Grants:PEG/WM AM/WikiConference Yerevan 2013/Report

Report accepted

This report for a Project and Event grant approved in FY 2013-14 has been reviewed and accepted by the Wikimedia Foundation.

To read the approved grant submission describing the plan for this project, please visit Grants:PEG/WM AM/WikiConference Yerevan 2013.

You may still comment on this report on its discussion page, or visit the discussion page to read the discussion about this report.
You are welcome to Email grants at wikimedia dot org at any time if you have questions or concerns about this report.

Compliance and completion

Did you comply with the requirements specified by WMF in the grant agreement?: Answer YES or NO.; YES

Is your project completed?: Answer YES or NO.; YES

Did you use any of the grant funds?: Answer YES or NO.; YES

Activities and lessons learned

This section describes what the grantee did, and what the grantee learned from implementing the project. This section should be useful to others implementing similar projects and is an opportunity for the grantee to reflect on the project's performance.

Activities

Provide a detailed list of activities performed to complete this project, descriptions of these activities, and the amount of time spent on each activity. This section should also include a list of participants, or a link to pictures, blog posts, or videos from the project or event.

May 2013

Organizing team had fixed meetings every Tuesday
28 - Armenian page of the conference was set up on Armenian Wikimedia
28 - English page of the conference was set up on Meta-Wiki

June

1 - Call for Submissions opened
14 - American University of Armenia agreed to support WM AM providing venue and staff members for the 2 days of the conference

July

31 - Submissions closed

August

1 - Registration for the Conference opened
2 - Press release about Wikimedia Armenia and its two main projects (Wiki Conference 2013 in Yerevan and WLM 2013 in Armenia).

September

1 - Selection was made from the total of 31 submission (15 presentations and 5 workshops)
Antares publishing agreed to cooperate with Wikimedia Armenia
30 - Registration for attendees closed

October

2-5 - 6 international guests received
4 - Official press conference
4 - Trip for international guests in Yerevan (National Museum of Armenia and other sights)
4 - Board members and International guests had meeting with Yervand Zoryan, IEEE vice-president
5 - Day 1 of the Conference (see Schedule for details)
6 - Day 2 of the Conference (see Schedule for details)
6 ― Trip for guests outside the city (Garni and Geghards)
7 ― Trip for guests in Yerevan (Genocide museum and Matenadaran)

Additional information

Organizing team and supporters

SusikMkr
Vacio
Beko
Ahaik
Arman musikyan (talk) 11:18, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Lilitik22
Karscout(Gyumri)
Avetic Yessayan (Shirak Technologies)
Davit Minasyan
Dato Abuladze
Hovhannes Kizoghian
American University of Armenia

Press mentions

- [1]
- [2]
- [3]
- [4]
- [5]
- [6]
- [7]
- [8]
- [9]
- [10]
- [11]
- [12]
- and more...

Lessons learned

What lessons were learned that may help others succeed in similar projects? Consider the following questions and respond with 1 - 2 paragraphs.

What went well?

In general, we think that we succeeded in organizing the conference, moreover the results are better than we expected. But not everything went well.

No evil without good.

The conference was planned earlier than our decision was made to join Wiki Loves Monuments. As a result, on the one we had a little shortage of human resources for the organizing of the conference, on the other hand Wiki Loves Monuments helped greatly to attracted the attention of so many people on Wikimedia projects. For about three months all media were full of articles about Wikipedia, Wiki projects and Wikimedia Armenia.

What did not go well?: The day of the conference coincided with other important events in Yerevan, in particular Digitec Expo 2013, Inet Armenia conference, teachers day, the celebration 2795-th anniversary of Yerevan and e.t.c.

Because of this the number of participants decreased to 150. At first we were disappointed, but during the conference we understood, that no evil without good. The attendants of the conference were newcomers or experienced editors or people who came with proposal to cooperate.

We were late with printing materials and with T-shirts, what influenced on quality. Some of the brochures we are going to print only now (in December), to use them during workshops for scientists and students and during negotiations related to LCC.

What would you do differently if you planned a similar project?

Next time we would organize this project as chain of events in three steps: pre-conference, the Conference and events after the conference.
Next time we'll investigate the potential clashes with other events before deciding on a date.

Project goal and measures of success

This section should reference the project goals and measures of success described in the approved grant submission. See Grants:PEG/WM AM/WikiConference Yerevan 2013 to review the goals and metrics listed in the approved submission.

Project goal

Provide the project goal here.: The Project goal is to disseminate wiki participation in regions and within Armenian diaspora and create campuses of local active wikimedians. To collaborate with museums in Armenia in order to encourage the GLAM project activities.

We'll work as in local level with the particular school, university and museum or library, as well globally training courses for ambassadors from each school, each university, each museum.

During the Conference days we would review results and discuss proposals how to go ahead as in outreach of Wiki projects as well enlarge and develop the content of Wikipedia and other sister projects.

Did you achieve your project goal? How do you know your goal was achieved? Please answer in 1 - 2 paragraphs.: We did very big step in path to achieve our goals. In regions where we have organized workshops now there are editors, who became permanent contributors and we have agreements with local organizations in collaboration in wiki movement. To maintain this situation and moreover to increase amount of editors and wiki activities in regions, we have to continue outside of Yerevan activities until the local groups will become self-sufficient in organizing workshops.; We agreed with Ministry of culture to start GLAM project in some museums. We started collaboration with National Library (2 employers of library will work with us in Wikipedia AND Wikisource projects).; We just started the collaboration with the laboratory of Armenian Bibliographies of AUA.

http://www.digilib.am/digilib/

Measures of success

List the measures of success exactly as provided in the approved grant submission, and evaluate your project according to each measure listed there.

The conference will be successful, if the

by the end of this year more than 50% of the content of Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia will be imported in Armenian Wikipedia, updated and wikified,
we will have collaboration with at least 3 museums (GLAM),
Wiki editing in learning process will be used in one university and in one school.
The conference will be attended at least by 200 students and 10 lecturers and staff members of 5 internationally known museums of Armenia.
we will have active wikimedians more than in 3 regions.
more than 20 organizations will support the activities of Wikimedia Armenia.

(My principle is to define more targets than you can, in order to achieve at last the half of it.)

Provide an overall assessment of how your project went according to these measures.: In general the project went and goes according to these measures.

About 30% of the content of Soviet Armenian Encyclopedia (SAE) is now imported in Armenian Wikipedia. We distribute this work among high schools.

3 high schools (AYB High School, Shirakatsi Lyceum, No. 198 High School) already started transfer SAE articles into Wikipedia articles. The results are great.

Although we started collaboration with one museum, one library and with one group of scientists (Digilib), we are not yet satisfied with these results. Because of time shortage, we couldn't organize a round table with representatives of GLAM and Armenian Ministry of Culture.
We are now working with aspirants of YSU and Academic Institutes, they have to write articles in Wikipedia during the course of Scientific writing.

If you were to plan a similar project, would you measure it differently? If yes, please explain how.: It is very difficult to find exact criteria for measure. Last year we have chosen as measure the number of active wikipedians, although after the conference this number increased, but then because of domestic issues in our country the number decreased again eventually. This year after the conference the number of wikipedians grows daily.

Impact

This section ties this project to Wikimedia's broader goals, and shows what the project accomplished.

What impact did this project have on WMF's mission and the strategic goals? Please answer in 1 -2 paragraphs and include specific measures of impact such as the number of readers or editors reached by a particular project, or the number of articles edited or improved.

Stabilize infrastructure
Increase participation
Improve quality
Increase reach
Encourage innovation

Before the WikiConference 2013, all our outreach activities were initiated by ourselves (active Wikimedians) and mostly new editors have written only several articles. Now every day we have invitation to organize series of workshops. Moreover, by transferring ASE articles into Wikipedia articles we will have the largest and deepest content in Armenian language. Now all media praise Wikimedia Armenia and cite Armenian Wikipedia.

Reporting and documentation of expenditures

This section describes the grant's use of funds

Documentation

Did you send documentation of all expenses paid with grant funds to grants at wikimedia dot org, according to the guidelines here? Answer "Yes" or "No".: "Yes"

Expenses

Please list all project expenses in a table here, with descriptions and dates. Review the instructions here.

Budget breakdown

Item	Number	Travel expenses	Accommodation	Per day	Total
Experienced wikimedian in GLAM	1	600$	3*100$	3*20	960$
Experienced wikimedian in educational projects	1	600$	3* 100$	3*20	960$
Simultaneous translation					680$
Printing brochures in Armenian	3*200				600$
Conference brochure	200				150$
T-shirts	200				1600$
Catering
Tea/coffee break	200			3*4$	2400$
Transportation					400$
Stationery					200$
Cultural program					1000$
Unforeseen expenses					500$
Net total					9450$

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.

Note that variances in the project budget over 10% per expense category must be approved in advance by WMF Grants Program staff. For all other variances, please provide an explanation in the table below.

Number	Category	Item description	Unit	Number of units	Actual cost per unit	Actual total	Budgeted total	Currency	Notes
1	Travel & Accommodation	Air ticket for Yuri Astrakhan	1 (Round Trip)	1	850.00	850.00		US $
2	Travel & Accommodation	Air ticket for Vojtech Dostal	1 (Round Trip)	1	540.00	540.00		US $
3	Travel & Accommodation	Accommodation for Yuri Astrakhan	1 (day)	1	160.00	160.00		US $
4	Travel & Accommodation	Accommodation for Vojtech Dostal	1 (day)	6	30.00	180.00		US $
5	Travel & Accommodation	Accommodation for Benoît Prieur	1 (day)	6	30.00	180.00		US $
6	Travel & Accommodation	Accommodation for Levon Azizyan	1 (day)	3	30.00	90.00		US $
7	Travel & Accommodation	Accommodation for Viktor Semenyuk	1 (day)	3	30.00	90.00		US $
	Subtotal					2090.00	1920.00	US $	We provided accommodation for more guests than planned
8	Promotional & printed materials	X banner	1	2	93.80	187.60		US $
9	Promotional & printed materials	A3 posters	1	40	1.73	69.20		US $
10	Promotional & printed materials	A4 flyers, 2 pages (Wiki Markup)	1	500	0.72	360.00		US $
11	Promotional & printed materials	A4 Conference Program, 2 pages	1	300	0.72	216.00	150.00	US $	More copies than planned (300 instead of 200)
12	Promotional & printed materials	T-Shirts	1	250	7.40	1850.00	1600.00	US $	More T-shirts than planned (250 instead of 200) to use them during our workshops in high schools.
13	Promotional & printed materials	Business Cards	1	700	0.91	72.84		US $
14	Promotional & printed materials	Badges	1	53	1.23	64.20		US $
15	Promotional & printed materials	Marker	1	1	1.14	1.14		US $
16	Promotional & printed materials	Design	1	1	222.22	222.22		US $
17	Promotional & printed materials	"Thanks" Certificates for selected Workshop participants	1	200	0.44	88.90		US $
18	Promotional & printed materials	Additional printed materials in Armenian: Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia (400x) GLAM One Pager (100x) Evaluating Wikipedia article quality (200x)	1	700		698.77	600.00	US $	Pending
More copies than planned	Subtotal					3830.87		US $
19	Conference facilitation	Simultaneous translation	1	1	550.00	550.00		US $
20	Conference facilitation	Tea/coffee/lunch	1	750	4.50	2469.13	2400.00	US $	We included also lunch (not planned in the grant budget)
	Subtotal					3019.13		US $
21	Other expenses	Administrative expenses	1	1	1	395.06		US $
	Grand Total					8,940.00		US $

SEE INSTRUCTIONS AT Grants:Index/Create financial report.

Total project budget (from your approved grant submission): US$ 8,940.00

Total amount requested from WMF (from your approved grant submission, this total will be the same as the total project budget if the WMF grant is your only funding source): PLACEHOLDER TEXT

Total amount spent on this project (this total should be the total calculated from the table above): US 8,940.00

Total amount of WMF grant funds spent on this project (this total will be the same as the total amount spent if the WMF grant is your only funding source): PLACEHOLDER TEXT

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

Remaining funds

Are there any grant funds remaining?: Answer YES or NO.; 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.)

In the Grant submission we had 3 items of expenses, which we haven't used yet because of time shortage. We would like use the remained money to implement these items:

Printing 3 outreach brochures and "Thanks" certificates for students,
Invite one Wikimedian experienced in GLAM projects to have collaboration with Ministry of Culture and GLAM institutions in Armenia and
Cultural program: the party, related to activities of Wikimedia Armenia, our achievements and to announce about our goals and plans, in order to enlarge participation of scientists, attract sponsors and encourage membership.

Note: We observe that the Armenian society is starting to believe in the Armenian Wikipedia as reliable source and in potential of Armenian Wikipedia too. We can't omit this very moment. We have to continue in this way, until we will achieve a stable situation.

If funds are remaining they must be returned to WMF, reallocated to mission-aligned activities, or applied to another approved grant.

Please state here if you intend to return unused funds to WMF, submit a request for reallocation, or submit a new grant request, and then follow the instructions on your approved grant submission.

We need funds to continue Education project with high schools and to attract regional schools too. Request for reallocation is in discussion page.