Grants:PEG/WM CZ/Mediagrant/Report/2012/02

Screenshot of our tracker environment showing current Mediagrant and P&O "topics" and "individual requests" (as of 13 January 2012)

This is the 3rd report on Mediagrant, which aims to summarize our progress as of February 2012. Sice the last report, it has been a calm time for the mediagrant's "eye"; not many new topics were established. One member of the eye (Che) has transferred from our eye to the Presentation & Outreach eye - in an effort to consolidate the state of things in P&O. This means that current members of our eye are Chmee2, Packa and Vojtech.dostal.

We made some effort to raise wikipedistic and public awareness about the Mediagrant, improving our mainpage on Wikipedia and "advertising" on a few occasions (various Facebook pages). We are also trying to encourage several wikipedians to apply for grant, however without significant results yet.

Overview of MG media collection topics edit

Current long-term topics (as of 22 February 2012)
Name Description Journeys
("tickets")
Objects Photographs Expenditures CZK Paid out CZK
Foto českých obcí Documentation of Czech Municipalities including the smallest ones 34 336 2895 7 880 ($420) 5 956
Lidová architektura Vernacular architecture 1 1 31 728 ($40) 0
Lidové kroje a zvyky Czech Vernacular Clothes and Customs 2 2 301 2 100 ($120) 2 000
Obrazová dokumentace chráněných území a památných stromů v ČR Documentation of protected Natural Areas and Memorable Trees in the Czech Republic 17 71 1260 2 787 ($150) 2 713
Odborná fotografie Scientific Photography 1 0 0 120 ($10) 0
Události Documentation of important events in the Czech Republic 2 2 93 132 ($10) 97
Vodstvo Water bodies of the Czech Republic 0 0 0 0 0
Židovské památky Documentation of Jewish monuments in the Czech Republic 5 44 392 1 150 ($70) 1 150
Summary 62 456 4972 14 897 ($780) 11 916


Latest one-time requests (4 November 2011 – 22 February 2012)
Name Description Photographs Expenditures CZK Paid out CZK
Komponenty k fotoaparátu Camera components (flash and tripod) N/A 7 501 ($400) 7 501
Ostrava-Poruba One-day event documenting architecture in Ostrava 295 665 ($40) 665
Fotoaparát 2 příslušenství Better equipment for our camera N/A 2 036 ($110) 2 036
Akumulátor NiMH AA (R6) Sanyo eneloop glitter 1.2V 2000mAh (8ks) New batteries for our camera N/A 674 ($40) 674
Summary 295 10 876 ($570) 10 876

Remarks edit

  • There will always be some difference between “Expenditures” and “Paid out” because there is always a time delay between recording expenditures into tracker and supporting them by documents and approving them. The second reason for this is that a few expenditures were decided not be approved in full extent.
  • The amounts in USD was rounded.

We have analyzed the current long-term topic’s difference (2 893 CZK) and we have found that the difference is composed of:

  • 1 616 CZK (7 journeys) – old journeys from Documentation of Czech Municipalities topic; these expenditures have been paid out but they have just not been correctly filed in the tracker
  • 1 032 CZK (4 journeys) – required documents (tickets) have not been added yet
  • 245 CZK (2 journeys) – these tickets have been approved but have not been paid out yet: we will ask our treasurer if there is some problem with them (for instance, the participants have not added their account numbers)

Also, the pay-out process has somewhat accelerated after our board chairman has handed over the treasurer post (due to his lack of free time).

Summary edit

Total amount of all Mediagrant expenditures: 81 113,85 CZK (approx. 4270 USD)

  • one-time requests: 66 216,25 CZK (3490 USD)
  • long-term topics: 14 897,60 CZK (780 USD)

Evaluation edit

PR efforts edit

The Czech Wiki-community is fairly small and it proves very difficult to engage new participants. Indeed, most of the active participants in Mediagrant are active members of our chapter. It is hard to attract new people from the Czech Wikipedia (or even from outside the Wiki world) to join and ask for funds. The attractivity of "taking pictures and getting refunds" program is low for many people: for example, each of 30 students of an ambassador project visited a protected area and took pictures of it; however, none of them filed a receipt in the grant we offered to them. It just seems that some people will never be willing to take part in the Mediagrant.

Still, we want to do everything possible to attract new long-term participants and make the Mediagrant more popular. At the moment, we want to "export" the Mediagrant from Prague (where it is fairly well-known thanks to our regular wiki-meetings) to other parts of the Czech Republic (e.g. by speaking about it at Brno's first wiki-meeting in a long time, on 25 March). We are also planning to post an article (on Mediagrant) to a non-wiki webpage targeting on photographing. However, this will be done in next quartal period. Also, the overall PR strategy of our chapter is going to change in many ways after the new Wikimedia CZ homepage is established, enabling easier outreach to both wikipedians and people outside the wiki-world.

Decision-making edit

We have made our decision-making process more effective. One of the eye's members is in charge of checking new requests and controlling that the decision-making has not stuck. We are able to make quicker decisions now and the smoothness of the process mainly depends on how quickly the applicants answer our questions.