Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Serbia/EduWiki Conference 2023/Report

Report under review

This Conference Grant report has been submitted by the grantee, and is currently being reviewed by WMF staff. Please create a discussion page for this grant report by following this redlink to add comments, responses, or questions, or by using the button below.

• To read the approved grant submission for this project, please visit Grants:Conference/Wikimedia Serbia/EduWiki Conference 2023.

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Guidelines on how to fill out this grant report

• If you wish to write your report in your native language, you are free to do so. Please indicate (in English) what language are you using.
• If you prefer to submit the narrative report in a video format, you can. The video should be in English. Please upload the video to Wikimedia Commons and share the link in your report page. Make sure to answer all the required questions. All Financial documentation will still need to be submitted in a written form.
• If you struggle with some of the questions, or wish to have a debrief meeting with your Program Officer before submitting your report, we are very happy to meet and walk you through the report template. This can be especially helpful if you want our help in identifying and reflecting on lessons learned. Please get in touch with your Program Officer.
• If you have other ideas, preferred methods on how to submit your Conference Grant Report or concerns - please reach out to us.

Outcomes and Impact

Thanks for bringing value back to the Wikimedia movement by sharing in this report. Everything you learned during your project is useful knowledge to offer future Wikimedians planning similar work.

In this first section you are asked to reflect on your initial goals and the impact the event had on your community. Remember there is no right or wrong answer. Even if your goals have changed over time, or the impact was different than what you expected. Feel free to share your long or short answer - we are happy to hear whatever you have to share.

• Did your event have any impact that you did not expect, positive or negative?

Group photo

We started planning this conference in 2019, with the idea that we’d have it in late 2020. The pandemic significantly delayed our plans, so by the time we actually hosted the conference, the impact that we’d expected ended up being different because our community had changed since then. We found attendees were craving the connections and collaborations that come from getting to know other education program leaders in person, and people were particularly grateful for the recognition of their work.

Break at EduWiki Conference 2023

In the post-conference survey, we asked attendees to rank their agreement with the statement “I made new connections with other Wikimedians at EduWiki 2023.” A total of 75% of participants strongly agreed with this statement, and another 20% agreed with it, meaning 95% of attendees agreed or strongly agreed that they’d made new connections at the conference. This meets with our anecdotal reports as well; we planned long lunches and breaks, and we found lots of people intermixing with other attendees.

We can see the recognition piece particularly in our pre- and post- conference surveys. We asked attendees to rank their agreement with the statement “I feel like my work is recognized by other Wikimedians.” on both the pre- and post- surveys. In the pre-survey, only 83% of attendees agreed or strongly agreed with the statement; however, in the post-survey, 95% of attendees agreed or strongly agreed with that sentiment.

• Please tell us about the top 2-3 innovative (new to you and your community) or things you tried this conference.

Participants engage in “Future of Wikimedia & Education” track.

We created a specific “Future of Wikimedia & Education” track. In the planning process, we’d originally called this the “strategy” track, as we wanted to specifically tie it to the Movement Strategy. However, based on feedback we got from participants, we did not call it “Strategy”, as people in the community seem to have a more negative perception of “Strategy” tracks. Instead, our interactive “Future of Education” track was popular, and we were able to conduct needs-finding sessions that resulted in a report on our future tied to Movement Strategy.

For our program, we instituted a strict “lightning talks only” for case studies sessions (“here’s what I did in my education program”). Program organizers found that past education conferences can become very repetitive if several people present the same kinds of sessions repeatedly. Instead, we asked attendees to identify trends globally (“how this has worked in several countries”) or capacity building sessions. Anyone wishing to present a case study was invited to do a lightning talk instead. Most attendees had favorable feedback about the program, indicating favorite sessions were the lighting talks, more hands-on workshops (how-tos for the Dashboard and PetScan ranked highly), roundtable discussions (like one on generative AI), and the keynote, delivered admirably by Shani Evenstein Sigalov. One attendee noted, however, that the lightning talk format was challenging for presenters as it put a lot of pressure on them to present in a short amount of time.

As an example of the quality of videos, the EduWiki 2023 Day 1 Opening Session.

We engaged in a one-way livestream of sessions. The technical aspect of this worked incredibly smoothly – we collected slides ahead of time, so decks were preloaded on the main presentation computer, lowering technical difficulties. We also then had recordings of every session (except ones where presenters asked for their session to not be recorded), which we were able to upload to Commons and link from each session page in the program on Meta in a timely fashion. We feel like this enabled participants who weren’t able to physically attend to still participate. We made a decision due to capacity limitations to not turn on a chat for the YouTube live stream that we could not moderate, but overwhelming feedback from streaming-only attendees indicated that adding that capacity for the future would be welcome. We’re excited, however, about the high quality recordings now available for every session.

Finally, we limited attendance to those who applied (even for non-scholarship recipients). We found that this created a specific group of people who were very focused on leading education programs, making the discussions richer and connections more meaningful. While this meant we did turn away many Wikimedians, we felt like the size of the conference and the knowledge of the participants enabled us to have more fruitful conversations.

• Were there any significant changes from the initial grant proposal?

Yes: our host Wikimedia Serbia’s past experience with visas led us to believe that it would be simple to get visas for those who needed them. However, this seems to have changed significantly since Covid. Every attendee who needed a visa struggled to get one, and about half of the attendees who needed a visa were not able to secure them in time to attend the conference, despite heroic efforts on the part of Wikimedia Serbia to work with the Serbian government to get the visas processed. This limited our ability to have the full diversity of attendees we were hoping to have.

• What do you think will be the long term impact of this conference?

We asked a question in the post-conference survey about how attendees planned to apply or share what they learned at the conference, and we got a wide range of specific responses — attendees indicated specific programs they wanted to start, ideas they’d had for tweaks to their own programs, new knowledge of how to use technical tools, and collaborations that they’ve formed with others at the conference. For attendees, we feel like the conference will be a catalyst for improving the education programs they deliver.

Additionally, the conference served as a key place for us to have strategic discussions about the needs program leaders have, with the goal of better supporting them (potentially with an education hub). The conversations about this were invaluable at the conference, and formed the basis of a report published on Meta and then discussed in a Wikipedia & Education User Group open meeting with members.

Meeting new friends is a key way to overcome “programmatic loneliness”.

Already, we’ve been asked when the next conference is! So we expect people to be excited about engaging with the education community in the future. One finding from our research was that many education program leaders suffer from “programmatic loneliness” – they are part of their affiliate, but they are the only ones running education programs, so conferences like this are an opportunity to connect with a peer group who do the same programming they do. Just over 98% of respondents to the post-conference survey indicated they’d recommend attending the EduWikiconference to others; the one respondent who didn’t say yes indicated “maybe”. So we rate that a success!

• Do your best to estimate the number of attendees in your event that have never attended any Wikimedia event before. How were you able to support and engage this group?

None; because this conference was for experienced program leaders, everyone attending had been involved in events at least in their local community. For several attendees, this was their first international Wikimedia event, however, and we tried to offer significant information to prepare them for their travels as well as social events (like the popular city tour) so they could get to know other attendees informally.

• Do your best to estimate the number of participants who have been involved in Wikimedia activities for more than 5 years. How were you able to support and engage this group?

According to the pre-survey, 68% of attendees have been involved in Wikimedia activities for more than 5 years. As a conference for program leaders, this is not surprising. Given the overwhelmingly positive responses on the post-conference survey, we believe attendees felt supported and engaged.

Learning and next steps

Conferences and events do not always go according to plan! Please use this section considering the perspective of what future event organizers within our movement organizing a similar style conference can learn. Make sure to include lessons around work with external/ internal partners; your communication efforts; your work with the community and volunteers etc.

• What would you do differently next time and why? Please share with us if there's anything you wouldn't do or something future organizers should avoid.

The visas issue was the biggest one; we wish we’d been able to start the process sooner (see answer to the next question for more on this.)

We purposefully decided two things early on: that we would have the conference in English only and that the live stream would be one way, not interactive. Both of these were decisions made based on capacity and not wanting to overcommit ourselves for our first conference, but they came at the cost of inclusivity. We would like to enable better multilingual participation, and more interactivity among those participating virtually.

• Was there any non-financial support that the Wikimedia Foundation could have provided that would have better supported you in achieving your goals?

We have already discussed this with the program officer and a change has been made for the future, but noting this here for the record: We strongly support having a greater lead time on grant approvals for international conferences. We’ve gone over the timeline for our conference so many times, and there simply wasn’t a way we could have accelerated the timeline we had from when we got formal approval of the grant to when we started trying to get visas for applicants. If we’d had two more months of grant approval, we could have made more of a difference with visas. Our understanding is that we can apply now in the grant time frame for a year before our conference, which will make a huge difference in the visa issue.

• What would you recommend on a local and/or regional level as the best next step to leverage your success and momentum? (Please consider potential new allies and partners; internal wiki collaborations; future projects etc. We don't expect you to necessarily do those, we are only looking for more ideas from your own perspective.)

We have already published a research report based on the conversations at the conference, we’re discussing regular virtual meetings for our community, and we’re starting planning the next conference. We have submitted and got approved for a presentation at Wikimania that will among other topics some of the learnings we have consolidated from the EduWiki conference earlier this year.

• Does your organizing team / affiliate / user group have any plans to follow up with your attendees in the future or support efforts related to the outcomes of this conference within your community?

Yes; see above.

• Please add any 3 operational recommendations for future events organizers.

1. Limiting your participation via an application process is absolutely worth it if you’re looking for a specific kind of discussion among a targeted audience (e.g., specific program leaders).
2. More how-to workshops are always well received by attendees.
3. Hire a great streaming service; the high quality videos are worth it!

Financial documentation

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Budget table

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions. Review the instructions here. These expenses should be listed in the same format as the budget table in your approved submission so that anyone reading this report may be able to easily compare budgeted vs. actual expenses.

Nr.	Item description	Budget	Final cost	Currency	Notes
1.	Travel costs	49,200.00	42,463.46	EUR
1.1.	International travel	48,900.00	42,215.75	EUR	Many participants could not attend due to non-approval or late approval of visas for Serbia.
1.2.	Domestic travel	300.00	247.71	EUR
2.	Accommodation costs	23,940.00	20,889.83	EUR
2.1.	Rooms	13,800.00	12,662.71	EUR
2.2.	Tourist tax	420.00	342.42	EUR
2.3.	Catering	9,720.00	7,884.70	EUR
3.	Venue costs	6,930.00	6,328.46	EUR
3.1.	Rent	3,150.00	3,159.18	EUR	Part of the cost is covered by a donation from the Hotel M.
3.2.	Coffee breaks	3,780.00	3,169.28	EUR
3.3.	Technical support	0.00	0.00	EUR
4.	Other expenses	7,080.00	6,607.62	EUR
4.1.	Video recording service	930.00	844.21	EUR
4.2.	Promo packet for participants	840.00	1,391.05	EUR	Part of the cost is covered by a donation from Wikimedia CH.
4.3.	Saturday dinner	2,400.00	2,367.62	EUR
4.4.	Downtown city tour	1,000.00	851.61	EUR	Donation of Wikimedia Serbia.
4.5.	Working material	600.00	629.19	EUR
4.6.	Bank fees	410.00	329.63	EUR
4.7.	Unforeseen expenses	900.00	194.31	EUR	Presentation platform subscription and extension cables.
5.	Income (inc. in-kind)	2,650.00	3,054.06	EUR
5.1.	Rent of venue	1,650.00	1,650.00	EUR	Donation of Hotel M.
5.2.	Downtown city tour	1,000.00	851.61	EUR	Donation of Wikimedia Serbia.
5.3.	Promo packet for participants	0.00	552.45	EUR	Donation of Wikimedia CH.
TOTAL		84,500.00	73,235.31	EUR

Additional notes: Wikimedia CH paid also for the flight tickets for four participants, but since we don't know the exact amount, this donation will be mentioned here.

If you have any tips or insights on creating a budget or allocating funds, please feel welcome to share!

• Since we live in uncertain times, keep inflation in mind when creating your budget. It is a long way from creating a budget for certain things to paying for them.
• Keep track of your spending progress and always be aware of your budget and funds remained.
• If you are organizing the conference in a country with an inefficient state administration, such as Serbia, consider that it can easily happen that registered participants who need a visa to enter the country may receive an answer from the embassy very late (in our case, the day before the start of the conference).

Summary of funding

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission): 87,150.00 EUR.

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission): 84,500.00 EUR.

Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above): 76,289.37 EUR.

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project: 73,235.31 EUR.

Are there additional sources of revenue that funded any part of this project? List them here.

• Donation of the Hotel M for the venue: 1,650.00 EUR.
• Donation of Wikimedia Serbia for the city tour: 851.61 EUR.
• Donation of Wikimedia CH for the promo materials: 552.45 EUR.
• Donation of Wikimedia CH for the flight tickets: The exact amount is unknown.

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?

YES.

Please list the total amount (specify currency) remaining here. (This is the amount you did not use, or the amount you still have after completing your grant.)

11,264.69 EUR.

Remaining funds from this grant have been returned to WMF in the amount of 11,264.69 EUR.

Evaluation

Optional - Event Evaluation Toolkit - In this page you can find a list of basic questions that the Wikimedia Foundation uses to evaluate large movement events like Wikimania and other regional and thematic events. Feel free to use any part of these questionnaires to evaluate your own event. You will find: Registration Questions; Post-event questions for participants and Follow-up questions for participants.

Anything else

Is there anything else you want to share about the conference or event?