Grants:PEG/WM EE/CEE Meeting 2015

statusFunded

Project & Event Grants

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015

Annual meeting of Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe

targetWikimedia projects in all CEE languages, Wikimedia Commons, Wikidata

strategic priorityEncourage innovation, Increasing quality, Increasing participation, Increasing reach

start date1st of September

start year2015

end date31st of October

end year2015

budget (local currency)18,816.90 (EUR)

budget (USD)20,600.74 (USD)

grant typeGrant requested by an organization

non-profit statusYes

creator• Kaarel Vaidla (WM EE)

contact(s)• kaarelwikimedia.ee• infowikimedia.ee

organization• Wikimedia Eesti

website• et.wikimedia.org

friendly space expectations

view all PEG requests

Goals

Maintain and develop collaboration among Central and Eastern European wiki communities. Increase the value of local learnings through regional sharing. Provide support to regional communities lacking experience in off-wiki work. Facilitate replication of local success stories in the region and support regional collaborative initiatives. Inspire and motivate Wikimedians to increase their level of participation in local communities.

Plan

Activities

Preparations

Significant effort has been made to engage Wikimedia communities of the region in sharing their needs and expectations related to the annual meeting:

1. Public meta page has been created to facilitate data collection,
2. 2 meetups were held during Wikimedia Conference 2015 (one of them concentrating especially on the design of the annual meeting) and there was a meetup at Wikimania 2015,
3. There has been significant communication about the annual meeting on the mailing list of the regional collaborative, as well as reminders posted on the CEE Facebook group.

Wikimedia Eesti has negotiated a suitable venue for reasonable price, as well as to solve possible logistical and technical issues:

1. The venue for the meeting has been chosen and confirmed, good communication with its representatives has been established,
2. Local logistics are principally resolved and international travel and visas will be handled in August.
3. Wikimedia Eesti has created a registration form for conference participants and registration opened on 3 August 2015 (also see the registration form).

Late night CEE session during Wikimedia Conference 2015 in Berlin, where details of Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 were discussed

Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 established an international programme committee to transform the collected input about needs and expectations of the different communities into a relevant and impactful programme:

1. During the Wikimedia Conference 2015 meetup, it was decided that the programme will concentrate on following topics:

1. sharing learnings from different (successful and unsuccessful) practices in the region,
2. practical workshops on Wikidata and on tools,
3. sharing projects that can be completed with relatively little financial input,
4. collaborative work on future cross-community collaboration projects (like CEE Spring 2015 was created during CEE meeting 2014.
5. the survey was launched for CEE members people to provide input publicly on Meta (see Questions and Needs subpage on the event page).

2. The programme committee was formed during Wikimania 2015 meetup,

3. The active working phase of the programme committee has been planned for the beginning of August, and the programme will be published on the 15th of August 2015.

Event

The meeting will take place in the form of a retreat in the countryside of Estonia. The chosen venue will provide seclusion from everyday distractions, as well as from possible sightseeing temptations, which will ensure an effective working environment throughout the meeting.

Date	Activity	Comment
9-10 September 2015	Arrival of participants in Estonia	Possible sightseeing activity and general preparations for the meeting
10 September 2015	Welcome dinner in Tartu	Icebreaker and creation of an effective meeting atmosphere
11-13 September 2015	Conference days in the venue	Active meeting work according to the meeting programme
13 September 2015	Farewell dinner in Tartu	Increasing social integrity among the participants and, therefore, the feasibility of planned collaborative projects
14 September 2015	Departure of participants from Estonia	Possible sightseeing activity

Follow-up

Documentation. Wikimedia Eesti will do its best to document the entire meeting and share learnings and experiences with the wider movement. According to the plan, there will be textual notes of all sessions and video recordings of some sessions (WMEE does not have a video recorder, but we shall ask the participants to bring their own equipment if they can). Recording, processing, and uploading will be done by volunteers, and videos will be published under the CC-BY-SA 4.0 licence and uploaded to Wikimedia Commons. All materials will be published by 31 October 2015.

Evaluation. After the meeting, attendees will be surveyed to evaluate general satisfaction of meeting participants. Also a general analysis of the conference organisation, its form and programme will be made to support future meeting organisers. The results of these activities will be published by 31 October 2015.

Projects. Sharing experiences and learning about each others’ projects, in addition to the programme design activities related to this meeting, will lead to more concrete collaborative efforts, which will result in actual on-wiki impact to various Wikimedia projects in many languages. Ideally, basic stub pages (short project descriptions) or plans for these projects will also be published by the end of October 2015.

Impact

Target readership

• Wikimedia projects in all CEE languages (Albanian, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Estonian, Georgian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish, Ukrainian, also several smaller regional languages)
• Wikimedia Commons
• Wikidata

Fit with strategy

What crucial thing will the project try to change or benefit in the Wikimedia movement? Please select the Wikimedia strategic priority(ies) that your project most directly aims to impact and explain how your project fits. Most projects fit all strategic priorities. However, we would like project managers to focus their efforts on impacting 1–2 strategic priorities. Examples of strategic priorities can be found here.

The main strategic goal of Wikimedia CEE meeting is to encourage innovation and this on different levels:

1. on the one hand, the meeting creates an inspiring atmosphere with brainstorming opportunities, which will help attendees to come up with new ideas for regional collaboration or local coordinated activity,
2. on the other hand, sharing and learning will support implementation of successful projects in new communities.

As the Wikimedia CEE Meeting is a meeting of community leaders, it provides good support in achieving other strategic goals of the movement as well: Regionally shared experiences and tips will help local leaders to actively support the increase of quality by promoting the usage of tools and techniques utilized by other wikicommunities in their language versions of the Wikimedia projects. These learnings are vital in increasing participation in these projects (see Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015/Questions&Needs for more information).

CEE Meetings try to involve the whole region and also reach out to less active communities, inspiring their leaders and providing learning resources from the region that can and most probably also will increase the reach of Wikimedia projects. Gender gap is going to be one of the issues to focus on (for example, trying to involve more women in the organisation team and in the international programme committee from the very start).

Giving more attention to documentation and movement-wide sharing, Wikimedia Eesti believes that Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 will not only contribute towards achieving these goals on a regional level, but also will provide support to Wikimedia activists around the globe.

Outcomes of the last CEE meeting

The meeting of last year was a success, with active participation and inspiring atmosphere

The main direct outcome of CEE Meeting 2014 (Kyiv, Ukraine) was the launching of the hugely successful Wikimedia CEE Spring article contest, our first full-scale regional cooperation involving most of the communities of the region. CEE WikiCamp 2015 was organised by Shared Knowledge (Macedonia) as a follow-up to the contest itself. For more outcomes, please see the grant report for the meeting and the post-conference survey. There were more than 2,838 articles created, although 1,000 were planned. There were 19 participants at the final event, although 10 were planned.

The personal challenge 100wikidays is another relevant and noteworthy outcome of CEEM 2014, as the links developed among the participants from CEE countries during the conference helped to spread the word about the challenge and inspired many other editors from the region to join as well. This challenge is not an official CEE project, but it is a sterling example of the mutual inspiration aspect of CEE, and it is still going strong! As of 31 July 2015, 28 of the 71 participants, and 7 of the 9 who accomplished the challenge, are from the CEE region. To date, more than 2,800 articles in at least 33 languages have been created.

Also, this year more CEE countries took part in Wiki Loves Earth photo competition. Namely, Wikimedians of Bulgaria organised WLE in 2015 in Bulgaria for the first time, and Poland participated for the first time as well.

The European Science Photo Competition 2015, a pan-European science photo competition which would bring more science content to Wikipedia, is being discussed (see participating countries).

Other events and projects organised by affiliates of the region (or interesting for them globally) may be found in WMCEE Calendar 2015.

Measures of success

Please provide a list of both quantitative and qualitative criteria that will be used to determine how successful the project is. You will need to report on the success of the project according to these measures after the project is completed. See the PEG program resources for suggested measures of success.

Quantitative At least 45 participants At least 15 countries or languages represented At least 20 attendees participating actively as speakers or table hosts, sharing their experience All of the presentations documented in writing (Etherpad) and at least 75% of the presentation slides made publicly available. At least 85% of attendees find the conference useful in the post-conference survey. At least 75% of attendees confirm having new ideas and/or better vision for the projects they want to work on. At least 75% of attendees confirm having learned new information regarding project management, running chapter projects, or community building.

Qualitative Information collected about the needs of most of the organisations and communities of the region. Countries without established chapters improve their organisation and the activities of their communities. Improved regional cooperation, with launch of new cross-border activities or significant improvement of existing ones (related to at least 3 projects). Designed working patterns for "standard" projects in the CEE region, such as WEP, GLAM, and article and photo contests. Transfer of acquired knowledge, skills, know-how from meeting representatives to their local communities.

Note: In addition to your project-specific measures of success, you will also be asked to report on some global metrics at the end of your final report. Please keep this in mind as you plan, and we'll support you as you begin your project.

Resources and risks

Resources

Team members

Organisational support

The core team consists of employees and board members of Wikimedia Eesti:

• Kaarel Vaidla (executive director)
• Mattias Jõesaar (assistant)
• Eva Lepik (board member)
• Tanel Pern (board member)
• Sven-Erik Soosaar (board member)
• Teele Vaalma (board member)

There is also support from the international CEE community:

• Antanana (WMUA)
• Лорд Бъмбъри / Nikola Kalchev (Wikimedians of Bulgaria)
• Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE)
• Asaf Bartov (WMF)

Wikimedia Eesti is currently working on putting together a local voluntary team to support good organisation and management of the event.

Programme committee

The international programme committee:

• Levon Azizian (Wikimedia Ukraine)
• Asaf Bartov (Wikimedia Foundation)
• Tomasz Ganicz (Wikimedia Polska)
• Eva Lepik (Wikimedia Eesti)
• Sven-Erik Soosaar (Wikimedia Eesti)
• Kaarel Vaidla (Wikimedia Eesti)
• Greta Doçi (Albania)
• Vassia Atanassova (Wikimedians of Bulgaria)
• Wertuose (Azerbaijani Wikimedians)
• Cornelius Kibelka (Wikimedia Deutschland; advising)

Previous experience

Wikimedia Eesti has experiences in organizing international seminars, like seminar of small Finno-Ugric Wikipedias that took place in Estonia in 2014

• Wikimedia Eesti has organised international seminars for small finno-ugric Wikipedias (in 2014 and also in 2015)
• Learnings from previous CEE meetings (2012, 2013 and 2014) have been shared and the organiser of last year, Wikimedia Ukraine, is mentoring Wikimedia Estonia through the process
• Wikimedia Deutschland has shared its experience of organising the Wikimedia Conference and its appointed Program and Engagement Coordinator Cornelius Kibelka is providing support to the organising team of Wikimedia CEE meeting 2015
• There have been CEE meetups on Wikimedia Conference 2015 and Wikimania 2015 where issues related to organising the event have been discussed, as well as most of the participating communities have provided input to the programme committee by filling in questions and needs questionnaire
• Representatives of larger chapters in the region (Wikimedia Polska, Wikimedia Serbia) are available for consultation, as well as staff of the Wikimedia Foundation

Risks

Risk	Management
Possible fiscal problems due to absence of local sponsors and possible rejection of current PEG grant	Due to a misunderstanding of Wikimedia Eesti, organising Wikimedia CEE meeting was part of its APG grant proposal and was not planned to be a separate PEG proposal, therefore 4700 EUR are already available for the organisation of the event. Although the original plan was not to ask for further funding from the Wikimedia Foundation for the event and instead raise necessary funds from local sponsors, this has not worked out and Wikimedia Eesti must, therefore propose this current grant request. Nevertheless, the organising team will continue its efforts to seek funds outside the movement. There is a possibility of additional support from other large chapters in the region, especially for travel grants (e.g. Wikimedia Polska).
Lack of interest and participation of attendees	During the preparations phase, data about interests and needs of possible participants has been collected, as well as numerous representatives of different communities (36+ representatives from 20+ communities) have signed up to take part in the event. The programme committee will do its best to take into account all the needs of meeting participants, which will make the programme highly relevant to many participants. Scholarships will be awarded to most of the participants, but their interest will be confirmed with the registration form.
Possible burnout of the staff and board of Wikimedia Eesti	Wikimedia Eesti acknowledges its scarce human resources and is aware of the risk of the burnout and therefore is looking to engage additional local volunteers to organise and manage the Wikimedia CEE meeting. Wikimedia Eesti is currently taking steps to well distribute organising tasks between team members, so everyone will be responsible for a fair share. There is a willingness to support Wikimedia Eesti in organising the event in the CEE region and Wikimedia Eesti is currently working on sorting out the tasks that do not require a local presence and will distribute them among the regional volunteers.

Budget

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

Grantees are subject to line-item scrutiny of expenses. Changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

Project budget table

Budget table is represented in local currency, i.e. EUR.

Exchange rate 1 EUR = 1.09480 USD (as of the 5th of August 2015, Oanda.com)

Nr.	Item description	Unit	Quantity	Cost per unit	Total cost	WMF contribution	Other sources	Comments
1.	Travel related costs				17,160.00	10,305.00	7,855.00	Travel costs include international travel for international participants, domestic travel for all participants and visas for those who need it.
1.1.	International travel	participant	56	250.00	15,000.00	7,250.00	7,750.00	Average travel costs have been calculated according to travel estimates (Google Drive working document). It is expected that 27 out of 56 guests (representatives of APG funded chapters, i.e. Wikimedia Serbia and Wikimedia Armenia, as well as locally well funded Wikimedia Polska) will not need scolarship.
1.2.	Domestic travel	participant	72	30.00	2,160.00	2,160.00	0.00	Quotes from AS SEBE and Tuuliku Reisid. There is a possibility to reduce domestic travel costs if arrival of meeting participants is well managed and a collective bus can be rented.
1.3.	Visas	participant	20	50.00	1,000.00	895.00	105.00	Not all participants will need a visa and some of those who need one already have one. Most probably the number here will be reduced. There are also 2 price levels of visa available, one being 35 euros and other 60 euros.
2.	Accomodation				5,592.00	2,961.00	2,403.00	Accomodation costs include pre- and post-conference accomodation in hotel in Tartu, as well as accomodation on the conference site at Voore.
2.1.	Hotel in Tartu	participant	56	51.00	2,856.00	1,479.00	1,377.00	Quote from Hotel Tartu in town center (twin rooms). Breakfast included. Thursday and Sunday nights calculated for all participants. There may be some late arrivals, as well as early leavers, so the costs may be reduced.
2.2.	Stay in Voore	participant	72	38.00	2,508.00	1,482.00	1,026.00	Quote from conference venue Voore Puhkekeskus. 2 nights, including breakfasts. Also including representatives of Wikimedia Eesti and conference volunteers.
3.	Catering				5,850.00	5,850.00	0.00	Lunch and dinner on conference venue, coffee breaks, as well as welcome and farewell dinners in Tartu.
3.1.	Main courses during the event	participant	72	32.50	2,340.00	2,340.00	0.00	Lunches and dinners at Voore Puhkekeskus, based on the quote.
3.2.	Coffee breaks on the site	participant	72	10.00	720.00	720.00	0.00	Coffee breaks during the conference.
3.3.	Welcome dinner	participant	62	25.00	1,550.00	1,550.00	0.00	Main course, dessert and one drink calculated according to average prices in Tartu.
3.4.	Farewell dinner	participant	62	20.00	1,240.00	1,240.00	0.00	Main course and one drink calculated according to average prices in Tartu.
4.	Event				1,001.00	1,001.00	0.00	Rent for the venue, as well as recreational activities for participants.
4.1.	Rent	day	3	167.00	501.00	501.00	0.00	Rent of the venue with technical equipment (2 projectors and microphones) for the event, according to the quote.
4.2.	Recreational activities	evening	2	250.00	500.00	500.00	0.00	Recreational activities for the evening, according to the quotes.
5.	Materials				316.00	100.00	216.00	Paper materials and pens for the conference.
5.1.	Program leaflet & nametag	participant	72	3.00	216.00	0.00	216.00	Small program leaflet to go with the nametag. Will be printed and transported by Wikimedia Polska.
5.2.	Pens	participant	100	1.00	100.00	100.00	0.00	Pens for notetaking and to serve as memorabilia.
6.	Administrative costs				3,299.90	3,299.90	0.00	Costs for administration, including bank expenses, communication costs, as well as unforeseen costs.
6.1.	Bank expenses	estimate	N/A	30.00	30.00	30.00	0.00	A general estimate of bank transaction fees.
6.2.	Communication costs	estimate	N/A	50.00	50.00	50.00	0.00	A general estimate for postal fees and phone bills.
6.3.	Taxes	estimate	N/A	200.00	200.00	200.00	0.00	Taxes to be payed for representatives of WIkimedia Eesti to take part in social events.
6.4.	Unforeseen	project	1	3,019.90	3,019.90	3,019.90	0.00	10% of the total grant sum. This includes unforeseen events and change in costs, mainly related to international travel, where ticket fees will increase, as the conference approaches.
				TOTAL	33,990.90	23,516.90	10,474.00

Total cost of project

33,990.90 EUR = 37,213.20 USD

Total amount requested from the Project and Event Grants program

In total 23,516.90 EUR = 25,746.30 USD requested directly from Wikimedia Foundation (the rest provided by bigger participating chapters)

4,700.00 EUR = 5,145.56 USD already allocated through APG process.

18,816.90 EUR = 20,600.74 USD requested from PEG process with current proposal.

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

Some of the participating chapters (i.e. APG funded chapters Wikimedia Serbia and Wikimedia Armenia, as well as locally well funded Wikimedia Polska) will pay for their own participation. There may be other participants willing to pay for their participation.

According to current calculation this sum is 10,474.00 EUR = 11,466.94 USD.

Non-financial requirements

See a description of non-financial assistance available. Please inform the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) of any requests for non-financial assistance now.

Requests for non-financial assistance, if any

Participation of some of the staff members of Wikimedia Foundation. To be specified with the Program Committee

Discussion

Community notification

You are responsible for notifying relevant communities of your proposal, so that they can help you! Depending on your project, notification may be most appropriate on a village pump, talk page, mailing list. Please paste a link below to where the relevant communities have been notified of this proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. Need notification tips?

• There have been several announcements regarding this event on the mailing list and the Facebook group of Wikimedia CEE collaborative
• A meta page has been created to share the information in an effective and public manner.
• Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 has been discussed in regional meetups at the Wikimedia Conference 2015 and Wikimania 2015 (see more for preparations)
• Efforts have been made to reach out to representatives of less active communities in a personal manner by sending emails and talking to people via social media and during offline meetings.

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Project and Event 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.

For grantees

If you are the grantee or representative that wrote this grant submission, you may request changes by using these links:

• Create a request for an extension of the approved project completion date.
• Create a request for changes to the approved project budget.