ally!

There is no need to budget for medical insurance as all volunteers and participants *traveling outside their home country*, are covered by the foundation's health insurance. Before the conference you will be provided with clear instructions and documentation needed to activate the insurance if needed.

• We did not know this! Thank you for informing us, we will modify the budget accordingly.

I'm wondering if local travel and meals will be sufficient as a partial scholarship. I assume the accommodation will be the more significant cost. Have you tentatively checked with potential participants? From you experience in the local community, do you think it will be attractive enough for participants given the costs?

• In our experience, the community that participates as a panelist or is selected with a half scholarship will appreciate having food and travel covered. In Argentina, academic congresses generally do not cover these costs, nor do they guarantee meals for all participants. In addition, the selected hotel has friendly prices in case someone decides to stay, or the participants can also choose other forms of accommodation, the city of La Plata and its surroundings has an accessible economic offer being a university city.

I really like the idea of having your partners represented on the scholarship committee.

• Thank you! At WMAR we consider our partners part of the movement, so we involve them equally in all phases of the process.

Can you please clarify if a presentation submission will be a requirement for a scholarship? As I do understand the rational behind it (if it is the case), our experience shows that it's shouldn't necessarily be an eligibility criteria. There are many people who can be excellent contributors and very engaged participants to the conference, but doesn't necessarily have the desired presentation skills. And for that reason, I do not think a submission should be forced in order to be eligible for a scholarship.

• As explained in the second question, any person applying for a scholarship must present a paper, project or experience, according to the criteria defined in advance by the committee. ​​As it has an educational and academic framework, it is expected that people who want to participate as scholarship holders will contribute to the congress with presentations and experiences that are part of the congress program. All the people who want to come and participate not as panelists, but as assistants, can do it, the congress is public and free, but they will have to cover their travel and accommodation costs.

So I understand you will have a total of 50 scholarship recipients + organizing team and WMF staff. Will all the rest be self funded participants? Do you expect such a turnout? (referring to the 200 total participants).

• Yes, and we believe that most of the attendees will be from Argentina, especially from the province of Buenos Aires, where the UNLP is the main public university. As it is a free congress, this does not generate any cost in attendance and participation. Congresses in Argentina have this dynamic and the faculty, academia and students are used to these proposals.

It's great to hear that you were able to secure the 'frozen costs'. If your request will be approved, and according to our timeline for approvals, I do not foreseen any challenges with funds getting your way before June (probably much earlier).

• Thank you so much!

I find your learning points very interesting. How will you measure those? How will you evaluate the impact of this conference given the things you would like to learn?

• Specifically we want to learn three things: a) change of perception of academia in the use of Wikimedia projects. For this we will interact before, during and after the event to analyze the positions of academics and how it has changed after the conference. This can be done through ex ante & post conference surveys, focus group or post conference interviews. b) new alliances. We want to promote a proposal with at least 50% of new participants to promote the incorporation of new voices to the Wikimedia Movement. For this we will subsequently measure the number of initiatives that are born as a result of the congress both locally and regionally. c) regional common agenda. Education programs are central to all communities at the regional level. We hope that this congress can align our agendas in initiatives with academic spaces at the regional level.

Metrics - I believe you will have more than 50 first-time participants in a Wikimedia movement event given the target audience, but that's a good number to start with.

• We are going to measure it through registration and then we will survey all the attendees and all the participants at the tables whether they have been scholarship recipients or not.

Budget: Can you clarify why you need 45 double rooms if you have 50 scholarship recipients? I guess some of it is for the organizing team? anyone else?

• The rooms are meant for scholarship recipients, Wikimedia Argentina staff, our Board of Trustees, Wikimedia Foundation staff, and we blocked some rooms in case attendees who receive half scholarship want to stay there and pay the cost themselves.

Who will do all the travel booking? Don't you want to consider having a travel agency to do that? That can be a very tedious task for volunteers.I wonder if a one part time events coordinator will be enough. Do you have more organizing capacity? will you have other paid staff with roles in the organizing team? If not, I am a bit worried about the your capacity

• Wikimedia Argentina has been working for years with a travel agency that accompanies us in all the conferences we have organized locally. We will also incorporate a person who will be in charge of the logistics and organization of the event. In addition, the Wikimedia Argentina team and the team from la Universidad Nacional de la Plata will have defined roles before, during and after the event, so that everything goes as expected. We have worked in this way before with great results.

Do you plan to have any kind of social events? This is not a 'must have' but I do want to point it out in case you just forgot to budget for it.

• There is a cultural and social activity organized by the Universidad Nacional de La Plata specifically for the scholarship recipients, and the dinner that night is included in the budget.

Thank you very much for a great proposal. Clear and to the point. I think that the last thing that remain unclear to me is the scope of the event. I remember in early conversations we had, you said that you would like it to be not a traditional Wiki Education event, but to be more focused on your local needs, challenges and goals. But this was not pointed out clearly enough if it is still the case. Will it be more of an international Education event, or will it focus on Argentina's Education and Academia perspective? It would be great if you could make this clearer. What is the main focus? What is your vision? What are you hoping to achieve on the local level or on the international level?

• It will be a local event with a regional and global perspective. It is an event that contemplates having participants belonging to the Argentinean educational system, academia, the student movement and Wikimedia. The scholarship budget is to bring participants from the region and some people globally, while the half scholarships are designed to cover the mobility of people in Argentina; participation is open to the educational community, but we hope that most of them will be people from Argentina linked to the educational issues addressed by the congress.The main objective of the congress is to promote a space for dialogue and cooperation between the educational community, academia and the Wikimedia projects, in Spanish. We want to promote Wikimedia projects as valid partners within academic spaces, where we hope not only to modify how and in what way the projects are perceived, but also to incorporate new alliances and voices to the Wikimedia movement to ensure its future sustainability.

looking forward to hearing from you. CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 22:51, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

• Thanks for all your questions!Anna Torres (WMAR) (talk) 20:03, 2 March 2023 (UTC)