Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Rapid Fund/amFOSS Hackathon + IMD Working Group Meeting - 2023 (ID: 22022902)

statusFunded
amFOSS Hackathon + IMD Working Group Meeting - 2023
proposed start date2023-01-31
proposed end date2023-06-30
grant start date2023-02-01T00:00:00Z
grant end date2023-07-30T00:00:00Z
budget (local currency)405750 INR
budget (USD)4966.38 USD
amount recommended (USD)4966.38
grant typeGroup of individuals not registered with an organization
funding regionSA
decision fiscal year2022-23
applicant• Nivas10798
organization (if applicable)• Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group
Review Final Report

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Applicant Details edit

Please provide your main Wikimedia Username.

Nivas10798

Please provide the Usernames of people related to this proposal.

Jayprakash12345, Gopavasanth, Lakshmi_Warrier, Sujith116, Krishkavya, KCVelaga

Organization

Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group

Are you a member of any Wikimedia affiliate or group, including informal groups like Wiki Fan Clubs, emerging language communities, not recognized Wikimedia groups etc.? Please list them all.

Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group, amFOSS

Grant Proposal edit

M. Please state the title of your proposal. This will also be the Meta-Wiki page title.

amFOSS Hackathon + IMD Working Group Meeting - 2023

Q. Indicate if it is a local, international, or regional proposal and if it involves several countries? (optional)

Local

Q2. If you have answered regional or international, please write the country names and any other information that is useful for understanding your proposal.


R. If you would like, please share any websites or social media accounts that your group or organization has.

https://m.facebook.com/indicmediawikidev/ https://github.com/indictechcom https://amfoss.in/

1. What is the change that you are trying to bring about and why is this important.

Indic MediaWiki Developers User Group, initially started off with an effort to support the technical needs of Indic Wikimedia communities. After a couple of years of being an informal group (https://w.wiki/VoX), we evolved into a User Group, expanding our scope of activities into areas such as outreach and mentorship. Although individual members of the User Group have done newcomers focused activities in the past, as a group we haven't, this is a step towards. The proposal has two components.

Explore pathways for newcomers: After the User Group has been formed, most of our activities have been focused on supporting existing Wikimedia communities (for example, training existing content contributors on technical areas to deal with basic to intermediate issues), and keep the current contributors engaged (through hackathons). Although these have been successful for their scope, we realized that there is a need bring in newcomers into the space. The main reason being, we realized that when training existing content contributors 1) it is hard to keep them retained in technical spaces, as they tend to move back to their content contributions post activity 2) a need for us also start with programming fundamentals, before even going into Wikimedia technical training. By collaborations at our activities in the past, we realized there is interest from existing open-source contributors. Our plan into tap into them.

Planning for the user group: Until now, most if not all our activities have been ad-hoc. We would like to shift to a more planned model. Given that, we would like organise some dedicated time to plan for 1-2 year strategy, annual plan, governance, processes around newcomers onboarding and retention, and defining keys areas + responsibilities. This is crucial for future growth and sustainability of our user group. We believe that dedicated time to think about these aspects is necessary as we hardly get time during other events.

2. Describe your main approaches or strategies to achieve these changes and why you think they will be effective.

The first component is the hackathon at Amrita University in collaboration with amFOSS, an active club already working on free-and-open-source projects. This will be training/onboarding followed by a hackathon. We believe that since amFOSS club members are actively working on several open-source projects, they would be motivated to contribute to Wikimedia technical areas. Three members of the club have participated in last Wikimania Hackathon we have organized in August 2022, and through them we have been made aware that there is interest from the group. This will also be new pathway for us to explore to welcome and retain newcomers in Wikimedia technical areas.

For the working group meeting, after several attempts in the past to club this time with other workshops and events, it didn't work well. As we would like to work on a few key things such as governance, 1-3 year strategy, an annual plan, key focus on areas and a workflow to welcome and retain newcomers. We believe setting aside this dedicated time in-person will be immensely helpful for the future and sustainability of our user group.

3. What are the activities you will be developing and delivering as part of these approaches or strategies?

For hackathon cum training at amFOSS: initially the club members will promote the activity at their university through their channels. We will having a brief online session on Wikimedia technical spaces and how they can contribute. Post that, there will be simple screening for those interested. We are expecting to have 25-40 students for the final in-person training. The training will be a three-day activity, during the first 1.5-2 days we will be onboarding the participants to MediaWiki basics, Phabricator, Gerrit, Toolforge, VPS, among others. Once participants get comfortable with these aspects, a pre-curated list of outstanding tasks will be used to kickstart participants contributions.

For the working group meeting: this will be 2-3 day activity, where will be having the core working group members and 2-3 active contributors to the group. This mostly be a brainstorming activity on the issues mentioned above such as governance, 1-3 year strategy, an annual plan, key focus on areas and a workflow to welcome and retain newcomers. We plan spend 70% of the time on brainstorming and around 30% of the time documenting and planning next steps. All the documentation will be made available on Meta-Wiki, which will be the outcome from this.

4. Are your activities part of a Wikimedia movement campaign or event? If so, please select the relevant campaign below. If so, please select all the relevant campaigns from the list below. If "other", please state which.

Not applicable

5. Do you have the team that is needed to implement this proposal?

All the team members listed here will be participating here in their volunteer capacity.

For the amFOSS hackathon:

  • On behalf of the User Group: User:Jayprakash12345, User:Gopavasanth will be leading the program and User:Nivas10798 will be coordinating.
  • From amFOSS club: User:Lakshmi_Warrier, User:Sujith116, User:Krishkavya

For the working meeting, we currently have four core team members, User:Jayprakash12345, User:Gopavasanth, User:Nivas10798, and User:KCVelaga, will be particpating in the conversations. In addition, we also plan to invite 2-3 new contributors from our past activities to be involved in the process.

6. Please state if your proposal aims to work to bridge any of the identified CONTENT knowledge gaps (Knowledge Inequity)? Select up to THREE that most apply to your work.

Not applicable

6.1 In a few sentences, explain how your work is specifically addressing this content gap (or Knowledge inequity) to ensure a greater representation of knowledge.

n/a

7. Please state if your proposal includes any of these areas or THEMATIC focus. Select up to THREE that most apply to your work and explain the rationale for identifying these themes.

Education, Open Technology, Diversity

8. Will your work focus on involving participants from any underrepresented communities?

Geographic

9. Who are the target participants and from which community? How will you engage participants before and during the activities? How will you follow up with participants after the activities?

The target participants are the members of the amFOSS club and students of Amrita University. Prior the event, amFOSS contacts will promoting the event within their college, about an awareness session. We will then hosting a brief online session to introduce the students to Wikimedia technical spaces. Post this, we will be doing a simple screening of interested student (based on their interest, previous experience to FOSS projects). We are also considering if it is worth to add a small technical task. During the training event, day 1 will be spent on basic training of MediaWiki, tools, bots and user scripts. Day 2 we are planning to split the participants in groups based on their interest (such as tools, bots, dashboards etc.) The pre-curated list of tasks will be used as lead, however, participants will be free pursue their own interests. We will have a showcase of work on Day 3.

We are planning to maintain a collaboration with amFOSS members. We will be planning further acitivities related to technical areas with the members. As this is also connected to one of the main agenda items for the working group meeting (welcoming and retaining newcomers) we will be taking our learnings from here.

10. In what ways are you actively seeking to contribute towards creating a safer, supportive, more equitable environment for participants?

We will ensure that Universal Code of Conduct and the Friendly Space Policy are informed and participants are of that in advance.

11. Please tell us about how you have let your Wikimedia communities know about the planned activities and this proposal. Use this space to describe the processes you carried out to make the community more involved in planning this proposal. Please link the on-wiki community discussion(s) around the proposals.

https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/mediawiki-india@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/3FPGDZNXFGMVM4EBKDZTYU3PIWCIYV6A/

12. Are you aware of other Rapid Fund proposals in your local group, community, or region that are being submitted and that align with your proposed project?

No

If yes:

12.1 Did you explore the possibility of doing a joint proposal with other leaders in your group?
N/A
12.2 How will this joint proposal allow you to have better results?
N/A
13. Will you be working with other external, non-Wikimedia partners to implement this proposal? Required.

Yes

13.1 Please describe these partnerships and what motivates the potential partner to be part of the proposal and how they add value to your work.

For the hackathon, we will be collaborating with amFOSS, a student-run community with over 50+ members from Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham, Amritapuri, over the last 14 years. They will collaborating with us to provide support at the university, promotion on campus etc. We will also be utilizing their knowledge to design the specifics of the program that will best suit their community. The university will also be providing the event space, a computer lab and necessary internet access.

14. In what ways do you think your proposal most contributes to the Movement Strategy 2030 recommendations. Select a maximum of THREE options that most apply.

Increase the Sustainability of Our Movement, Ensure Equity in Decision-making, Coordinate Across Stakeholders, Invest in Skills and Leadership Development, Evaluate, Iterate, and Adapt

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation edit

15. What do you hope to learn from your work in this fund proposal?

We intend to learn the following things from this activity

  • collaborating with external partners
  • organzing activities for technical students
  • strategies that will be effective in retention of users in technical areas
16. Based on these learning questions, what is the information or data you need to collect to answer these questions? Please register this information (as metric description) in the following spaces provided.
Main Open Metrics Data
Main Open Metrics Description Target
Progress on technical tasks For a hackathon, it is hard to set a target the output, the key idea is learning and awareness of technical spaces for newcomers. However, we would like to target a few outstanding issues. 10
Development of annual plan Our main work from the working group meeting is to bring planned structure into our activities. We will be publishing a plan on Meta-Wiki 1
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
17. Core quantitative metrics.
Core Metrics Summary
Core metrics Description Target
Number of participants 25
Number of editors
Number of organizers 5
Number of new content contributions per Wikimedia project
Wikimedia Project Description Target
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
N/A N/A N/A
17.1 If for some reason your proposal will not measure these core metrics please provide an explanation.

editors and content contributors are not applicable as this is a technical event

18. What tools would you use to measure each metric selected? Please refer to the guide for a list of tools. You can also write that you are not sure and need support.

We will using Phabricator for technical task tracking.

Financial Proposal edit

19. & 19.1 What is the amount you are requesting from Wikimedia Foundation? Please provide this amount in your local currency.

405750 INR

19.2 What is this amount in US Currency (to the best of your knowledge)?

4966.38 USD

20. Please upload your budget for this proposal or indicate the link to it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1yYea6_xhVPt9io76vJ4h_5V4_bUbaAz1T85oVYLVqes/edit

We/I have read the Application Privacy Statement, WMF Friendly Space Policy and Universal Code of Conduct.

Yes

Endorsements and Feedback edit

Please add endorsements and feedback to the grant discussion page only. Endorsements added here will be removed automatically.

Community members are invited to share meaningful feedback on the proposal and include reasons why they endorse the proposal. Consider the following:

  • Stating why the proposal is important for the communities involved and why they think the strategies chosen will achieve the results that are expected.
  • Highlighting any aspects they think are particularly well developed: for instance, the strategies and activities proposed, the levels of community engagement, outreach to underrepresented groups, addressing knowledge gaps, partnerships, the overall budget and learning and evaluation section of the proposal, etc.
  • Highlighting if the proposal focuses on any interesting research, learning or innovation, etc. Also if it builds on learning from past proposals developed by the individual or organization, or other Wikimedia communities.
  • Analyzing if the proposal is going to contribute in any way to important developments around specific Wikimedia projects or Movement Strategy.
  • Analysing if the proposal is coherent in terms of the objectives, strategies, budget, and expected results (metrics).

Endorse