Grants:Conference/ProgramUpdates

The conference grants program will begin using this page as of July 2020 to provide regular updates about the conference grants program, what we are working on, and any updates we have. We will do our best to update this page weekly but may not always be able to due to vacations, skipped meetings, big deadlines, etc.

Updates will come from the weekly 1:1 meetings of the Conference Grants program leads: Chen Almog, Senior Program Officer (events): working on regional event conference grants & Rachel Farrand, Senior Program Manager (events) working on thematic event and growth event conference grants.

If you have any questions about any of our updates please contact us at conferencegrants@wikimedia.org and ask! :) Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Weekly updates

Update 17 November, 2020

We will be ready to announce this rounds conference grant recipients by our 20 November deadline. You can see more information about the candidates here under open proposals and review some of the discussions we have been having with the potential organizers on the proposal talk pages. If you have any interest in beginning to discuss you ideas for proposals for conference taking place in the second half of 2021 please email us and let's talk! conferencegrants AT wikimedia.org Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 21:54, 17 November 2020 (UTC)

Update 14 October, 2020

We have received three conference grants requests for mostly or fully remote events for the first half of 2021 and are busy reviewing them and providing feedback.

We have accepted two new members onto our conference grants committee and have requests to join from three more community members. We are slowly but surely growing this committee and planning to work more closely with our committee throughout the year than we have in the past.

We are also working on finalizing the timeline for the next conference grants round so we can give community as much time as possible to submit proposals for conference that would take place between July - December 2021.

Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 20:47, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

Update 15 September, 2020

Hello!

As you may have already seen, we are now accepting proposals for events (local and remote) that require funding that will take place during the first half of 2021. The deadline for submitting a funding request is Sep 28. We currently have zero requests, so you chances of being approved (with a quality funding request) are high! All events that involve any kind of in-person component will now need to consider and follow our risk assessment process. That process was created and tested by Chen from our team and should be pretty simple to use - but if you have any feedback from us we would love to hear about it.

We have also released some guidelines and tips for any remote events that may be funded. There are some new Friendly Space and privacy considerations as well as lessons we have learned along the way through supporting and following along with other Wikimedia remote events.

Thanks for reading! We are here if you have any questions.

Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 16:39, 15 September 2020 (UTC)

Update 4 September, 2020

Hi all!

Another busy week here :) At the end of last week we announced the new dates and timeline for the upcoming Conference grants funding round.

As we want to allow more time for potential grantees to review and utilize the forthcoming September release of guidance for in-person gatherings, we have extended the upcoming deadline for new Conference Grants proposals until September 28, 2020. Please see all the specific dates on the conference grants meta page. We will be accepting applications in September for events occurring between January - June 2021.

As Rachel mentioned last week, for this round we will also include Growth events and innovative ideas that will welcome more contributors to our movements and projects; and on gatherings that will support the implementation of the Wikimedia 2030 strategy recommendations.

We ask that if you have any questions or issues with this timeline - reach out to us at conferencegrants@wikimedia.org and we will try to assist.

Have a great weekend! CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 11:35, 4 September 2020 (UTC)

Update 24 August, 2020

Hola!

This week we would like to update you around changes we are making to our meta pages related to conference grants. We have updated our Round 1 timeline and deadlines in advance of major announcements about the future of Wikimedia events which will be emailed out my Katherine in early September. We have also updated our funding priorities to include a new "Growth event" category as well as to explicitly state that we will prioritize events focusing on implementation of movement strategy along with our existing priorities. You can find all of this information on the main conference grants start page. We will also be making a few other tweaks and clarifications to other pages.

I will be on vacation for the next two weeks so please reach out to Chen with any questions.

Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Update 18 August, 2020

Hey all!

These days we are finalizing the new risk assessment protocol for in-person events. This week we will be working with a few affiliates leadership to test the new tool and to get their feedback. We are currently still on track with the announcement date (early September), and to allow more time to build and develop potential events proposals, we are thinking about delaying a bit the deadline for conference grant proposals for the new round. We will communicate this shortly, once the new schedule will be finalized.

This week we will also work on standardizing the working process with the Conference grants committee before the new round opens.

Looking forward to giving you more updates soon! CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 07:55, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Update 5 August, 2020

No major updates this week. Rachel has been on vacation and Chen has been busily working on the risk assessment so we can understand the possibilities around opening grants programs again. The announcement is not ready yet but still on track for early September.

We are are starting on a process of rethinking our conference grants committee and a new call for applications for folks to join. Nothing is finalized yet, but we are playing with the idea of having a pre-grant-round strategy discussion with the committee about what types of events we should be prioritizing. The committee members will still be reviewing grant proposals as well. We are looking for more committee members from regions of the world that are not yet represented in the committee. Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 15:21, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Update 28 July, 2020

Hey everyone! We are starting weekly informal updates form the conference grants program team so that we can work more transparently and so that everyone can follow along and with what we are doing.

This week we are continuing work on a the post-COVID risk assessment for community events. We still should have guidance and next steps for what can be funded and what can not be funded and other considerations for the next round announced by early September.  We are also finalizing new guidelines, recommendations and tips for conference grants grantees around local and remote events in the case's of events that we are able to fund.

Additionally, we have done some efforts to update both the meta Friendly Space Policy and the Wikimedia Foundation Friendly Space Policy to include some wording around remote events so that online events are also included under the policies. The policy on Meta was updated and as usual communities are free to adapt it to their own needs - the foundation policy went through a small community consultation period to make sure we got the wording right.

Thanks for following along and we will update again next week! Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 17:07, 28 July 2020 (UTC)