Grants talk:IEG/Generation Wikipedia

Eligibility confirmed, round 2 2013

This Individual Engagement Grant proposal is under review!

We've confirmed your proposal is eligible for round 2 review. Please feel free to ask questions here on the talk page and make changes to your proposal as discussions continue during this community comments period.

The committee's formal review for round 2 begins on 23 October 2013, and grants will be announced in December. See the schedule for more details.

Questions? Contact us.

Community Notifications

Hi Emily and Jake,
As you know, the IEG committee will begin their review of round 2 proposals on 23 October 2013. To expedite proposal review, I'm looking over the community notifications section of each eligible application. It looks like your proposal's Community Notifications section still needs updating. Please paste links to where the relevant communities have been notified about your proposal, and to any other relevant community discussions. And please do that soon so the committee can more easily follow up. Thanks.
Best of luck! :)
Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 21:36, 18 October 2013 (UTC)

German Wikipedia group of young Wikipedians

In the unlikely event of not knowing the German Wikipedia group of young Wikipedians, please have a look at de:Wikipedia:Jungwikipedianer. They have a long history of experiences in working together and had several attemps to meet each other in person (which unfortunately all failed due to a lack of time, prohibition by their parents, a missing organizer with responsibilities, or long journey distances; a lot of them met each other at conferences with a broader audience nonetheless). It would be awesome if your project succeeded! Cheers, —DerHexer (Talk) 09:37, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks DerHexer! That will be a great group to reach out to for our early research on what's been tried before and what works best. Cheers, Ocaasi (talk) 16:07, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thank you! We will definitely reach out to them! Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 20:05, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I saw that you'll both attend the Wikimedia Diversity Conference. As I will also do that (and even offer sightseeing tours through Berlin), we maybe can have a chat about that face-to-face. Cheers, —DerHexer (Talk) 10:22, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Cost

20 k$ seems to me an absolutely disproportionate investment for "10-15 attendees" (and it doesn't even include costs for the attendees themselves!). Frankly, I'd have comments on other parts of the request too (in short: you're trying to help wikimedia kids at the things they're already best at; and better than adults), but the cost alone is enough to make this a no go. --Nemo 21:28, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

If you could able to reduce the expenses for travel and venue, that'd be better. Else you should try to increase the number of attendees to 15-20. -- ɑηsuмaη «Talk» 09:02, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I have a slightly different perspective to add to this discussion, personally. Since there are always some potential for risks in gathering groups of minors, and even though WMF staff (including the legal team) would be helping to mitigate those risks, I would probably feel most comfortable knowing that the pilot group was not too large in size, and that we were not sacrificing caution in order to lower the cost-per-attendee during a first experiment with this idea. Because conferences do tend to run as economies of scale (meaning more people = cheaper per person), this could mean that a first pilot would probably be more expensive than gathering a larger group of attendees would be in the future, if it proved successful. I do think the proposers should still be cost-conscious, and that Ansuman and Nemo's concerns about cost are useful to consider, but I would encourage people to also think about pilot costs as situations where dollars may have different investment tradeoffs to consider, and where risk and experimentation are also factors in the equation. Siko (WMF) (talk) 19:04, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree with what Siko said - we want to make the security of our participants the highest priority and therefore want to keep the pilot group small. If this is a successful pilot, I wouldn't anticipate future programs costing as much because of a greater number of attendees. We are also hoping to cover all or most of the cost for the participants, and therefore make cost to them and their families much less of a concern. Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 03:37, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't want to sound too sanguine here, but it's also worth mentioning that investment in youth can have incredible, outsized payoff over time. These editors, should they remain with us for many years, take on active organizing roles, and connect with their peers around the world, may be in a position to do tremendous and innovative things. This is a pilot, of course, so that's something we are actively testing for impact; however, it's not unreasonable to think that a relatively higher up front cost could lead to a meaningfully diverse group of future movement leaders. Ocaasi (talk) 13:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

My comment is not about the number of attendees but about the cost: I would understand a meeting at a city-level, with two order of magnitudes less costs. I also disagree that young wikimedians need any such "help" in general, let alone in becoming "future movement leaders" (!). (What does leaders mean here? Why should learn "leadership" from you?) --Nemo 09:42, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Scope

Keilana, Ocaasi, 2011 Editor survey seems local to Wikipedia. Would you consider looking at the share of this age group at the sister projects? Thanks. :-) Gryllida 03:33, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi again Gryllida, I would love to look into that - I'm curious too! I will think about who we will need to poke to make that happen. :) Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 05:38, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Travel costs

If this is an international event (it's not clear, but I assume it is), then the travel support budget looks very low to me - as it stands, it's about $500 per person for travel, which won't cover long-distance travel (e.g. travelling from Europe to the US is at least $800). I'd also expect that more of the attendees would need travel support than usual, unless they have very wealthy parents. It might be better to focus this on a single area (e.g. US, Europe, Africa, etc.) to keep the costs (and journey times) down - if there's sufficient suitable attendees in those areas. Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 11:50, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Mike Peel. We are going to need to be very cost conscious in order to pull this off. We want to defray travel costs, though we might not be able to eliminate them entirely for all attendees. Our focus with covering travel costs will be to subsidize or cover editors who have financial need, especially those from underrepresented demographics or less economically prosperous areas. We're also aiming to host the summer conference in a reasonably central location so that travel costs are minimized. So far we are looking at the midatlantic east coast of the U.S. or western Europe. We may also look to explore supplementing funding by having attendees seek out financial support from other options (such as participation support grants or chapters). Our interest in this proposal was to be conservative with the expected expenditures. In order for this to work, we are going to have to be very aggressive about maximizing impact while minimizing operational costs. That would be a big part of the planning--from looking for travel deals, to seeking non-profit rates or even donations of resources, to potentially even having sponsors like Wikimania does. We have a lot of options, all of which we will seriously look into. Ocaasi (talk) 11:39, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm very sad (or to be honest, disgusted) to see that Mike's very reasonable comments have been ignored. --Nemo 09:45, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Comparison events?

Out of curiosity, are there any examples of other events that this could be directly compared with? You say 'This is a model similar to that used by other tech-focused or specialty summer camps.', but are there any that focus on online websites/communities exclusively? Thanks. Mike Peel (talk) 12:04, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Mike, the first thing that comes to mind is Ada Camp! That's a hugely successful model, albeit for adults. There's also a myriad of summer camps that teach technical skills to this age bracket and encourage them to build community. Here are some links - [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]. These are just a few that I found with a couple basic google searches, I know there are tons around the country and around the world. Does that help? Keilana|^{Parlez ici} 21:33, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the committee for Generation Wikipedia

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	4.5
(B) The project has the potential to lead to significant online impact.	4
(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.	4
Ability to execute
(E) The project has demonstrated interest from a community it aims to serve.	4.5
(F) The project can be completed as scoped within 6 months with the requested funds.	4
(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.	4.5
Fostering innovation and learning
(I) The project has innovative potential to add new strategies and knowledge for solving important issues in the movement.	3.5
(J) The risk involved in the project's size and approach is appropriately balanced with its potential gain in terms of impact.	3
(K) The proposed measures of success are useful for evaluating whether or not the project was successful.	4
(L) The project supports or grows the diversity of the Wikimedia movement.	4
Comments from the committee: Quite cool if the project is international and brings together young Wikipedians from around the world and different language versions. More age group research is needed on sister projects. A potential risk is of continuity: ongoing 'social activities' may be needed, but this is one time support. Chapters may be interested (travel support etc).

Thank you for submitting this proposal. The committee is now deliberating based on these scoring results.

Funding decisions will be announced by December 16. — ΛΧΣ²¹ 00:24, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Advisor

I am interested to follow the development of this project because in my opinion it may have a good dissemination. I am member of the IEG and I have to say that at the start I was a little bit critical with some points (one week and the management of young people), but I like the concept. --Ilario (talk) 10:01, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikimedia DC

I am the president of Wikimedia District of Columbia, where Emily sits on the Board of Directors. I would like to confirm that this proposal would not conflict with her duties as a board member, and that Wikimedia DC is supportive of her work in Wikimedia outreach. harej (talk) 16:45, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for confirming, James. Siko (WMF) (talk) 23:33, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Provisional approval

Congratulations! Your proposal has been selected for an Individual Engagement Grant.

The committee has recommended this proposal and WMF has approved funding for the full amount of your request, $20,000

Comments regarding this decision:
This project has been recommended by the IEG committee and WMF has provisionally approved it for a grant, pending further legal review. Your grant will not start right away. We will delay signing a grant agreement, disbursement and the project's start itself until dependencies can be cleared by WMF’s legal team. Thanks for your patience and participation in the process - we're hoping to see this project move forward and will keep you informed as review continues.

Next steps:

1. You will be contacted to sign a grant agreement and setup a monthly check-in schedule.
2. Review the information for grantees.
3. Use the new buttons on your original proposal to create your project pages.
4. Start work on your project!

Questions? Contact us.

Unable to fund

Hi all,
Jake and Emily, we've spoken in person about this already but I'm posting an update here too for anyone else following this project. Sadly, WMF cannot approve funding for this project. Because the project poses some Legal and Financial risks to the individuals and to WMF (minors online and offline are a tricky issue, as we all know), some WMF staff time outside of the grantmaking team would be needed to help manage those risks and ensure the project went smoothly. And since IEG is unable to call on additional staff support from other departments (who are already working at capacity), we've been asked to not move forward with this grant. I've sorry to be the bearer of disappointing news, because I think an event like this would have been a useful pilot investment in Wikipedia's future. Should you find an alternate avenue for funding and organizing something like this in the future, I'll be happy to handoff to you any contacts I made during due diligence on this grant, including the Frost Valley YMCA, which seemed like a promising camp venue.
Meanwhile, I'm going to mark this proposal as withdrawn, and move it to IdeaLab so you can still access it in the future.
Best wishes,
Siko