Grants:Conference/WCNA/WikiConference North America 2022

This Wikimedia Foundation grant has a fiscal sponsor. Wikimedia New York City administered the grant on behalf of WikiConference North America.

statusFunded

Conference & Event Grant

WikiConference North America 2022 (WCNA)

A grant for the annual WikiConference North America conference, which will be online again, on Nov 11-12, 2022.

targetNorth Americans participating mainly in English and Spanish language Wikimedia Foundation projects, and with an interest in geographical data, e.g. on Wikidata

strategic priorityTraining, partnerships, and fellowship for North American Wikimedians and OpenStreetMap participants

event datesNovember 11-12, 2022

amount-localUS$24,750 $

amount$24,750 $

typeOrganization

nonprofitYes, through non-profit fiscal sponsor Wikimedia NYC

creator• econterms

contact• infowikiconference.org

organization• WikiConference North America

website• https://wikiconference.org/

Friendly space expectations

index

Review your report

Event overview

Purpose and vision

WikiConference North America (WCNA) is the annual conference of Wikimedia enthusiasts and volunteers from throughout the continent, providing a meaningful setting for Wikimedia-related discussions and activities. Since 2014 these conferences have welcomed non-Wikipedians, such as academics, students, and activists, to engage with the Wikimedia movement through conference programming, collaborative events, cultural initiatives, discussions, and more. The conference nurtures grassroots Wikimedia communities, addresses long-standing online and local community issues, spurs the creation of new content, and facilitates partnerships with cultural and educational institutions.

This year, we have agreed with OpenStreetMap to combine forces to make a joint event with their usual fall Mapping USA conference. This is new. Organizers on both sides see topics of mutual interest and an interest in cross-training across the platforms. We will have speakers or a session addressing misinformation, and the Credibility Coalition has agreed to provide support.

• Do you consider this to be a Regional; Thematic or Growth event? Regional

• Is it a Remote, or in-person event? Remote

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)	November 11-12, 2022
Proposed location	Online
Number of participants	200
Event page	WikiConference North America 2022
Primary contact person	Econterms (WMDC), along with Pharos (WMNY) Peaceray (Cascadia), Omar_sansi (WMMX), Lunita28mx (WMMX) and SuperHamster (Ohio)

Background

Community input

Use the results from the community engagement survey to fill in the table below.

We did not conduct a pre-conference survey in 2022 but we have feedback from last year's conference.

	Description	Priority
Strategic discussions: What are the top issues affecting your community that need to be discussed in person?	Representation of community on the WMF Board; Movement Charter; Development of regional and thematic hubs.	High
Capacity development: Are there important skills that many people in your community need to learn?	Training, as was done in the past GLAM Boot Camps, WCNA conferences, and OpenStreetMap's State of the Map and Mapping USA conferences Development of the "essential infrastructure of the ecosystem of free knowledge" across the most common languages and for geographic data. Editing across languages and projects (Wikidata, Wikisource, Abstract Wikipedia, and other projects) Supporting a translate-a-thon to support this work.	High
Working groups: Are there joint projects to be planned at the conference?	Wikimedia Commons, Wiki Loves Monuments Indigenous cultures and languages	High
Community building: Are there other in-person activities are important for community building?	We want to extend our outreach to possible Mexican and Caribbean attendees and have a Spanish/Mexican-focused edithathon.	High

Survey analysis:

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

   None this year ; we have feedback from 14 people in last year's pre-conference survey and at least 30 from the after-conference survey.

2. 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?

   The responses cover many topics. The organizers combined several into these top two areas, which overlap with the Strategy initiatives (numbered 1-45) too:

   • Training: New tools; Wiki in education; Training and nuturing new editors, e.g. GLAM specialists; learning translation tools; Commons, Wikidata and structured data; enabling movement who want to develop the software; "apprenticeship"; building capacity of all kinds; Wikipedians as an educational community. The same topics are mentioned in Strategy initiatives, e.g. 11, resources for newcomers; 33, Skill development infrastructure; 32, Leadership development plan
   • Partnerships: Our activity involves engaging with external “ecosystems”, e.g. GLAM institutions, professional societies, the Internet Archive, phabricator, github, and other software development tool platforms.Working with GLAM institutions; working with other affiliates, e.g. in hubs and planning conferences like this one; including underrepresented groups through their institutions; coordinating and communicating with the WMF; look at topics and discuss together to compromise and synthesize. Relevant Strategy initiatives include: #12, peer to peer spaces; #15 API partners; #25 regional and thematic hubs; #29 Enhance communication and collaboration capacity with partners and collaborators; #38 Content initiatives in underrepresented communities
   • Another area of specified interest was Sustainability, which we do not put in the top two, but it related to user safety balanced with the free exchange of ideas balanced with online admin powers; handling covid; editor retention; global governance processes such as the Movement Charter and Global Council; These relate to Strategic initiatives: 13, Platform functionality and documentation standards; 34, Facilitate a culture of documentation ; 45, Adaptive Policies; 44, Iterative change processes

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

   Based on the responses so far, the top-two activities people have prioritized are working groups and community building. We will want to ensure we set up the proper environments and infrastructure that allow people to form these working groups as well as to meet others and build community. Similar to what was done for the virtual WikiConference North America , this would likely entail utilizing multiple platforms that cater to each specific purpose.

Context

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

WCNA is a rewarding annual conference that helps knit our dispersed editors together. Our previous events are listed below. Since November 2016, the conference has been coordinated by the WikiConference North America user group.

Past events	When and where
WikiConference North America 2021	Virtual; Oct 2021
WikiConference North America 2020	Virtual; Dec 2020
WikiConference North America 2019	Cambridge, Mass; Nov 2019
WikiConference North America 2018	Columbus, Ohio; Oct 2018
WikiConference North America 2017	Montréal; Aug 2017
WikiConference North America 2016	San Diego; Oct 2016
WikiConference USA 2015	Washington, DC; Oct 2015
WikiConference USA 2014	New York City; May–June 2014

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

Our dispersed editors and communities have a variety of meetings: WALRUS, Wikimedia Mexico, Wikimedia Canada, Caribbean User Group.

3. Do you have any Thematic or Regional committee or group? (Such as WISCom, CEE, Iberocoop, etc).

WCNA user group; Wikimedia Mexico; Wikimedia Canada; Caribbean User Group; WALRUS; Wikimedia New York City; Wikimedia DC; Cascadia User Group; User groups in Los Angeles, San Diego, New England, Ohio, and more

Plan

Venue and Logistics

1. Do you have any proposed venue for the event? If so, please share details (such as: how far is it from the airport or transportation hub; how close is it to the hotel, do you anticipate any challenges with using the space for the event you are planning?)

Online as in WCNA 2020 and 2021.

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

Not applicable.

3. Are you planning to outsource some of the services? For example - a travel agency, an event production service?

Yes, we will be hiring translators and employing transcription and technical services for language interpretation. We hope our partner organizations can do much of the event planning

Friendly space policy

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

• This was our policy for the 2021 conference, and we felt it went well.

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.

Wikimedians in North America, including Canada, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the U.S., and related thematic communities such as the Wiki Women's user group and Wiki LGBT.

2. If your conference has an outreach component to also target non-Wikimedian individuals or mission-aligned institutions, can you explain your intention for this outreach (for example: how will you ensure engagement with these participants after the conference, and what impact do you see them having on the projects)?

We have agreed to partner with the open-source-minded organization OpenStreetMap, as confirmed with their executive director. We hope many members of both communities learn to participate on the others' platform. Wikimedians are invited to long-lasting telegram channels for the conference.

3. Are you thinking about collaborating with potential partners? Such as national; educational or thematic groups and organizations? If so, will this partnership be a financial one (such as sponsorship), or a visionary one (to collaborate in regards to the content of the event)? Please share some details if you have any.

Yes. We have an agreement to partner with OpenStreetMap US and hope to contact some of their people in Mexico and Canada. We are also likely to partner with Hacks/Hackers/WikiCred to create sessions addressing disinformation. We may, as in the past, find a chance to partner with GLAM institutions (e.g. the Smithsonian Institution or the Met museum), or with the Internet Archive with whom we have some common projects.

4. In which ways can WMF staff support your event onsite? If you would like support, please list the different capacities in which we can support, or describe how you would like WMF staff to be involved in the event. (Some examples of WMF support or involvement might be: for outreach and communication efforts; to lead specific sessions; for legal or safety reasons, etc).

• Support from the Events team, for videoconferencing support, and support learning days, perhaps before the conference.
• Translation and transcription help and advice. We want to translate live or at least on video between English, French, and Spanish. We are advised that some of the Strategy meetings have had simultaneous translation, by volunteers or WMF staff or contractors. Let's use that approach. We'd like to have subtitled or interpreted videos, but this is new to us.
• Presentations about legal/advocacy issues, e.g. Section 230, privacy, copyright ; WMF Legal/Policy is interested to present
• OpenStreetMap sessions, some related to Open data
• Movement Strategy update; Hubs and the drafting of the Movement Charter

Scholarships

We may allocate some resources to software or data development for program purposes or logistics.

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	User:Pharos and User:econterms
Logistics	econterms, SuperHamster, Fuzheado, and partner organizations
Conference Program	SuperHamster, Fuzheado, Peaceray
Volunteer Coordinators / Friendly Space	econterms, with support from RosieStep
Finance	econterms, coordinating with OpenStreetMap and Hacks/Hackers
Other team members	user:Lunita28mx, user:Omar_sansi, user:RosieStep

Risks

• Risk: (1) Partnerships, (2) shortage/burnout of volunteers
• We will host on a variety of video and communications platforms, building on our experience with the virtual WikiConference North America/2021. We were successful with translation/interpretation between Spanish and English last year, but it's still somewhat tricky, expensive, and new to some of us. Our OpenStreetMap partners have not done it. We may need to try it on a new online conference platform. There is some tradeoff between inclusivity and safety.
• We have many volunteers and organizers across the continent. We will endeavor to have backups of volunteer roles -- a distributed workforce. Our volunteers and attendees have some "Zoom fatigue"
• We'd like to have Mapping parties and/or Wiknics; this would make it a hybrid event, which can be tricky

Budget

This Wikimedia Foundation grant has a fiscal sponsor. Wikimedia NYC administered the grant on behalf of WikiConference North America.

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

Event budget table

Number	Category	Item description	Units for item	Number and cost per unit	Item cost	Notes
1	Registration	Pretix	membership/subscription	1	$0	Included with a Venueless subscription, or for a conference under a certain size
2	Platform	Venueless, Pheedloop, or Hopin	membership/subscription	1	$2000	Conference platform ; may be included for free with our partner organizations, or we may need to extend our Hopin subscription
3	Platform	Zoom	WMDC or WCNA membership/subscription	1	$100	Possibly some sessions/meetings will be on Zoom; WMDC can supply use of its subscription
4	Platform	Streamyard	membership/subscription	1	$0	Would be included in a Hopin subscription
5	Wiknics, happy hours, and real-world mapping parties	Possibly on the w:Wiknic model		4 * $100	$400	Costs not clear; but we avoided shipping anything last year
6	Accessibility	Tlatolli Ollin's live interpreters (English ⇔ Spanish)		2 tracks, 2 full conference days	$8,000	Slightly more than last year's actual costs
7	Accessibility	Virtual interpreters' spaces		2 tracks, 2 full conference days, including program technicians	$9,500	Budgeting for last year's costs with Kudo, but we may find a less expensive alternative
8	Accessibility	Transcription service			$500	Possibly Otter.ai; we have not researched it
9	General	Event planning		20 hours	$1800	We may not need this if our partners supply the event planning services
10	General	Branding, design, and marketing		Logos and t-shirts	$0	Icons, banners, materials ; we anticipate selling t-shirts to cover the costs
11	General	Post-event video production, introducing/framing the recordings			$0	We anticipate just using URLs to point to videos on YouTube or Vimeo
12	General	Financial and banking fees			$200	Some suppliers will be in Mexico and there can be costs to send the money
12.5	General	Management fee			$450	To WMNY, the fiscal sponsor. This fee added with approval of WMF Conference Grants staff
13	General	Subtotal of all above			$22,950
14	General	Contingency (10%)			$2,295

Total cost of event

$40,000

Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program

$25,245

Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this event, and amounts funded

We shall partner with two other organizations: (1) OpenStreetMap USA, for whom this conference will serve as their Mapping USA conference; and (2) Hacks/Hackers/WikiCred which has asked for sessions on disinformation. OpenStreetMap has corporate sponsors and will find more. We do not think there is a significant conflict of interest here but we must watch this. We can only guess at funding levels now (June 2022) but it seems plausible to expect on the order of $10K from OpenStreetMap and $4K from the Credibility Coalition.

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.

• Support I have attended the last seven years, and presented twice in person, once during the 2020 online conference, & made four presentations during the 2021 online conference. I plan to work again with organizing again this year. I have learned as much from WCNA as I have from Wikimania, and I would like to continue contributing back. Peaceray (talk) 00:31, 14 June 2022 (UTC)
• Support Thousands of people have attended this annual conference since 2014. This has been one of the highest impact Wikimedia Movement activities in North America in terms of how much wiki editing it drives. This is a low amount of money for what this conference has proven to done. The same overseers who have a record of success continue to guide this event. Bluerasberry (talk) 15:40, 15 June 2022 (UTC)