Grants talk:Conference/Wikimedia Polska/CEE Meeting 2017

Grant committee members decisions

Grant Committee members who support this request

1. harej (talk) 22:58, 30 January 2017 (UTC)
2. Mervat Salman --Mervat Salman (talk) 21:20, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Grant Committee members who support this request with adjustments

1. --ProtoplasmaKid (WM-MX) (talk) 20:13, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Grant Committee comments

This is a terrific proposal. I can see plenty of work went into it, taking into account experiences from past conferences. I also very much appreciate that you are interested in documentation for the benefit of Wikimedians worldwide. My two questions here are: (a) do you have documentation from past conferences, and (b) what is your plan for documenting this upcoming conference? harej (talk) 22:58, 30 January 2017 (UTC)

Hi :) Thank you for your appreciation. As for your questions:

• Thanks to our Volunteer of The Year Borys Kozielski and the Wikiradio we were able to provide live audio streaming from some of our conferences. Also all of the presentations during the celebrations of the 10th birthday of Polish Wikipedia were video recorded and are available on Commons.
• It is very important to us to allow people who cannot attend in person to be able to learn from the conference and to feel the atmosphere. We are going to use our experience to provide live audio streaming from the conference. And video documentation of all the presentations and sessions in the two main tracks (we have decided not to make videos of the workshop track - it is dedicated for sessions which are very practical and from which people can benefit mostly by participating actively. Also it is possible that our attendees may want to have a sessions on a difficult and sensible subject - for example harassment - during which people may feel safer knowing that this would not be recorded). We are also going to have a team of volunteers responsible for updating the etherpad and for covering the conference on social media. And there will be a photographer taking pictures of the conference and putting them on Commons during the event. We will also make sure that the presentation slides are available on Commons after the conference. Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL) (talk) 23:14, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

ProtoplasmaKid comment

• Hi CEE Meeting team! Congratulations for your time and awesome organization of this conference. Do makes sense to CEE committee add to Measures of success something related about women participation from this edition and the future? Also I will very happy to know that this topic can be included in some track or specific activity during the meeting. Best, --ProtoplasmaKid (WM-MX) (talk) 20:30, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you for your kind comments :) From my point of view (as the person in charge of the operational side of the project): firstly, Wikimedia Polska has 4 full-time, paid staff members and 3 of them (Natalia, Marta and Anna) are female and obviously we are bringing all of them to this project. In particular, I'd like to underline Natalia's role. She's coordinating our "Wikipedia is a woman" project this March, so she is obviously very aware of issues such as gender gap and related problems. And as you can see in our CEE Meeting Team list, in this project she will be coordinating the Programme Committee and its process. This makes me quite sure that this topic will find its place in one or more of our conference tracks, I'm sure Natalia will take care of that. Secondly, we'd love to host as many women as possible in Warsaw, but if I understand correctly the way in which the participants are being recruited, each local WMF affiliate gets to decide on their own, who their representatives will be. So we do hope to see many women as delegates, but it's not really our decision. Powerek38 (talk) 21:27, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

• Thank you for your quick reply to ProtoplasmaKid (WM-MX)'s question, Powerek38. We are pleased to hear that there are several women on the planning team for this event. My understanding is that each affiliate sends 2 people to the event, and although each affiliate is responsible for selecting delegates, I think it would be reasonable to give them some direction in their selection. Below are two ways we could support a better gender balance at this event:

1. Give guidance to affiliates to select delegates from different genders (i.e. one man and one woman, or one woman and one non-binary gendered person). You can be flexible when necessary if it is not possible to find two delegates of different genders who are able to participate in the conference. In those situations, we encourage those affiliates to take steps to address gender imbalance for participation in future events.
2. Instead of making a requirement about gender diversity of delegates from each affiliate, you could set a goal for gender diversity based last year’s meeting. For example, if last year 7 of the 33 affiliates sent two participants of different genders (this is an arbitrary number, I have not reviewed this data), your goal for the 2017 CEE Meeting could be for 14 of the 33 affiliates to send two participants of different genders.

Do you think that either of these strategies would be suitable for CEE affiliates? If not, please suggest other ways in which you will promote an increase in gender diversity at the event. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 23:17, 3 February 2017 (UTC)

• I'm really glad that you brought this subject up. As a person strongly engaged in projects held by WMPL and dedicated to closing the gender gap and the content gender gap I am very much interested in this. In Wikimedia Polska we are well aware how important it is to increase women participation in our movement and we are looking for any inspiration and ideas which can help. In fact in 2017 we are addressing the gender gap and the content gender gap problem very intensively - we have made it an important topic of our Winter Conference (held two weeks ago) and we are planning to introduce a lot of related projects in March ("Wikipedia is also a women" editing project, at least two edit-a-thons and some work with the media). So we would be more than happy to make CEE Meeting an event in which women would participate, get inspired and empowered. Going to the details:

The women participation related sessions have been a part of the previous CEE Meetings and the ones I had a chance to take part in were very productive and had quite a lot of participants. I think this year would not be different and we will work with the program committee to organize such sessions.

As for the women participation in the conference - this is also something important to work with. We can encourage and invite affiliates to select delegates from different gender. We can also work on creating some good space for women to talk and exchange ideas and experiences (for example a women's lunch - those have been a nice tradition of Wikimanias and I found those in which I could take part a very empowering experience; maybe we could think of organizing something similar). If there are any suggestions or specific ideas you would like to share, we would be happy to consider them and get inspired :) Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL) (talk) 13:00, 4 February 2017 (UTC)

Hi Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska (WMPL), thank you for your replies. I am glad to know that women's participation in the event is something that is important to your team. I have approved the grant with the understanding that the organizing team (working with the team from last year) will look at the ratio of women to men at the event in the last year and set a goal for making an improvement in the gender balance this year. The CEE community has demonstrated that shared goals are highly motivating, and we hope that by setting some shared goals around more diverse participants will ensure that each affiliate will take part in meeting those goals either this year or in the future.--KHarold (WMF) (talk) 01:50, 8 February 2017 (UTC)

Mervat's Comments

Hello team. I must say that your proposal is very organized, I like how you described the tasks each team member is supposed to do. I am just curious about the schedule; I see you are focusing on GLAM, but can you explain more what the intended workshops are going to be? Also can you explain more what the role of the WWF invitees will be? Are you doing to call for registration and presentation proposal so that you can decide about a final schedule?

All the best. --Mervat Salman (talk) 21:58, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Yes - exactly. I mean - we want to establish international program committee as it was in previous years with CEE meetings, although hopefully much earlier hence having more time to process final program. Among others we want to make a survey with questions what local CEE communities really want/need and then tailor the program accordingly. Regarding guests from WMF as well as other non-CEE located speakers - we want invite those able to provide expertise in the areas which are found of interest to CEE communities. This is actually a kind of tradition of CEE meetings as well. We are focusing on GLAM only as a side activities as our chapter is good in it - but we don't want to force it too much if there won't be too much interest among CEE communities. Polimerek (talk) 22:15, 2 February 2017 (UTC)

Community comments & questions

Hi, thanks! I was pointed to this request today, and noted no questions/comments were added yet. When looking through the proposal, which looks good to me overall, I did have a few questions which I'm confident you discussed, but maybe I'm overlooking it:

1. The venue speaks about a main room for up to 160 people, but the budget seems to limit participation to 66 from outside Poland. Could you give a bit more insight in what kind of numbers you expect for participation? There is some 'at least' criteria mentioned but little 'at most' (which is very relevant for the cost). This works its way into the budget too.
2. The costs for lunch etc seem a bit on the higher end (some 20 dollar per person per day) but not excessive. Am I correct to understand this would cover ~70 international visitors, and ~20 Polish volunteers?
3. In general the participation section could be clarified a bit.

On the positive note: it looks like a highly experienced team with very familiar names. I expect little surprises on that front. Wikimedia Polska is in general a reliable partner in this kind of projects, to the best of my knowledge. The process leading up to this also looks good and collaborative. Effeietsanders (talk) 16:01, 27 January 2017 (UTC)

1. Regarding question #1 - 66 is the number of potential scholars from CEE chapters and user groups, whose travel and accommodation is about to be paid from the grant. As we calculated, we have now 33 user-groups and chapters in the region. Assuming that there will be 2 scholars from each one - there are maximum of 66 scholars. Then some chapters (lets count 4 of them) - will send additional people on their own expense (+ 2 on average) = +8. Then WMF usually sends around 3 people, and there are some invited speakers not from WMF (+2), then there will be 11 people of core organizing team + around 5 of other volunteers helping in organization. So it gives: 66+8+3+2+11+5 = 95. So, 95 is kind of maximum, realistic estimation of people who may be present at the conference. As the venue offer 2 rooms one for max 100 people and the second for 60 people in theater type of arrangement - for the sessions which are about to be attended by all participants we may need to combine them by temporary removing the movable wall to provide some more space, or decide to organize it in bigger room only. It does not affect the cost - as we are about to hire 2 rooms for 2 parallel sessions + L-shaped foyer, for catering and organising workshops/informal meetings and thanks to generosity of the Museum we pay only 25% of the normal price for this. Polimerek (talk) 12:00, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
2. Regarding number of people - it is explained above. Regarding costs - The Polin Museum restaurant is indeed not the cheapest one - we could probably find something cheaper but not very close to the venue, so it would be inconvenient. The other advantage of the Polin Museum restaurant is that it is well prepared to provide special type of food - namely - kosher, halal, vegetarian etc.. as the diversity of participant needs from CEE countries is hard to predict. We can probably decrease the cost of catering a bit by resignation from continuous coffee tables and organize short coffee breaks only but our experience is that it also might be inconvenient for participants, especially it is forbidden to bring big bottles of drinks to the Museum. It has safety regulations similar to the airports. Polimerek (talk) 12:00, 31 January 2017 (UTC)
3. Regarding participation - this section reflects simply our past experience with previous CEE meetings. How specifically you expect to clarify this? Polimerek (talk) 12:00, 31 January 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the answers, insightful indeed. With regards to the participation section, in part that is covered by your explanation above, but maybe you could also have added some information on the type of people you're looking for. People with a leadership position in the online community or rather people who would lead in real world organizing efforts, are you looking for people with certain linguistic skills, etc. Are you expecting to also invite certain people because they would personally add value to the meeting (i.e. as a speaker) besides being a delegate? Not necessarily all super essential information, but would have been a nice addition. I guess most of it could be guessed based on previous editions. Effeietsanders (talk) 16:42, 5 February 2017 (UTC)