Grants talk:Conference/Kawayashu/Queering Wikipedia

Expert consulting for crisis

The LGBT+ community experiences above average crisis experiences such as from external hostility, harassment, and being the target of misconduct. Harassment reports have been a regular part of the Wikimedia LGBT+ experience everywhere. If we had this conference, then we would convene more experienced Wikimedia contributors who advocate for the LGBT+ community and who are likely points of contact for responding to reports of LGBT+ harassment.

To date the Wikimedia community has developed its own responses to harassment. The Wikimedia Foundation Trust and Safety team offers some support, but this team probably does not have the particular expertise to provide training for a group of people to develop best practices for peer support. Also, the WMF T&S team have a bias to recommend WMF workflows, which may not take advantage of off-wiki resources or which may under-utilize peer-to-peer Wikiemdia community support in favor of digital resources which are more generally available.

I was considering whether to seek out options for expert training from an established organization which could advise us on how to respond to LGBT+ crisis situations and also teach something about the contemporary field of online communities + crisis response. If there were such an organization available to come to this Wiki LGBT+ event, and if they had experience in online communities, and if they were LGBT+ oriented, then under what circumstances would we want their presentation at this conference? If we had them, would that be for 2 hours, half day, full day, or what?

Thoughts? Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:34, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

That's a good idea! :) Do you have any suggestions for such an expert or expert organisation? --Shikeishu (talk) 12:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

@Shikeishu: en:Samaritans (charity). This organization has expressed some interest in an ongoing collaboration with Wikimedia projects and has asked for introductions to a community group for conversation. If we wanted them then I expect they might join our event. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:59, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea Blue Rasberry . While a specific conference such as this will harness and share all the combined knowledge of the participants. There may likely be some things that are needed or will be useful that can best come from external capacity building opportunities. Should this or similar items be included in the budget Kawayashu Shikeishu? --- FULBERT (talk) 03:13, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

@FULBERT and Kawayashu: We have an offer of sponsorship from another source if we want this organization at our event. There would be no need to budget for this but let's consider whether we want it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:54, 7 September 2019 (UTC)

I vote for inviting them Blue Rasberry Kawayashu Shikeishu --- FULBERT (talk) 03:03, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi all, I apologize for the lack of reactivity last week, but I was in the francophonic conference in Brussels and didn't check my account. I totally support the idea of having such training in the conference. In fact, the foundation seems to be pushing for having capacity building elements in the upcoming meetings. And yes, the money for bringing such trainers is included in the scolarships section, yet, I don't know if we should pay them or ask them for free training (didn't include this in the budget).--Kawayashu (talk) 19:33, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

@FULBERT and Bluerasberry: I was also thinking of having a trainer or consultant who can help us setting the guidelines that we want to present to the foundation and the other affiliates as an output of the conference.--Kawayashu (talk) 19:39, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

That is something different. The WMF hired such consultants to help produce documentation with the Strategy/Wikimedia movement/2018-20. I see the value of having a professional around to guide conversation to consensus on making recommendations. Let's see what time we have in the program - I prefer your idea for a consultant support for documentation to any other kind of consulting. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:26, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Interested participants?

Should there be a section for interested participants, or should that list be created elsewhere? Not sure if funding is based on level of interest or not, but IMO, never too early to start gauging community interest. -Another Believer (talk) 22:40, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Do you think this would be a different section than the endorsements? --Shikeishu (talk) 12:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Yes. IMO, endorsing the conference and hoping to attend are two different things. -Another Believer (talk) 20:19, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

I agree that endorsing and being interested in participating are 2 different things. I'll add a specific section for that once I get the apprvoal for that from the grants team, as I can't edit anymore the application now (under review).--Kawayashu (talk) 19:51, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

WMF comments

Dear Kawayashu and Shikeishu,

Thank you for submitting this informative proposal! We are happy to explore the opportunity to support you in hosting the first LGBT+ Wikimedia community conference.

Your proposal has many strengths to highlight and the collaborative effort and vision is clear.

I reviewed your proposal, and have some follow up questions and comments to share.

• I was happy to see so many partnership opportunities and for taking into consideration different stakeholders.
• In hosting this conference and addressing such pressing issues, you are creating the platform and opportunity to impact and contribute to all Wiki projects in all Wikimedia communities.
• Engaging in the notion of peer support is a great modelling to all. Do you currently have any cross-communities or cross-projects initiatives?
• Community input - I'm not clear on whether you sent a survey, or a feasibility check. Were there any questions focused on community specific needs and interests? The survey was supposed to help you identify the agenda for the conference. Not only to assure the need to have one.
• Code of conduct will be a great outcome to achieve and integrate through all movement events. But I'm still missing some clear goals and outcomes. What will be the action items to follow up on after the conference (and to build on top of for the next conference)? How will you evaluate your impact? What will success look like? Please share metrics and objectives to indicate you met your goals.
• Can you list a few of the non-Wikimedian organizations you are thinking of inviting?
• As for not communicating the conference to the wider Wikimedia movement - It seems like this is the key to dealing with the other challenges you mentioned.
• According to the budget table, you are including accommodation costs for 50 people. But you mentioned you are offering only 20 full scholarships. Could you please clarify?
• Please remove the 'self paying' travel costs from the table. The budget table should reflect only direct conference expenses.
• Could you please clarify the Project management (salaries) costs? What is the scope of work and for how long? Are those Wikimedia Österreich employees?

Thank you for the work you have done on this grant proposal. We are excited to see your motivation and initiative to encourage growth within the community and to raise awareness to such an important issue that challenge our whole community and the free knowledge vision. Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 22:37, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi Chen, Thanks for the remarks and questions. So I will answer some of the questions and leave the rest for Shikeishu.

* Engaging in the notion of peer support is a great modelling to all. Do you currently have any cross-communities or cross-projects initiatives?
Yes we do. Many members of the UG are coming from different communities and they are collaborating to set many regional activities such us Wikipedia for peace and WikiLovesPride. Also currently, a joint project related to LBT communities is being prepared by some members of the UG and the LessanspagEs team (who are based in France and Switzerland and work on feminism). Also, many chapters are supporting our work such us Wikimedia CH, Wikimedia France and Wikimedia Austria, by funding, communicating about our work, and giving us access to their resources.

* Community input - I'm not clear on whether you sent a survey, or a feasibility check. Were there any questions focused on community specific needs and interests? The survey was supposed to help you identify the agenda for the conference. Not only to assure the need to have one.
Indeed, the questions we shared with the community didn't only focus on the need behind the conference, but mostly how they want it to be, what do they want to have as activities, and who can support organizing it. So for example, it's through these discussions that we knew there is a capacity building need that we will need to work on during the conference, and that there is also a need for setting a more solid structure of the UG, something we also included in the agenda. Even the dates and the venue were decided after these discussions.

* Code of conduct will be a great outcome to achieve and integrate through all movement events. But I'm still missing some clear goals and outcomes. What will be the action items to follow up on after the conference (and to build on top of for the next conference)? How will you evaluate your impact? What will success look like? Please share metrics and objectives to indicate you met your goals.
We are not aiming to make just a code of conduct. We also want to come up with some guidelines for the rest of the Wikimedia affiliates world Wide to implement in order more Queer friendly and inclusive. These guidelines will give methodology related to big aspects of the affiliates work whether in communication, projects management, leadership, community engaging, etc. And a way to measure the impact is to see how the affiliates will respond to these guidelines, and evaluating the change that happened in their locals communities (more queer people in the community, in the board, more partnerships with Queer NGOs, etc). So success for us is managing to convince even few affiliates to engage and follow these guidelines and hopefully see them participate in the next editions of the conference. On the other hand, one of the goals of the conference is to build partnerships with the Non Wikimedian institutions we want to have, and the way these partnerships will be evaluated is through the emerging communities that will be developed thanks to them, as we are mainly seeking institutions working in countries where so far, the LGBT+ User group didn't reach.

* Can you list a few of the non-Wikimedian organizations you are thinking of inviting?
We are thinking of inviting some regional leagues of Queer NGOs such as the Arab foundation for freedom and equity, a league for NGOs operating in the MENA region, the African Queer Youth Initiative, same concept but for african NGOs, and the international federation for librarians and archives's LGBTQ Users Special Interest Group. Also, we will try having someone from the UN's high commissioner for human rights. As you can through these examples, we have 2 types of insitutions we are inviting: One for the academic collaboration for the content on Wikimedia projects, and one for starting new communities of LGBT+ wikimedians in countries where so far, there aren't any.

I leave the questions related to the budget to Thomas, and if he has anything else to add on what I said. Hope it's all clear. Thanks, --Kawayashu (talk) 11:31, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Chipping in with a bit of general context. As this is the first conference of this type, from the outset it is strategically modest in numbers. When this was discussed in recent WM-LGBT+ videoconferences, there were several benefits such as easier logistics and the ability to focus sessions on planned outcomes. When planning the event with a ballpark of 50 attendees, the number of related organizational representatives who are not themselves active in contributing to Wikimedia LGBT+ events needs more careful management. External participants do have significant value to offer, and will help energize the conference, at the same time it's worth recognizing that the first conference benefits from staying relatively modest, while later conferences may be able to more confidently have a wider approach with significantly larger overall numbers of participants and more varied stakeholders. Thanks --Fæ (talk) 15:06, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments and questions, Chen! I agree with what Houssem already mentioned and would like to add some more content to some of his answers and reply to the ones he has left for me:

• Engaging in the notion of peer support is a great modelling to all. Do you currently have any cross-communities or cross-projects initiatives?
  • We are currently developing a nondiscrimination policy in the User Group. This is done on a global level, we have a small working group working on it and reporting back to the bigger group in our monthly online meetings. However, we would like to have more LGBTI+ people working on this than just the people in this small working group. This conference could be a great way to continue working on this.
• Code of conduct will be a great outcome to achieve and integrate through all movement events. But I'm still missing some clear goals and outcomes. What will be the action items to follow up on after the conference (and to build on top of for the next conference)? How will you evaluate your impact? What will success look like? Please share metrics and objectives to indicate you met your goals.
  • Some indicators to look out for:
    • amount of participants we will have in the online User Group meetings before and after the conference
    • amount of new working groups within the User Group formed
    • amount of projects (e.g. Rapid Grant applications, Wiki Loves Pride edit-a-thons) developed after the conference that refer to the conference as an important space for having started the project, created the partnership and gotten skills for implementing it
  • We would like to evaluate our impact both at the end of the conference in an evaluation session as well as by doing a participant survey 1 week and 2 months after the conference. In these surveys as well as the evaluation session we will ask for learning and impact, e.g. about change in involvement in the movement, about project ideas and whether they are being implemented. Of course, we will also use these evaluation opportunities to learn for future conferences in terms of program, selection of participants, venue, etc.
• Can you list a few of the non-Wikimedian organizations you are thinking of inviting?
  • I could also imagine inviting representatives from ILGA, which is the biggest network of LGBT+ activist organisations and possibly some of its members, IGLYO, which is a network of LGBT+ youth organisations, OII, a network of intersex organisations, Transgender Europe as well as LGBT+ museums and archives (e.g. QWIEN in Vienna or Schwules Museum in Berlin).
    • In Linz our partner organisation Open Commons Linz already works closely with HOSI - the LGTBQ+ advocacy group of Upper Austria - and we already onboarded them to our planning and they will support us wherever possible. So this is definitely an organisation we will work closely with on a local level. --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 13:22, 26 September 2019 (UTC)
• According to the budget table, you are including accommodation costs for 50 people. But you mentioned you are offering only 20 full scholarships. Could you please clarify?
  • We assume that a majority of our participants will need funding. 20 of our 50 participants we would like to fully cover through this grant. 15 or more participants we would like to have funded by chapters that can support their members in the participation of conferences or even support participants from other regions to make their participation possible (e.g. Wikimedia Austria, Wikimedia UK, Wikimedia Germany, Wikimedia Switzerland). However, in events like Wikipedia for Peace/Europride Vienna 2019 we have made the experience that chapters are more willing to support travel costs than to support other costs such as accommodation and food. Also, for completely self-funded participants, we would like to lower their costs and thus make it more easily possible for some people without scholarship or chapter support to come to the conference by covering their accommodation costs. This is why we included accommodation for 50 people.
• Please remove the 'self paying' travel costs from the table. The budget table should reflect only direct conference expenses.
  • Done.
• Could you please clarify the Project management (salaries) costs? What is the scope of work and for how long? Are those Wikimedia Österreich employees?
  • These are not salaries for Wikimedia Österreich employees, but salaries for the three main organisers (Houssem, Magdalena and me). We want to work a lot on this conference and make it as professional as possible in terms of content, facilitation, preparation, logistics, support and communication with participants, documentation, impact assessment, follow-up. The salary would not cover all of the hours we would work on the project. We would start our work right after receiving the grant, in November 2019 and work until the assessment of the second survey sent out two months after the conference in July 2020 as well as having handed in the grant report. Wikimedia Österreich employees would mainly support us in administrative tasks as well as communication, which is why we included the overhead costs.
  • Just a small correction: The project management costs are salaries for Houssem and Thomas. My working time is not included in this calculation and it won't be necessary. Maxdalenareiter (talk) 11:07, 10 October 2019 (UTC)

Please let us know if you have any more questions or comments. --Shikeishu (talk) 07:26, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Green Event

A bit of additional information regarding the event, that was not yet available at the proposal deadline: We would like to make this event as green as possible and there is an incentive program in Upper Austria with guidelines and possibly a small subsidy of 500 EUR if the event qualifies as a green event. This includes information of all stakeholders about green travel and conference behaviour, organic and regional catering etc. Digging deeper into the requirements, it seems like this is an attainable goal for our conference. There is more information available here (in German). --CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 13:33, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Some more detailed information on this:

We want to take at least following steps:

• Accomodation: Together with the office for green events we will try to find a green accomodation.
• Catering: We will have food from a caterer that offers vegan or vegetarian, local or fair trade ingredients.

Austrian tap water is of high quality and can be offered in glass carafes. There are several local beverage producers, breweries and winemakers that offer non-alcoholic and alcoholic dinks in reuseable glass bottles. We will offer fair trade coffee and sugar as well as vegan or organic milk. We use glasses, tableware and cuttlery as well as the dishwasher at the venue.

• Travel:We will ask participants to travel by public transport and offer them help to find train or bus routes to Linz. If the distance is too long we will explain the possibility to pay CO2 compensation for a flight.
• Waste seperation system: Our venue offers a proper waste seperation system that we will explain to all participants.
• Printing products and material:We will produce only those printing producs that are necessary in an appropriate number and will use decorative elemements (banner etc.) that we can reuse for following events and that are recycleable after its lifetime.
• Communication:We will inform all the partner organisations as well as the participants about the green event and how they can support us in this decision.

--CDG (WMAT staff) (talk) 12:53, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Yay for Wiki Loves Vegan! Any option for remote participation or recording, as with WikiProject remote event participation? Whatever the case I am happy. Let's be more sustainable every year! Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:04, 3 October 2019 (UTC)

Eligibility confirmed, Round 1 2019-2020

This Conference Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for Round 1 2019-2020 review.

New grants will be announced October 29, 2019. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Final WMF comments

Hi Kawayashu, Fæ, CDG (WMAT staff), Maxdalenareiter and Shikeishu,

I very much appreciate your thorough response. It was very informative and helpful.

The committee and I reviewed your proposal and we actually don't have a lot of other comments apart from maybe the need to refine some of the quantitative metrics. But if approved, we can work on it together.

Final decision will be announced October 29. Thank you again for your cooperation! Best CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 03:46, 19 October 2019 (UTC)

Conference team coordination

@Kawayashu, Maxdalenareiter, Shikeishu, FULBERT, and WikiLester: @RachelWex, Kaizenify, Jsamwrites, Bluerasberry, and Opsylac:

Congratulations everyone on having the funding confirmed!

This may already be in-hand, apologies if I'm accidentally stepping on toes, but it would be a good idea to agree how volunteers help with conference logistics, planning, scholarships, communication and how we should best coordinate our efforts. The WM-LGBT+ User Group has a zoom conference scheduled for 19 November, see Wikimedia LGBT User Group November 2019, so it would work well if volunteers already named in the conference team and any new volunteers could join an initial zoom discussion (led by Houssem or Magdalena?) within the next week, and if that works well, we can set the schedule for coordination meetings. This would help to ensure the User Group meeting on the 19th can focus on a summary feedback on progress, and any key decisions that a wider group of the LGBT+ community can help with.

Priorities to talk through are probably going to include getting ready for travel scholarship applications and the schedule to set conference content.

If a zoom video-conference seems a good way to coordinate, we can set up a Doodle poll shortly and then promote the meeting so that new conference volunteers can join in.

Thanks! --Fæ (talk) 18:29, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Hello @Fae:! Thanks for taking initiative for the meeting. I think Zoom is a good platform for meeting. It can also be used for recording for documentation purpose. Next week sounds great! Wikilover90 (talk) 18:36, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

I agree this process needs to begin Fæ, and thanks for getting this conversation started. Given the importance of handling scholarships and programming (such as a call for presentations or the like), this conversation needs to happen soon if we will ensure those who may travel from a distance (including potential visa issues) get addressed soon, at least with initial organizing team planning. This also involves clarification about not only roles and responsibilities, but also who will be project managing this process (as that role is not listed on the list of volunteers) to at least get this started. It seems that may be Kawayashu (organizer) or Maxdalenareiter / Shikeishu (logistics). Happy to provide Zoom support for this, once it is clear who will coordinate this first organizer meeting. I agree this should happen prior to the next LGBT+ User Group meeting on 19 November. --- FULBERT (talk) 19:08, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Hi all, Thanks for starting this conversation. Shikeishu and I will be coordinating all the teams and do the follow-up with the foundation. We will be having monthly meetings with the grants team to report all the progress, so it will be great to synchronize these meetings and the team meetings.

I suggest a meeting next week where we can have a better overview about tasks and responsibilities. After, that w can set a monthly meeting for follow-up. What is most urgent I think for now is setting the scholarships criterias and releasing the application form, as visa procedures take a long time, so maybe that will be our priority for discussions in the next month. What do you think?--Kawayashu (talk) 20:51, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

Great; want to send out a Doodle for a poll of possible days and times next week Kawayashu? --- FULBERT (talk) 21:08, 30 October 2019 (UTC)

A Doodle is here. Chosen possible times that probably fit okay across Europe and the US. Noticed the integration with Slack, so if we go with that maybe it'll work even smarter. --Fæ (talk) 12:18, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for getting the Doodle started Fæ. I cannot see timezone support listed on it, so am not clear what timezone is appearing. Can you clarify this? Thanks. --- FULBERT (talk) 18:40, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

The options appeared to be that it would format in the reader's timezone. UK times were 5pm through to 10pm each day. --Fæ (talk) 19:08, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

I do not think that time zone support setting may be turned on, as those are the same times they appear for me, and I am not UK time. --- FULBERT (talk) 20:43, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Checking my account settings, my account is definitely set to United Kingdom/London and the help tells me that should be the default for polls I create, with users seeing the calendar in their own time zone. Not sure how to fix what you are seeing. I have used Doodle before for multi timezone meetings, using this same account, so it's a new problem to me. --Fæ (talk) 20:58, 31 October 2019 (UTC)

Not sure what the problem was, but did my best to try to figure it out Fæ. I do think it is important that Kawayashu be present at this meeting. Whomever can or cannot make it, the time is passing and a lot related to scholarships and then programming needs to be set ASAP @Maxdalenareiter, Shikeishu, Kaizenify, Jsamwrites, Kaizenify, Jsamwrites, Bluerasberry, and Opsylac:. --- FULBERT (talk) 12:55, 2 November 2019 (UTC)

Funding approved for remote conference

This rescoped grant / new budget has been approved for funding as of 23 March, 2021! Rfarrand (WMF) (talk) 16:38, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

We held our remote event as planned CAlmog_(WMF), and wish to request an extension in submitting our final report. This request is because the report is due on the same day we are meeting with you as a debrief and discussion on some open issues related to the event funding itself that we want to clarify before we complete the full write-up. Can we please have until the end of July for this report? Thank you. --- FULBERT (talk) 16:40, 16 June 2021 (UTC)

Hi FULBERT, sure - your new submittion date for the report is July, 31, 2021. Thanks, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 12:27, 21 June 2021 (UTC)

Thank you CAlmog (WMF). --- FULBERT (talk) 12:39, 21 June 2021 (UTC)