Grants talk:TPS/Sky Harbor/Open Source Bridge 2017
Request not funded[edit]
Dear Sky Harbor,
Thank you for submitting this request. As you know, I have expressed some concerns about continued funding of your requests. Since you have referenced the late reporting as a source of concern, I want to clarify that this is not the primary reason for my concern. My primary concern is about impact relative to cost of international travel. In other words, if I were fully confident that the impact was very high, the late reporting would be a relatively minor concern. This is so important to communicate, because we are primarily after general effectiveness and accountability, not after administrative perfection.
In making another review of your previous requests around this particular event, Open Source Bridge, here is what I notice:
- In the first year of participation, in 2013, you say on your report talkpage that only 2-3 participants attended. Aside from the low participation itself, it concerns me that you did not practice proactive transparency about the concerning lack of attendance. Instead, you revealed it only in response to a direct question from Siko. I would wish for it to be true that you would want to use your report to reflect on low participation or low impact, questioning whether continued participation makes sense and brainstorming about what you might be able to do to increase the impact of your presence. This kind of effort to learn from failure is very valuable. It is an indication that you take seriously the opportunity to travel to represent the Wikimedia movement, and that you want to extract valuable lessons learned by reflecting when your impact is less than might have been desired.
- In 2014, you applied again and when you were declined, you protested the committee's decision, citing as one of your reasons that you were honest about the low attendance at your talk in 2013, rather than falsely reporting higher attendance. That also concerns me very much, because it undermines my confidence that truthful reporting is a given for you. It also undermines my confidence that your main aim is impact. I would have preferred that your appeal focused entirely on ideas you had about how to increase and improve your impact for the Wikimedia movement, to make it worthwhile for the committee to take another chance on funding you. Instead, a concern about improving impact never pointedly enters your arguments at all.
- In 2015, we funded you for this event again. We did so because we learned that you had gone ahead and given the proposed talk in 2014 without TPS funding and that your participation level had gone up. We decided to give you another opportunity to demonstrate impact. As you know, your report on this round of participation was completed over 8 months late. But more importantly, it did not demonstrate substantial impact. Though your attendance levels were better than in 2013, your report was very spare and provided very little information about the outcomes of your participation. You indicate briefly that the conversation about community-building were 'fruitful,' but say nothing about how they were fruitful or what follow-up came from these discussions. You indicate that a couple of affiliates expressed interest in replicating the CHMP in their countries and that you hope that your learning pattern will help them in their efforts, but you don't indicate whether you socialized the learning pattern to the affiliates who wanted it, let alone whether they used it or found it helpful. Especially, the highlight of this round of funding was the learning pattern you created, which was a substantive contribution. However, since the learning pattern was created after the event was finished, it isn't at all apparent that this outcome depended on international travel.
- In 2016, you submitted your request after the event had already begun, and we declined funding, citing some of the reasons also listed in my response today.
In this program, as in our grant programs, we have an ethical mandate to try to use donor funds judiciously and wisely, spending money on proposals that convey significant enough impact potential to warrant the cost. I am not convinced that this request meets that threshold. This is in part based on the past performance review highlighted above, but it is also based on the lack of evidence in the request itself. It's not clear that your participation will make a meaningful difference for the Wikimedia movement, since you indicate that your talk is about tech communities in general, not Wikimedia communities specifically. Your plan includes no other outreach or training activities beyond the delivery of the talk, either during the event or afterward. We generally like to see a more diverse engagement plan than you have outlined here, especially for repeat attendance at the same event.
Consequently, I am declining this request. Should you wish to represent Wikimedia at future events, I encourage you to reach out to me in advance to discuss what kind of participation plan we would hope to see in order for your request to be funded. If you would like to discuss the concerns I have raised here, I would also be very glad to make time to talk with you.
Though I have concerns about your impact record in TPS, I also want to say that I recognize and deeply appreciate your ongoing participation in the Wikimedia movement in general. I do appreciate your very clear dedication and passion for Wikimedia, for the open source movement, and for the volunteer community-building that makes it possible.
Warm regards,