Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/WikiIndaba South Africa 2024/Final Report

Conference Fund Final Report

Report Status: Draft

Due date: 30 December 2024

Funding program: Conference Fund

Report type: Final

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General information

Title of proposal: WikiIndaba South Africa 2024
Username of applicant: User: Bobbyshabangu
Name of organization: N/A
Amount awarded: 207469
Amount spent: 45074 USD, 817100 ZAR

Part 1: Understanding your work

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

The Organising Committee was not expecting a few things one of which was the WikiIndaba Hackathon being as well received and as well attended. We planned for a rather modest capacity of 20, but were pleasantly surprised by the amount of wikimedians who attended and participated in the hackathon. It is our suggestion to future committess for the WikiIndaba to utilise the same process we used for the Hackathon but to do 2 items:

Plan for more space to accommodate more participants
Rename the Hackathon to a something else as the word Hackathon is not well received by those who do not know about what a hackathon is.

The team also believed that the implementation of a Virtual assistant increased the engagement with attendees.

Keynote, Plenary and breakaways sessions were well received by participants. The program team was deliberate in its selection of items for the program to ensure a balance of informative sessions but also to ensure variation and inclusivity of its attendees.

The Scholarships committees managed to achieve a 50/50 split between new editors and more experienced editors as well as to ensure that the entire region was represented in both English as well as French participants.

For the first time we experimented with having the conference organised by experienced users who organised the conference before, we then matched them with newbies which really worked well.

On the negative side, something which needs to be managed better in the future is the -*planning of travel (Some delegates traveled and arrived in the am of the 1st day of conference which meant they had very little sleep before the opening day.

Turn-around time to change flights or provide flight related information was very slow due to travel agent based in a different continent and not having direct communication with travel agent.
Although we had interpretation service but it was not well received by many French speakers who were expected to provide their own headphones to listen to the interpretation service. As a results many French speakers felt conference was leaning towards Anglophone.
New users should be isolated from scholarship recipients and a workshop should be organised to teach them about international travel to minimize missed flights.

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

We believe that the impact of this conference will be considerable in a few ways:

From a participant experience we believe that all delegates felt included and gain knowledge of activities across Africa as well as on Wikipedia.
From a collaborative perspective we believe that a large number of delegates will go back to there communities and replicate some of the ideas and programmes they witnessed in the presentation which will intern increase the depth of content in there communities.
From a partner perspective there was an exceptional amount of engagement and discussion and we believe will be reflected in upcoming synergies between partners and communities in the coming year.
We believe that from the newbies who were able to attend, a new generation of Wikimedians will be inspired to carry on with editing and wikimedia projects.
The conference also increased network opportunities and strengthened cross boarder partnerships between Wikimedians and Stakeholders who attended from different parts of Africa e.g Madagascar Community UG were introduced for the first time to the African Communities and are now part of Africa Baraza, SADiLaR ( one of the SWiP partners) has connected with many librarians in the continent and are looking to pilot some pan African projects in the future.

3. Would you say that your work improved participants’ ability to apply new skills and knowledge?

Yes

3a. If yes, please describe how and why you think this was successful. Please describe why you think this is the case.

We believe all participants learnt new skills and this is reflected in project initiatives which have since WikiIndaba been initiated. some of these endeavours include:

The Hackathon provided a hands-on approach and many people got to learn new skills e.g how to use the Translate Wiki, How to use Kiwix, How to use dashboard for reporting. How to use Raspberry PI datacasting to update offline Kiwix libraries.
The way the lightnight talks were curated and the types of questions asked also showed that participants were interested.
Library Meetups to introduced the Public to Wikipedia - Initiated post WikiIndaba by first time attendees
BaSesotho 200 Years Project - Initiated by another first time attendee to introduce his community to wikipedia and to increasing content in Sesotho.
Collaborative activities in the community between attendees to empower the community and get involved.
New projects isolated by partners for the new year to look into future collaborations with partners who attend WikiIndaba as well as Communities who were represented at WikiIndaba 2024

4. Please use this space to upload media and other files that help tell your story and impact. You can also provide links to them.

Field to type in URLs.

2. https://outreachdashboard.wmflabs.org/courses/Elandskop_Outdoor_Museum_Rhino_Heritage_Park/BaSesotho_200_Years_Project_Workshop_(2024) 3

5. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Strongly agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Strongly agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Strongly agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Strongly agree

6. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

Planning Documents:

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fXfYrSmaTaNrKdMM1NBLmxrnXlSsU0XR?usp=drive_link

7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?

I believe the key item for any event is to be deliberate about your goals. Our committee had a deliberate goal of inclusivity, information and engagement. these were linked closely to our theme: United in Diversity. We we deliberate about our selection of programme, scholarships and partners. This was by design we wanted to ensure our event had an even balance between gender, language and location.

Part 2: Your main learning

8. Were there any major challenges or things you found difficult that you would like to share? What would you do differently next time?

One major problem was the use of multiple forms/Spreadsheets to manage delegates from International, Local, Self sponsored and Partners, most of these documents had similar information by in different order of column name or with additional fields. The end result was it was very difficult to collate all into one master document. A suggestion would be to create one standard form with all infromation required across areas and add additional fields at the end. This would allow for a quicker collation of data. Another item which we would plan differently in future events is to have 1 contractor for all AV requirements which would allow more control and quicker resolution via troubleshooting. We had mulitple vendors and this delayed troubleshooting. Additionally for future events we would propose that the venue booked includes access onsite to the venue to conduct testing, go lives the day before to refine the agenda and troubleshoot additional issue, even if there is cost implications of this.

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

The various teams were exceptional in there assistance however one item which we believe can be beneficial in future is for the foundation to have a travel team member join the event as there are both learnings to be had by being present at events and the event delegates would benefit from having a member of the team who could assist with travel related issues onsite. Additionally more strategic on site participation would allow for better resolution of region issues. As an example if we had a senior member of Product and Tech available at the event with a list of technical issues supplied ahead of time, we could have a collaborative engagement outside of meetings to resolve some of these identified issue from around the community.

10. What would you recommend on a local and/or regional level as the best next step to leverage your success and momentum?

On a local level the key activity post Conferences is to strike while the iron is hot. We have ensure that we leverage off of the event with partners involved to continue discussion and isolate synergies for the Local community. Additionally we also have ensured that the good relationships built at the conference are nurtured to ensure longevity and possible colloborative activities in the communities, locally as well as Regionally. I believe that as a region we should be meeting more between events to ensure activities can be aligned and support provided where possible

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

1. Create one template for scholars to ensure collation is easier. 2. Initiate partner engagements in the December preceeding the next Event to ensure you have enough time to engage and align on partner financial years for budgeting purposes. 3. Finalise communications plan and printing 1 month before event to ensure printing is completed well ahead of events 4. Visa Reimbursements should be documented prior to event and paid on 1st day of event.

Part 3: Metrics

12. Open Metrics reporting

In your application, you defined some open metrics and targets (goals). You will see a table like the one below with your metric in the title and the target you set in your proposal automatically filled in.

Open Metrics Summary
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Newbie Editor Activation	A percentage of Newbie editors who are motivated and activities to run initiatives in their communities/countries Target (1) 50% of newbies who attended the conference run their own initiatives 6 months after the conference	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Movement growth and regional cooperation	Metrics Description (2) A percentage of invites from Countries without Affiliates, start plans to organise their communities Target (2) At least 2 more countries start affiliate set-up 6 months after the conference, and at least 2 affiliates collaborate in a project across geographic region	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Regional leadership activation	Metrics Description (3) Clarification of regional leadership and cooperation Target (3) 2 More community members volunteer to support WISCom	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Raise Wikimedians awareness	Number of Wikimedians who have had their article tagged for speedy deletion, IP blocked in English, Arabic and French Wikipedia. What do they understand about policies in these languages Target (4) 3 admin/stewards attend the WikiIndaba conference	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Gender equity	Ensure that different genders are represented in the conference, in an equal manner Target (5) Minimum of 40% non-male attendees.	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

13. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?

No

13a. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future. Also mention why you felt you had to change some metrics.

N/A

14. Here are the templates of registration and survey tools that the Wikimedia Foundation has developed so that you can use in your conference fund work.

1. Standard Registration Form, 2. Post-event participant survey

14a. Please share the result(s) with us, provide the link(s) or summarize the main result(s) and insight(s) from them.

Registration Form - International Scholarships: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qwEFhj77El_ILI_mUoB04kTT_iCkOhSeDYFy4Z9EaQU/edit?ts=66c46279#responses Registration Form - Local Scholarships: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1vTD1t4zz5nljOgdbOLsd-AWTTM6RwTMkuEJ8r6UjsCY/edit#responses Registration Form - Partners: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1qmd57J170TpdkHxNv_I-dvE_Ubn1YMJUwP-hrNR8nPA/edit#responses Registration Form - Self Sponsored: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1V9jUFS-ByqcvYxiRJLPGXhZ0gow9unZjcmCtjyaAQSQ/edit#responses

Post Conference Survey: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1tkMLCqdnGfOtpm7Z2iIpmNvn6xzXykzR/edit?usp=drive_link&ouid=117381669003576879904&rtpof=true&sd=true

14b. If you used other forms, please share them with us, as these forms might be useful for others to use.

Part 4: Financial reporting and compliance

15. & 16. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

817100 ZAR

17. Please state the total amount spent in USD.

45074 USD

18. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

Upload a financial report file.

WikiIndaba 2024 Budget .xlsx

Please provide a link to your financial reporting document.

Financial Document: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1IhnoJMaIQWr02dHBWenX9IBapom63PGeM6QsG3I7lWE/edit?usp=drive_link

As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

19. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.

No Changes however due to excellent negotiating with vendors the Chapter managed to realise a total of USD 645 discounts.

20. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

Yes

20a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

R80 700.49 unspent funds which is the result of discounts from vendors (Total of 11 698 rand) as well as assistance provided by the Foundation - Communications team with regards to Translations.

20b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

A. Propose to use the underspent funds within this Fund period with PO approval

20c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

We hope to utilize the under spend to fund a few Wikimedia South Africa Chapter members travel to Wikimania 2025. If the foundation approves these funds would be added to the Chapter Budget line item - 14 (Wikimania scholarships)

21. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

Yes

22. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

23. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.

Yes

24. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.