Grants talk:IEG/Convidando o Brasil

This project has not been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant at this time.

We love that you took the chance to creatively improve the Wikimedia movement. The committee has reviewed this proposal and not recommended it for funding, but we hope you'll continue to engage in the program. Please drop by the IdeaLab to share and refine future ideas!

Comments regarding this decision:
We'd like to support improvements for the Brasilian community, and we admire your boldness! In the end, though, we still have concerns about the big scope of this project as currently designed. There are a lot of good thoughts in this proposal, but what we're looking for in a 6-month project is a bit more focus. Please do ask questions and continue discussions on this talk page to help you refine your idea for a future round or to start a fresh idea, if you're still interested in participating in the program. Thanks!

Next steps:

1. Review the feedback provided on your proposal and to ask for any clarifications you need using this talk page.
2. Visit the IdeaLab to continue developing this idea and share any new ideas you may have.
3. To reapply with this project in the future, please make updates based on the feedback provided in this round before resubmitting it for review in a new round.
4. Check the schedule for the next open call to submit proposals - we look forward to helping you apply for a grant in a future round.

Questions? Contact us.

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Convidando o Brasil

Scoring criteria (see the rubric for background)	Score 1=weakest 5=strongest
Potential for impact
(A) The project fits with the Wikimedia movement's strategic priorities	4
(B) The project has the potential to lead to significant online impact.	3
(C) The impact of the project can be sustained after the grant ends.	3
(D) The project has potential to be scaled or adapted for other languages or projects.	3
Ability to execute
(E) The project has demonstrated interest from a community it aims to serve.	3
(F) The project can be completed as scoped within 6 months with the requested funds.	3
(G) The budget is reasonable and an efficient use of funds.	3
(H) The individual(s) proposing the project have the required skills and experience needed to complete it.	3
Fostering innovation and learning
(I) The project has innovative potential to add new strategies and knowledge for solving important issues in the movement.	2
(J) The risk involved in the project's size and approach is appropriately balanced with its potential gain in terms of impact.	2
(K) The proposed measures of success are useful for evaluating whether or not the project was successful.	3
(L) The project supports or grows the diversity of the Wikimedia movement.	3
Comments from the committee: Focus seems to be very broad. Measures of success are vague for a large grant. In the current design it will be hard to determine if new editors are added because of any one component of the project. Retention seems to be a problem in the PT community, but this project does not address that. Presenting lectures in all regions of Brazil seems undoable, given the size of the country, and no roadmap is provided to support this ambition. Methods for intentionally targetting gendergap issues are not indicated, though that is a stated goal. Proposer has not addressed the stated overlap with the Catalyst program already underway. Budget adjustments may be needed, particularly for the video component.

1. I have discussed this, and has been reduced to the maximum, see the discussion below.
2. I followed the standard measurement of success of other grants, you have always required results very similar to what is there, I do not understand this discrepancy attitude towards the chosen standard. (ie. Wikibrasil, Start-up and in another IEG "perhaps giving numbers in terms of quality images etc will help." "Would like to see improved measures of success - numbers are important."). And as the text was already too long, I did not write about some details. We will work with schools and partners using Wikiversity to support the course, encouraging the use of Wikiversity (in the coming days you will see that, we has already started doing this in SPaulo) to take ownership of the space, and make students use Wikiversity as a space for discussion, as has been done here, see the groups here. In addition to having our control, will create a course "how to teach wikis," for workshops where we will not created discussion groups, we can add users who participated in the workshop. In addition to several other methods analyzed in the discussion below...
3. Yes, you are right, retention is one of the problems. But not the only one. I had proposed solving this problem, however you advised me to choose between working with users already active, or bring new ones. I and the other volunteers who embraced the project, we have a greater ability to bring new volunteers, we have more interest in it, and we usually perform activities for it. We also believe that with new heads, new thoughts can be applied, renewing the current view of the community without a program for that. And remember that I will not only work with Wikipedia, there are many projects in Portuguese that the problem is not retention, but lack of volunteers to lead the project.
4. Yes, I could not do lectures in all parts of Brazil, but I did not say that, I said regions, North, South, Southeast, Central-West, Northeast. Without the grant, my work is restricted to SPaulo, located in the southeastern region, the idea is to increase the reach giving lectures in other regions. Being logical, four lectures fulfill this goal.
5. I'm sorry, you're right the premises wasn't clear from you: in schools we don't find the gender gap as in many university courses. Actually, women are the majority of students in every educational level[1], [2]... , but it's very common that some of the high level courses included in the Education program in Brazil (Physics, Chemistry, Maths and others) have men as the majority of their students (while courses such as History, Biology and Psychology have more women). However, we believe that building capacity among female students during high school will prepare them to be great editors during the university courses, while bringing women who study and work, and some are also take care of children, during the university could be more difficult than working with female teenagers. Besides the already mentioned cultural centers, which often have more women than men, we will not work specifically with women, but our work can generate a reduction in the gender gap.
6. My fault, because in Brazil we do not make divisions when the activity involves both parts, it never occurred overlap, occurs a sum in our work. As usual, when an activity involves the two groups, we talked and we see how the work can be done collaboratively, as this thought is natural for us, I may not have been clear, or not being clear, but we bring the Wiki idea for the offline world.
7. In which part, besides the equipment?

   Sorry, I had forgotten to put the estimates for travel, notice that the estimate exceeds what was requested...

   The equipment was an professional indication to produce videos and photographs comparable in quality to that performed by the WMF, but at a lower cost than the WMF equipment. And we also can dramatically reduce the quality of the material produced by swapping the equipment, impacting directly on the degree of involvement of the project and the level of seriousness shown by the group. In addition to derail some productions that chapter would perform with the same equipment, having to be done another grant request to purchase other equipment, increase considerably the spending. If you want to "reduce" costs, there is this option that can meet a small part of our goals, remembering that we would have to make another request for equipment for other activities:

• Alpha NEX-7 Camera Body 999,99 (USD)
• 10-18mm f/4 Wide-Angle Zoom Lens 849.99 (USD)
• 35mm f/1.8 Prime Lens 449.99 (USD)
• Total 2300

Just a note, this evaluation could be performed better if there was a dialogue between the Committee and the proponent, for example the H point, I do not know how they rated me if I do not know and never talked to any of them. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 17:26, 11 March 2013 (UTC)

Clarifications

Some points are not clear for me in this evaluation:

• What kind of metrics/criteria has been used to grade the interest of the community in the project?
• Did you used the project talk page to evaluate the project?

For now that is. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 00:59, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

Design

Thanks Rodrigo, I value the work invested in this proposal and the patience you are offering it with a second time. What I'm unsure about is a) how strongly the old draft version reflects the newer institutional developments - like WMF narrowing its focus - in the best possible way for maximal impact; b) the concrete institutional relationship with with the named entities as well as the established education pilot in Brazil; c) what exactly the "online support" amounts to; d) whether c) could find synergies with this proposal; and e) how you intend to measure the impact in concrete terms. Please enlighten me :), thanks & best regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 16:00, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

Hi Jan,

1. I started to adapt to the new reality [3], but I still have a lot to fix, but I find it interesting that it has an interesting structure. About the educational project, I even gave some workshops for the educational program, and this project is designed to increase the bus factor of the educational program, which has a lack of volunteers...
2. Partner quoted has a great proximity to us, but as AffCom not approved the Brazilian chapter, we can not establish anything institutionally.
3. I have not enumerated yet, but.. counting hits, using social networking, also work together with the WMF, which will be performing measurements in Brazil... And other ideas that are already used by companies and NGOs in Brazil.
4. I think only this Gorgeous salary ... :P But the reality of Brazil, is the opposite of Portugal. The Movement Wikimedia Brazil has ideas to create videos, I remember at least 4 different ideas. However, as it will involve a team, I'll do the film projects as one of several volunteers and I think there will be a request for equipment purchases soon, unless we can close partnership with a television network, which is likely to succeed. Nor do I think that we have to pay to generate media, we can generate spontaneous media. And creating tutorials videos... I'm doing without cost. File:Tutorial de upload de uma única imagem própria no Wikimedia Commons.ogv, File:Mudando o idioma da Wikimedia Commons.ogv, and I know there are other volunteers in Brazil doing it.
5. After lectures, for example, we could stipulate schedules where volunteers would be available for questions, and we could test various channels such as IRC, Google Hangout...

thank you for your time. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 02:22, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Thank you Rodrigo, I'm very comfortable with the hands-on ideas you are entertaining in handling the institutional frames pragmatically to the advantage of the respective local communities within Brazil that would be potentially affected by the proposal (instead of inventing some sort of artificial new model just for the sake of Meta's "we need a coherent one entity solution"-default fixes). How exactly is timing of the material bit supposed to be framed? Would be disadvantageous to put a lot of efforts in designing "how to edit"-material in June based on the current interface, if the visual editor would be rolled-out in July. This strikes me as especially difficult given that such a roll-out is an unknown factor - both in terms of timing and actual interface details to be deployed - at this stage in the editors development.

Said that, I would like to suggest considering the point I made regarding technical video cooperation with the proposal from Portugal. Given that the two proposals aim at different stages of the on-boarding-chain to the same project, it might makes sense to explore technicalities early on. I however do recognize that - given pt.wp's history - there might be good non-technical reasons not to do it in the end. There would be no sense in pursuing technical cooperation if the existence of such an arrangement would turn out to eat away community acceptance of results for whatever reason. Therefore, careful exploration of such an option seems advisable to me, best regards --Jan eissfeldt (talk) 14:15, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

I do not think we can solve everything with the visual editor, but we can do a "how to edit" already with the visual editor, as people struggle to create an account, so I guess that counts. I was already doing things that do not depend on the visual editor, how to use a talk page or start a new article. Since the project began in April, I think it is worth focus on "how to edit" now, because July is the middle of the project, and could disrupt the measure numbers.

I invited the tugas to talk and find a solution for this. [4].

Thanks, and if you have more criticism, please, do, be bold, to improve the project. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 10:13, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Rodrigo, we should definitely collaborate in the production of the videos. I was already talking to Ezalvarenga that we should create a list of the wanted videos and try co divide the work between the two. We could perhaps have common images and then dub them in both versions of the language. So when a video is finished in pt-pt we could send them around to the other side of the Atlantic to be dubbed, and vice-versa. GoEThe (talk) 10:36, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Format

Hi Rodrigo - nice to see your idea in this new program :-) I've made a couple of formatting changes to what you've drafted so far - it is fine to keep some of the older sections on the page, but complete proposals for this new program will need to have all of the required sections so that the committee can easily review and compare proposals. So, for Part 1 - the idea, I've added in 2 sections. You can probable just pull some information up into these sections from what you've got in the background area already...I just didn't want to presume to do so for you :-). And then, when you start to created Part 2 - the project plan (using the button at the bottom of your page) - this may help walk you through some of the other things that Jan is looking for in terms of impact measurement and so on. Thanks for participating, I look forward to seeing this idea develop into a complete proposal. Siko (WMF) (talk) 18:29, 1 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Siko,

Thank you, yep, I'm on the road again, and I was writing an email to you.

I'm unsure of how to do with travel, I make a rough estimate? I could maybe get the mean travel expenses of Oona, because I would not know today all expenses for six months from now, as prices are fluctuating, and also I depend on the willingness and availability of interested parties.

There are funds to purchase equipment such as a projector, a laptop, cameras? I say this because it would ensure a better job, but is not essential.

Strange, until recently the button was to go to Part 3, which would be the evaluation of staffs. :D Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 02:22, 3 February 2013 (UTC)

Rough estimates for travel are fine - if you found yourself varying a bit from the expected budget when the project happens, we will want to know the reasons for it, but we also will understand that sometimes the future is uncertain. Just make your best guess with the info available to you now (including consulting with Oona - good idea!). Siko (WMF) (talk) 18:51, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Focus and scope

Hi Rodrigo, Wow - there are a lot of interesting ideas in this proposal! So many, in fact, that I worry how many of them you can reasonably accomplish during the course of a 6 month project. Having worked with fellows in the past, I feel that having big dreams is great, but limiting the scope so that you can accomplish something meaningful without killing yourself in the process is a really good idea. WMF has funded fellowships where 1 person worked for 6 months on just help pages or tutorials alone, and they were barely able to complete those things in the allotted time. Each resource or activity you do will take time to do well and measure the impact from, and if you try to do too many things at once you might not be able to do them as well as you would like. What I might suggest is picking a couple of the things that seem most critical to get your project started, and scope those activities into a 6 month grant project (if you wanted to talk this through more, I would be happy to - scoping big dreams into small do-able starting points is one of my favorite things). That doesn't mean that you can't do everything you want to in Brasil eventually, but it would help you set yourself up for a successful start by limiting what you're committing to do within 6 months. It is possible that a successful marriage :-) with the Portugal project may also help you focus on a few key ingredients too, of course - I'm interested in seeing if/how you guys might decide to join forces or divide up some creation of resources in ways that make sense to you. Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:02, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I was expecting that observation :P

Unlike Portugal, there are things already being done, and some points are points that the WMF set out to do, so I would be helping in many ways and other points I would be continuing volunteers initiatives.

I also think that in 6 months is not enough time, to do things right, however I've started doing some online things and in March I'll start do some offline in São Paulo, the city where I live. The situation is critical, and I believe that it is not necessary to fix half of the current situation.

Furthermore, almost everything we do in Brazil we involve partners, so this can be a way to engage people to help the Movement, call they to "complete" this list.

Another point, I think communities should decide what would be critical for them, in fact I am able to accomplish everything in 6 months or less, but if I do everything myself, it will not make any effect on the Movement. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 21:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I will admit: I had this same reaction as Siko when I read the proposal. It is really robust, but I do read it and fear that it is too broad of scope. Not sure if the two of you already talked about ideas to narrow this, but one idea could also be to limit your target audience to either NEW users or EXISTING users. From what I understand of the proposal, this could cut out a set of the materials you were planning on making: i.e., only the documents introducing readers to Wikipedia would be within the scope of this particular project. I think if you hatchet down the work to focus on either bringing in new editors or retaining existing editors, you would be much better situated empowered to impact change. Jwild (talk) 01:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I will open the eyes of the crowd. :P

If I create a material to conduct a workshop for new volunteers, I'll have to create basic guides on how to use the discussion pages, how to edit, how people can explore the Movement, which project is part of the Movement, which is accepted or not in the projects... right?

So Material for workshops and Material for readers have the same content, but in a different arrangement.

Institutional printable material and Denuding the Wikimedia Movement, has the same base, but different audiences, just need a little bit of adaptation.

printed material for massive disclosures we just need to get the information for new users, compact, make beautiful and printable, so, no energy required.

Tutorial requires almost no energy.

Creation of tutorials to sysops and Creation of tutorials of how to deal with beginners and others volunteers, is necessary, but Sturm will do.

So... is not that big... Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 23:04, 14 February 2013 (UTC)

Well, I'm still not totally convinced with these open eyes, I've got to say. :-) Having seen how long it takes to complete any 1 of these many components for other projects, I know it always ends up taking longer than you might expect, especially if you are testing for how good each component is and improving things when you find they don't work as well as you'd hoped on the first try. It makes great sense to want to do everything on your list as a volunteer eventually. But to me it still makes less sense to try to do them all as a grantee within 6 months. It is your choice to not focus your project scope down to experiment with less things within the 6 months, of course. But because we're offering 6 month funding for which we would like to see results of all initiatives scoped in your plan at the end of the grant period, I think you may be putting yourself in a bit of a risky position. Siko (WMF) (talk) 21:56, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, ok...

This one is better? Grants:IEG/Convidando o Brasil/test (see the differences here)?

Or, better, could you highlight the points that you think that's important?

I will commit to the minimum possible for the process occur, what is the points that you find important? Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 05:03, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Ok, ok, I appreciate that you're continually working on your plan - that is really nice to see, so thank you :-) Here is what I think with both your test page and what's on this proposal currently: The scope is becoming clearer to me, but it seems like you are still considering trying to target 3 different audiences who have 3 different kinds of needs, messages, and materials that you would want to create. And then you will have to figure out how to measure the impact in all 3 areas separately, or we won't really learn what worked and what didn't from this project. So that still feels like a lot to me. True, you know what your community needs much better than I do. And I don't doubt that they need all these things. I'm just wondering if they need to get all of these things from this 1 6-month project. I can see you being very successful if you focused just on trying to convert readers to editors, and running banners leading to video tutorials and/or other info they needed to get started. Or, I can see you being very successful creating materials targeting institutions and doing outreach to generate partnerships. Or, I can see you being very successful working on social media to raise awareness about Wikipedia and so forth. But I will stay awake all night worrying about your ability to succeed at all 3. It takes time to change the world, and I tend to think the way we can be successful at changing it is by focusing on doing just 1 or 2 things really well at a time. But I bet you expected me to say this, anyway, right? ;-) Siko (WMF) (talk) 04:27, 23 February 2013 (UTC)

┌─────────────────────────────────┘
Hi Siko, so I had a brief face to face conversation with Anasuya about that, and maybe I understood some things in a better way...
As the br.WMF team is still in SPaulo, I'll try to improve some things with them during this week. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 08:32, 24 February 2013 (UTC)

So, I remove the social media. But now, if I remove one or the other, I'm not going to test things, and not know how to do the evaluation, nor bring new volunteers. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 14:48, 3 March 2013 (UTC)

Deadline to propose is in a few days

Just a reminder that when your project is ready for final review, please change the wikimarkup status from DRAFT to PROPOSED, so that it will be ready for review by the deadline of 15 February 24:00 UTC. If it isn't clear how to do this when you're in edit mode of your draft, let me know! Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:07, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

I'm just waiting the comments of MWBR people, but it is Carnival in Brazil and I think they are drunk, I'll wait a little longer for they change or speak something, then open to "other" communities, and to exchange "proposed". Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 21:34, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Evaluation

I'm glad you have so many clear indicators of how to measure this project! I would also be interested in seeing a little bit more on how you plan on monitoring the impact of this project. Are you going to be creating a database of all the people you meet at the outreach events? Are you going to keep a log of all the usernames associated with your workshops? Are you going to have surveys after different events in order to see if the materials distributed are actually helpful? How would you ensure that you were documenting the learnings along the way (i.e., what types of programs work well or don't work well)? Etc. Etc. If you know what you want to watch for, you will be much more likely to get there! Jwild (talk) 01:34, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I agree tracking the experience of new users is super important to document the learnings. This tool has helped us so far. --Oona (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Agree. I think we should also try to see how was this measured on previous outreach events of WMF in the global south, like in Brazil, India and some Arabic speaking countries during the last years. Do we have a page systematizing that? --Ezalvarenga (talk) 19:03, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

Are you going to be creating a database of all the people you meet at the outreach events?

All people will not be possible. If the work with schools goes well, we will talk, literally, for thousands of people. Alias​​, If the lecture capture just 5% of 3000 students, will be visible in the curve of new editors, even in WP.

And as the vast majority of accounts, for this type of event will be created in schools, we can make a track of accounts created within a range of IP and see if they continue to edit. (If it violates something that I do not see, forget).

The same thing works for colleges or workshops in a smaller number.

And all first contacts with potential partners will be released in br.wiki, contacts that require discretion shall be conducted via OTRS, with not, br.wiki, or mailing list. And once a month I am willing to do a report somewhere here, do we have some place to centralize this information?

And all the events that we do, we will evaluate the material, but it is not so simple, because if I'm using a new material and if I have a fever at presentation, for example, I created a new variables not measurable...

I think it's important to us to have recording equipment, to be able to record people watching the lectures, or giving testimonials about the talks, record the questions made in the "questions time"..., but mainly in the workshops, to see beyond the quality of our material, we'll be able to diagnose the problems that new people have using the software. Example, I'm sure it was much more important to have developed a better form of communication, more practical and normal, than a visual editor, but without the data, I can not prove it. (Alias​​, it has been done elsewhere?)

I'll have to document, if not, this work is meaningless. The idea here is just start a methodology to do high impact activities all over Brazil, with low cost of energy. And through this process we need to bring new volunteers to perform these new activities. This not simply disclose to disclose, this is a program to understand better processes, and how to bring best results to do outreach activities. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 13:22, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Materials for volunteers and/or documentation?

I do think this project has a lot of convergences with the Catalyst Project and I'm glad you proposed it! What I would suggest, to reduce the scope of it, is that instead of having as an expected product a material for existing volunteers, you work on a detailed documentation of welcoming activities and actions for newcomers, and documentation of their development in Wikipedia and other projects, sharing the learnings with all - what works best, what hasn't worked well etc., in a way anyone can learn from it and hopefully adopt at least some of the good practices. Sturm could become a tutor for newcomers of the project and interact help them develop their capacities in all terms, and the documentation of this experience could make us all learn a lot. This is my sense with reference to what seems more feasable to me. In the end of the project, this documentation can even become a material, but that would be a plus. --Oona (WMF) (talk) 19:00, 13 February 2013 (UTC)

I removed one material to be created for volunteers, and one approach, very reluctantly. If I draw something else, I think it will be detrimental to the project, everything was connected, and what's left is interdependent.

If I do better outreach program in the history of the world, and volunteers do not know how to say: Welcome, this will fail. So the work with the volunteers is truly necessary.

I think remove more than that, will be harmful.

And do not think that is a plus, is essential, otherwise it becomes an individual learning, and then not worth to the community. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 13:59, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

Participants

2 questions related to participants on this project:

1. Rodrigo, you are the only grantee listed as a participant for the project in the info box of your page. But from the rest of your plan it appears that you have at least one other project participant who you are asking funding for, correct? If so, can you please add that user to the infobox as well? It is fine to have as many volunteer participants working on a project along with you as you would like, but anyone who would expect to receive a portion of the funds to assist with the project will need to be listed along with you as a grantee.
2. In your equipment budget you mention wanting to improve upon the chapter's video/photo equipment, and it made me wonder if you intended this equipment to be used by the chapter once you're done with it for this project, or how the chapter might be involved. If the chapter needs video equipment (which it would then loan out to individuals like yourself for projects like this), would it not make more sense for the chapter to apply for this funding from WMF Grants?

Thanks in advance for clarifying these points! Siko (WMF) (talk) 22:06, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

1. The first point, I have to see if Sturm will accept the reduction, he does not think it's fair to be paid for so little work... Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 05:43, 18 February 2013 (UTC)
2. That's why I asked to you above if this request would be interesting.

But as for "chapter", all to do I have to engage the Movement, several workshops will be made by others volunteers, filming will be done with the help of several MWBR volunteers. And the equipment, in my view, has to remains at the disposal of the Movement, it is clear that at this time only a few people can operate this equipment (two or three), but nothing prevents I participate in activities and record.

And maybe "chapter" apply will be better, but I had doubts. Because in my view, if I open, or other, this grant by chapter, it would be open almost two individual grant.. Flow me:

The equipment will be available to the community, however, Marcio and I will be the only technique capable to use the camera. So it's for the community, but is tied to a technical difficulty that limited its use.

Moreover, the first projects to occur with the equipment will be Convidando o Brasil, might sound like a cheat.

The ideal equipment was costing 12,500 dollars, but we remove things and estimated cost for the trips is well below that was recommended to close the 30 '000. But if I ask in separate grants, I can request 30'00 "hiring" another person and making a larger reserve for other activities and trips, and ask for a 12'500 or more in another grant for equipment, to perform the same activities. So.. 42'500 or more to do the IEG.

Of course, this equipment will serve for other activities (and here I see a reason for you guys to be more flexible as grant value :P), but it can seem strange. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 05:43, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Budget

20,000 + 12,250 is more than the 30,000 maximum. That request would make this project ineligible, so I just wanted to check with you that this is really your intention. See also my question above about equipment and the chapter - as you mention this equipment will last 3 years, and appears to be a significant outlay of expense for a 6 month project, I'm curious to know what you would plan to do with the equipment after the end of the grant period. Thanks! Siko (WMF) (talk) 22:10, 17 February 2013 (UTC)

I removed the Nikkor AF-S 70-200mm VRII from the equipment's list, so the new total budget will be lower than US$ 30,000.00. This lens would not be used very often during the videos, but it would be very helpful during the photos. Marcio De Assis (talk) 01:54, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Hi Siko,

Well we have a lot of ideas, including, record class to Wikiversity, make webseries exploring touristic points to Wikivoyage, or exploring other things in city to Wikipedia, interview people... we already have people available to do this things, but no equipment. And, of course, continue doing outreach videos. Rodrigo Tetsuo Argenton ^m 04:25, 18 February 2013 (UTC)

Note re-overlap with the Brazil Catalyst Plan

Hi all! Considering this and/or future proposals by this group of volunteers or any other volunteer in Brazil, I would like just to state a note with regards to the issue on the overlap between this proposal and the Catalyst Program. Please note I'm not trying to push anything different from the evaluation which already took place, nor I'm referring to anything but the relationship with the proposals and the Brazil Catalyst Plan.

• We have been working as close together as possible with active volunteers of the Wikimedia Movement and have a lot of things together, from planning to the implementation of activities with the support of volunteers.
• The Brazil Catalyst Program is meant to help building sustainibility through independent projects of volunteers and partners - so the more we have actors in the movement taking the lead of activities, the better it is. Any overlap can be good, actually. As long as we're constantly dialoguing, I think overlaps can be fruitful.
• We have a lot to accomplish in the next years and we find it very valuable to have other movement players to develop projects, especially in-person outreach activities, as stated in the Narrowing Focus strategy document. We may end up not having overlaps, but a mutual support on programs with different approaches and common objectives.
• The more the movement takes the lead successfully, the more we can do in other areas and the more successful the Catalyst program can be considered. This is the objective of our project: "loosing" relevance as more and more players (both partners and volunteers) take the lead in many different areas.

PS: I had decided not to mention anything before the evaluation process because I thought the colors (pink) were clearly pointing out the convergence points with the Brazil Catalyst Program and also I found it a good practice not to endorse any proposal on the Portuguese Wikimedia projects (both this one and the "Community engagement in Portugal"), since my situation is a bit uncomfortable since my strong involvement with the movement basically emerged with my work as a consultant for Wikimedia Foundation - therefore, I didn't want to mix roles. But I thought it would be useful to share this here in case we have future cases like this one.

Thanks! --Oona (WMF) (talk) 19:21, 11 March 2013 (UTC)