Grants:Conference/International WikiCamp/Withdrawn

statuswithdrawn

Conference & Event Grant

International WikiCamp

WikiCamps are educational camps, the main goal of which is the education of participants through Wikipedia, Wiktionary, and other Wikimedia projects. Along with editing, campers also visit cultural heritage sights, play intellectual and sports games, sing, dance. WikiCamps balance contribution, education and fun.

targetWikipedia in several languages, WikiData, Wikicommons

strategic priorityIncreasing Participation

event dates25 July 2020 - 30 July 2020

amount-local10,113,000.00 AMD

amount21,155.00 USD

typeorganization

nonprofitNo

creator• WikiTatik

contact• susanna.mkrtchyan@wikimedia.am

organization• WM AM

website• https://www.wikicamp.org/en.html

Friendly space expectations

index

Event overview

Purpose and vision

Please give a brief description of the event you are planning. What do you hope to accomplish during the event? Why is this event important for your community?

WikiCamp is a platform where alumni come, learn, become good friends and continue to develop Armenian and other Wikipedias.

International Wikicamp will be an important gathering of wikimedians sharing free knowledge from different communities of the same ages. Wikimedians will develop new wiki skills, team-building, and language skills. They will learn from each other, and they will feel the big family atmosphere while discovering new friends, interests, hobbies, various strengths, food, and cultures. Also, they will be involved in camp program activities like sports, intellectual games, performing arts, and dance.

Wikimedia Armenia has organized a lot of WikiCamps and it has a great experience in managing camps successfully. Thus, it has received various requests from several affiliates to provide information and details about activities of WikiCamps and during this camp, communities will learn more about how a camp should be organized in their home countries. The Wikimedians from CEE and Western European community will have the chance to see and learn the nuances of organizing WikiCamps and to be a wikicamp trainer in their home community. The camp will have 2 tracks; one concerning to leaders and people who want to organize WikiCamps in their communities and want to get acquainted with our experience of organizing successful camps (with a training format), the other will be aimed at engaging active wikimedians in the regular WikiCamp activities. Even though these two groups will be working separately, the leisure time and entertainment will be organized for everyone to make the WikiCamp more interactive and lively. Both leaders (affiliates representatives) and active wikimedians will be chosen by their home chapters. After this camp due to the trainings and experience sharing opportunity, each affiliate would be able to confidently organize and manage camps in their respective countries.

The international camp will give our local community the opportunity to meet wikimedians from different places of the world, to learn of the activities they are involved, to share and to exchange everything learned during this and previous camps. As WikiCamps organized by the WMAM are mainly for Armenians (even though we had some participants from other countries, like Georgia and Italy), such international WikiCamps are a great chance for the Armenian community to socialize with others and learn from their experience, to think new projects and try to collaborate with their peers from other countries. This will enable community members to become more engaged in the Wikimedia movement not only in Armenia but also internationally.

Important details

Please add key information to the table below. The dates, location and number of participants can be estimates and do not need to be finalized at this time.

Proposed date(s)	25 July 2020 - 30 July 2020
Proposed location	Tsaghkadzor, Armenia
Number of participants	90 (80 campers, 10 organizing team)
Event page	Wikimedia Armenia/International WikiCamp 2019
Primary contact person	Susanna Mkrtchyan

Background

Community input

Use the results from the community engagement survey to fill in the table below. Since you cannot cover all topics or meet all needs at one event, prioritisation is important. Please rank the priority of each topic, skill, project or problem as high, medium or low. Finally, please answer the questions below the table.

	Description	Priority
Strategic discussions: What are the top issues affecting your community that need to be discussed in person?	The active Wikipedians need to know each other to share knowledge, to create new projects, to feel as part of huge movement. To raise collaboration between communities To start new projects To bring new editors into the community and inspire them Engaging the community in Wiki projects and generally in Wikimedia movement	4
Capacity development: Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn?	Our community was built through offline activities and we need to strengthen some of their skills to encourage them to continue in the way they started. Besides we need to improve their technical skills and knowledge to prepare them for online activities as well. Technical skills Learning patterns Community building Team building Communication skills (offline communication helps to solve online conflicts) Keeping up the emotional high spirit	2
Working groups: Are there joint projects that need to be planned in person?	WikiCamps are very successful experience of collaborative working inside our community. At the same time, Wikimedia Armenia has received requests from several affiliates to help them to organize WikiCamps in their countries. During this camp, we can discuss all the details and features of particular cases for communities of each country. After this camp, each affiliate would be able to manage camps in their respective countries.	1
Community building: Are there other in-person activities are important for community building?	WikiCamps are a very successful way for community building, so participants of guest countries will learn the community-building approach of the camp. Also, we can learn from other countries' experiences. Sports activities and art and cuisine performances, which are included in the schedule, help the campers to stay friends after the camp, to keep good relations Discussions of various issues and topics concerning Wikipedia and other projects Meetups where community members from different countries may share their concerns about the Wikimedia movement; may discuss their successful and unsuccessful experiences and think about ways of strengthening ties among community members which will contribute to the community-building process.	3

Survey analysis:

1. How many people did you send the survey to? How many people responded to the survey?

As we had only one week to get responses for the survey (because we were notified only at the end of the last week that we should send a new survey), we sent it to around 50 people. We have received 32 responses.

1. Did you see consensus around shared goals that this community wants to focus on in the next 12 months? What were the top 2 goals?

Yes, there were some common goals that our community wants to focus;

1. Improve the quality of translations, create and edit more articles;
2. Engage with other Wiki communities from all over the world.

1. Based on survey responses, what are the most important things your community should do at the conference to achieve those goals?

According to survey responses, one of the most important in-person activities were editathons which will contribute to the first goal; the second goal will be fulfilled if the International WikiCamp becomes a reality because, as a lot of survey responses showed, the camp will strengthen the communication and interaction among different communities.

Context

It is helpful to get an understanding of why this event is important to your community, and what experiences you have had in the past. Please answer the applicable questions below.

1. What inspired your community to begin planning this event?

Wikimedia Armenia had organized more than 25 WikiCamps as local as half international, also in overseas countries. We hope that this event will encourage the youth from the international community to become active members of the Wikimedia movement, take the knowledge and experience from WikiCamp to their home community. Also, as Wikimedia Armenia has organized so many successful WikiCamps, it will be a good thing to contribute to the international community by sharing our experience.

2. How does this event relate to other activities that your community is working on?

The International Wikicamp will be a follow-up of the previous successful camps organized by Wikimedia Armenia. Wikiclub active members and other active wikimedians will be engaged in this event. This will bring new collaborations between different language communities. Besides that Wikimedia Armenia is working with doctors organizing Wiki Loves Science events especially for doctors and students from medical universities. We already have an efficiently operating medical council that engages in organizing events that contribute to developing medical content in Wikimedia projects. The link between students from medical universities and WikiCamps is that these people edit with a lot of enthusiasm having in their mind the hope that they will be able to participate in WikiCamps as these are considered to be important events where people can learn new things and also have fun. We are also working with other specialists or university students - especially historians and economists - hoping to create councils just like the medical one. And the WikiCamp is a motivation for these people. Lately, we have organized a Winter WikiCamp only for historians, economists and medical students and the camp was very successful. The camp is an incentive for editors to be more active and engaged in Wiki projects and the movement.

3. Please list the priorities identified in the report from the last conference organized by this community. What progress have you made in those areas?

• Capacity development: we have organized several seminars and short courses which were meant for the community's capacity development;
• More engagement of the community in Wikimedia movement and Wikimedia projectsː the progress of engagement of the wikicommunity in the movement and Wiki projects is visible as a lot of community members initiated interesting projects themselves and carried them out successfully or participated in others' projects.
• Broaden the scope of collaboration between chapters and affiliates; the progress is that during last year a lot of community members had the chance to participate in international conferences or meetups (Wikimedia Conference, Wikimedia Hackathon, CEE Meeting, etc.), or collaborated with other affiliates, for instance, Indian-Armenian editathon between Indian and Armenian affiliates.

4. If your community has hosted a similar conference in the past, what key lessons were learned, and what would you like to improve on?

We have a good organizing team. Wikimedia Armenia has organized some National Wikiconferences, CEE Spring 2016, Wiki Education Program 2017, Strategy Salons and around 25 WikiCamps and we have learned (via surveys) that the program should be meaningful to the community and it should be engaging. After hosting some foreigners in one of our latest WikiCamps, we understood that the engagement of foreigners in our projects and events is important for our community as experience and knowledge sharing opens new chances for community members. The practice of involving foreigners in our projects should be improved.

By the way, you can find more information about the foreigners' experiences and impressions in WikiCamp in Armenia here [1].

Plan

Venue and Logistics

1. If the venue is more than 1 hour away from a major airport or transportation hub, how will participants travel to the event venue?

The venue is 1 hour away from Zvartnots airport.

2. Is the event venue within walking distance from the hotel? If not, how will people travel between the two locations?

Event venue and hotel are in the same place.

3. Is the event venue and hotel accessible for people with physical disabilities?

Yes

4. Do you anticipate any challenges with using the space for the event you are planning?

No

Friendly space policy

Please link to the friendly space policy that your community will be using for this event. Friendly space policy

Participation

It is crucial that most participants have a minimum level of Wikimedia experience so that they can engage actively in workshops and discussions. Please answer all applicable questions below.

1. Please describe the target audience for this conference or event.

All participants will be experienced wikipedians aged 18-35. The participation of international WikiCamp will be an award for the community's active wikieditors. By the way, it is not difficult to engage people of these ages in the project because a lot of our active editors are students from various universities and generally people of the mentioned ages. Moreover, the camp is a motivation for a lot of people so they actively edit and participate in various events in order to have the chance to participate in the WikiCamp.

Each community (Wikimedia Ukraine, Wikimedia Deutschland, Wikimedia Netherlands, Wikimedia Italy, Wikimedia Serbia, Wikimedia Community User Group Georgia) will choose its participants. Wikimedia Armenia shared this news at CEE meetup during Wikimania in Cape Town, South Africa, and communities signed here.

2. If your conference has an outreach component, how will you ensure engagement with these participants after the conference, and what impact do you see them having on the projects?

We do group statistics of the participants, of their inputs and we will share this experience with the leading trainers of the participating countries. Each community leading trainer will follow up its participants, we will integrate them in our mailing list, social media to be connected with the communities after the camp. Keeping in touch with the participants and getting their feedback is very important because it will help us to understand what we need to change in the format of the WikiCamp, which may be improved and developed.

3. Are you thinking about inviting WMF staff to attend or participate in the event? If yes, please list individuals or teams who you may want to invite, or describe how you would like WMF staff to be involved in the event.

Members of WMF staff are of great importance for the camp participants. They will get more inspiration from Katherine Maher's talks and discussions, Asaf Bartov's Wikidata, Sparcle query trainings will be of great use for the wikicampers, Alex Wang's talk on Friendly Space Policy is a good topic to be shared. The WMF staff can disseminate the Armenian Community engagement experience in other communities.

Scholarships

1. How many scholarships would you like to offer?

As we have mentioned below in the budget part, the grant will cover the accommodation, food, and transport for all the participants, meaning scholarship for 90 people.

2. What expenses will the scholarship cover?

It will cover the accommodation, food, and transport for participants. But the travel expenses should be covered by affiliates that participate in the WikiCamp.

3. How will scholarship recipients be selected?

As it is mentioned above, the grant will provide scholarships for all the participants. However, the appropriate affiliates will do the selection of their participants.

Resources and risks

Describe the resource potential for successfully executing this project and the key risks/threats.

Resources

Organizing team

Team	User Names
WMF Liaison
Logistics	David Sargsyan (WMAM), Mher (WMAM)
Conference Program	David Sargsyan (WMAM)
Scholarships
Communications	Artur Khumaryan (WMAM), Mari Avetisyan WMAM
Volunteer Coordinators	David Sargsyan (WMAM)
Other team members	Ashot Janibekyan (WMAM)
Volunteers	Ավետիսյան91, VardanMn

Risks

Examples of risks, along with how you would minimize or overcome them, are: Each wikicamp brings many new editors and we need more creative activites to keep the army of editors to continue the way they started and even do much more.

• Skill gaps in project leadership team (e.g. no financial management experience)
• Components of the measurement process that are hard to quantify

Examples of how to minimize these risks include:

• Recruiting volunteers with desired skills to project leadership team.
• Working with the WMF Learning & Evaluation Team to develop an appropriate measurement and evaluation plan.

Budget

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here. See Budget Guidelines.

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Cost per unit	Total cost	Currency	Notes
1	Hotel accommodation and food	5 nights and food	1 person	90	33	14850	USD	90 participant
2	Transport	bus, taxi				1970	USD	from the airport to the hotel and back
3	Hotel costs	playgrounds for various activities which will be defined by the agenda				550	USD
4	Video shooting*					500	USD
5	T-shirts		1 person	90	13	1170	USD
5	Office supplies					125	USD
6	Prizes and awards					670	USD
7	Salary					320	USD	doctor, song teacher, organizing assistant
8	Unpredictable expenses					1000	USD

* Next year is Wikipedia's 20th birthday and WikiCamps are one of the most successful projects, it would be good to have a video showing the importance of the Camp in community-building and expansion of the Wikimedia movement.

Event budget table

Total cost of the event

21,155.00 USD

Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program

21,155.00 USD

Please confirm that you are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

Yes.

Discussion

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Conference Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.

1.  Support — Mikheil ^Talk 08:07, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
2.  Support per Wikimedia Armenia/International WikiCamp 2019 Martin Rulsch (WMDE) (talk) 09:18, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
3.  Support --FiliP ██ 17:40, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
4.  Support --Андрій Гриценко (talk) 19:32, 19 September 2018 (UTC)
5.  Support --Grijz (talk) 20:07, 19 September 2018 (UTC)|Frans Grijzenhout (Support from WMNL)
6.  Support Mervat (talk) 21:24, 24 September 2018 (UTC)
7.  Support - this is a very interesting project, a the budget looks reasonable. Dr Bug (Vladimir V. Medeyko) 06:53, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
8.  Support - Magioladitis (talk) 09:01, 13 October 2018 (UTC)
9.  Support aegis maelstrom δ 05:29, 23 October 2018 (UTC) Reasonable costwise, interesting project to watch more carefully and learn from it for the Movement in general.
10.  Support --Liridon (talk) 12:59, 6 November 2019 (UTC)
11.  Strong support-- WikiCamps are educational camps, it do balances contribution, education and fun, such conference will inspire more WikiCamps to happen at other parts of the world. I would love to be a part of such noble initiative.Rajeeb ^(talk!) 20:14, 02 February 2020 (UTC)