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Grants:PEG/Wikimedia Levant/WikiArabia 2016 Conference

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statusFunded
WM Levant/WikiArabia 2016
2nd annual meeting of Arab Wikipedians and others who participate in enriching the Arabic content.
targetWikimedia projects in Arabic
strategic priorityIncreasing reach, improving quality, increasing participation.
start date15th of January
start year2016
end date28 of March
end year2016
budget (USD)US$54,450
grant typeA group
non-profit statusNo
creator• Mervat Salman
contact(s)• mervat.salam@gmail.com
organization• Wikimedia Levant
endorse


Goal

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  • Gather as many Arab Users/effective people together to discuss the challenges, opportunities of enhancements and new ideas face to face.
  • Develop and strengthen collaboration among Arab user groups, especially that most of them are new. Support common projects and share experiences.
  • Strengthen the relationships and collaboration among the WMF, Wikimedians and Arab wikipedians. It’s been noticed that Arab wikipedians are not strongly engaged with the Wikimedia projects and programs; may be the most noticeable interaction is through the education program, yet it needs more.
  • Provide support for local and regional initiatives that may affect and be affected by Arabic Wikipedia; encourage them to merge their work with Wikipedia and other projects.
  • Sharing past experiences about GLAM, WLM, Wikipedia's education program and other regional activities, in order to expand them into new Middle eastern countries as well as further developing them in the countries where they are already employed.

Plan

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Activities

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Preparations

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  1. Preparations for the conference were done through:
  2. Meetings: face to face and online
  3. Chat group on facebook
  4. Phone calls
  5. A shared document on Google Drive (https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1sS29cAM2zcHgbdXdq2oCbHu3q7hE_kYuibZwIWuAY1c/edit)

Event

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The conference will take place in Amman-Jordan. We are currently discussing the offers we got for a suitable venue with all required facilities and equipment that would create an comforting and effective environment for the sessions and workshops.

Date Activity Comment
23 March 2016 Arrival of participants in Amman some may arrive earlier
23 March 2016 Welcome dinner a simple event through which participants can introduce themselves to each other
24-26 March 2016 Conference days in the venue Will work according to the program
25 March 2016 tourism trip after the conference work hours
27 March 2016 Departure of participants

Conference Days

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The main activities we’ll focus on will include, but not limited to:

  1. A learning day: With cooperation of the Learning and Development department (Maria Cruz) in the organization, we’ll arrange for some training sessions that would benefit different users. We’ll target the representatives of the Arab User Groups, to teach them some important techniques that they will make use of when managing their groups’ activities.
  2. A technical Workshops (MediaWiki and Wikidata and WikiSource): This will be a gathering for users with technical background, to learn and work on technical aspects related to Arabic Wikipedia, like fixing bugs, changes in Media Wiki, etc. Any users who are interested in technical work can participate. A special session about bots will also be included.
  3. Wiki belongs in Education: a gathering for users working on and interested in education program. This will include experienced users (from Egypt program, Tighe, etc.) and users initiating new programs (e.g. Palestine, Oman, Iraq) and users with moderate experience (e.g. Jordan). In addition, we would like to invite individuals/groups who started similar initiatives but not under the Education Program umbrella (e.g. University of Jordan – Languages Facility, and bilarabi).
  4. Admins gathering (open discussion/workshop): The conference will be a great chance to admins to discuss policies, activate different ideas such as evaluation of featured articles and photos.
  5. Arab User Groups gathering: We’ll invite representatives of the user groups, to discuss common work, new programs, share experiences, especially that there are 3 new groups recognized officially in 2015, among which is Wikimedia Levant (organizers).
  6. Any important/new ideas that the community would like to suggest. These will be collected in a registration page, and by a simple survey (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IvGN8opIygezu9HdEIQpfWuFV7kyIswBHMaln4zVF68/edit)

Impact

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Target readership

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  • All Wikimedia projects in Arabic; mainly Wikipedia.
  • Wikimedia Commons
  • Wikidata
  • Wikisource

Fit with strategy

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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.

  • Increasing Participation and Increasing Quality:
  1. Improving editor diversity by encouraging new editors from target groups (e.g. women, students)
  2. Coming up with ideas for regional collaboration in order to boost the entire experience and decrease the deviations.
  3. Coming up with new ideas to increase participation, such as Topic-specific online writing competitions, e.g. advanced content related to the Levant history, etc.
  4. Coming up with ideas to increase awareness and trust of Wikipedia.
  5. Coming up with ideas to encourage reading in Wikipedia, such "Wiki Reading Clubs at Schools" with special contests. This will also encourage focusing on quality of our articles rather than focusing on the quantity.
  6. Increasing participation by subject matter experts to perform surface and in-depth reviews. A meetup will be held in the conference to discuss how content (e.g. featured and good) can be evaluated, and what criteria can be defined to select the featured content, how other non-editors (e.g. university teachers, language centers) can participate in these tasks.
  7. Active interest-group collaboration on identifying articles for improvement (e.g. partnerships with cultural and learning institutions, under-represented groups)

Measures of success

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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.

  • About 70 participants representing no less than 10 countries.
  • At least 20 attendees will participate actively as speakers or workshop trainer, but all will share their experience
  • All of the presentations will be published and shared for public.
  • All attendees are required to fill out a post-conference survey, in which they can explain if they find the conference useful, beneficial, and if they learned something.
  • Speakers will be required to send a report on how their presentations will be translated to effective programs and practical work.
  • WMF representatives will also be asked to evaluate their participation and the event in all.
  • A success measure could be collaboration in common projects and activities across the countries and user groups.
  • Evidences that acquired knowledge and skills from the workshops and meetings are transferred to local communities.

Resources and risks

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Resources

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Team members

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Organization team consists of:

Risks

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Risk Management
Possible rejection or delay of the PEG grant
  • We expect a higher amount of expenses, compared to the amount needed for the WikiArabia 2015, and this is due to the fact that we'll invite a higher number of participants (than in WikiArabic 2015) and due to cost of living in Jordan is the highest in the region.
  • The amount needed is an estimate that can't be final unless all participants are selected.
Need a lot of consultation as this is our first grant request ever We will be contacting different people from WMF who are familiar with the Arab community for advice and guidance. We are sure they will spare no efforts helping this making this event work
Invited participants may not be able to get a visa, or may not be able to arrive for the conflicts and security issues in their countries. If the participant will present something or will participate in training or workshop, he/she may join via hang-out. We'll also try to broadcast the sessions online.

Budget

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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
Number Item description Unit Quantity Cost per unit JD /USD Total cost USD/JD Notes
1. Travel costs & visas 20,000 JOD/ 28,208 USD
1.1 International travel costs per participant 40 ?? 20,000 JOD/ 28,208 USD The cost is estimated; registration is still open, and ticket costs will vary according to the participants' countries
1.2 Visas per participant ?? ?? ?? Same as above, the costs are not certain yet
1.3 Traveling Agency Per Participant 40 40 JOD/ 57.14 USD 1600 JOD/ 2285.70 USD
2. Accommodation 5,200 JOD/ 7,334 USD
1.1 Hotel Accommodation Rooms x nights 20 x 4 65 JOD/ 81.68 USD 5,200 JOD/ 7,334 USD
3. Venue and meals 6,500 JOD/ 7,050 USD
1.1 Venue Hall x days 1 x 3 500 JOD/ 705 USD 1,500 JOD/ 2,115 USD
1.2 Meals Meal x days 1 x 4 600 JOD/ 846 USD 2,400 JOD/ 2,538 USD For lunch at the 3 conference days as well as a dinner for the first night
1.3 WiFi connection -- -- -- 200 JOD/ 282 USD
1.4 Transportation Buses x days 1 x 4 1,200 JOD/ 423 USD 300 JOD/ 423 USD For the after party as well as 3 conference days
1.5 After party Nights 1 1200 JOD/ 1,692 USD 1200 JOD/ 1,692 USD Mainly the cost of a dinner meal, final place is not settled yet
4. Printed materials 2,500 JOD/ 3,526 USD
5. Additional expenses 2,500 JOD/ 3,526 USD
1.1 Management expenses -- -- -- 500 JOD/ 705 USD
1.2 Emergency expenses (Contingency budget) -- -- -- 2,000 JOD/ 2,820 USD
TOTAL 38,300 JOD/ 54,450 USD
Total cost of project
Total cost is $54,450. This does not include the cost of accommodating the guests from WMF.
Total amount requested from the Project and Event Grants program
$54,450. As we'll coordinate with the WMF to handle the flights reservations, we don't need the amount directly. So, we can exclude $20,000 from the amount to be received.
Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this project, and amounts funded
Amman Municipality

Non-financial requirements

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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
Coordination with Engineering and Learning and Development

Discussion

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Community notification

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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?

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Endorsements

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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.

  1.   Support Touzrimounir (talk) 18:01, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
  2.   Support Sure, it's a great opportunity to meet all of active Arab Wikipedians to share their experience and discuss how we can improve and enriching the Arabic content, resolving some problems and making a plan for the future of Arabic Wikipedia.--لا روسا (talk) 19:53, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
  3.   Support Good event to share ideas and experience Mohamed Ouda (talk)
  4.   Support Omar2040 (talk) 20:23, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
  5.   Support It's verry important with a sum of six "users group" in the arabic world recognized between 2014 and 2016. This conference should give the best way to helping these users group to increase their experience for disseminating open knowledge around wikimedia projects. Mohammed Bachounda (talk) 14:11, 8 December 2015 (UTC)
  6.   Support I highly support the place of the event for the contributions that the Wiki Levant user group share and the impact it has. I also support the idea of holding such an event; I believe it narrows the geographical and ideological gaps between the Arab users and it creates a better atmosphere for collaboration and achievement.May Hachem93 (talk)--07:35, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
  7.   Support It's a great event where Wikipedians Can share Tools and Ideas to More Contribute. Hamed gamaoun (talk) 18:17, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
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