Grants talk:PEG/Dimitris Koukoulakis - Commonsfest/Commonsfest 2014

Comments

Comments MADe

Seems like a nice proposal. Is this proposal ment to cover the full conference or merely a part (eg. a booth) at it? What's the involvement of both organisers in the Wiki community? MADe (talk) 07:53, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the comment. the proposal is only to cover the "main" part of the festival (conference as you mention) which are the 3 days mentioned which will have most of the talks, workshops and discussions. It is planned to cover most of our expenses for these three days. There will be several workshops, screening and talks from January till May as well, but these are not covered. If I understand correctly you mean the Wikipedia community? The organizers have no special involvement in the Wiki community. Some of us are active contributors in the English and Greek Wikipedia and we are active in promoting the Wikimedia projects in general. For example we did a "How to edit the greek wikipedia" workshop in last year's commonsfest, we have given away many flyers about Wikipedia in several events with the tolabaki - hackerspace, and we plan a Wiki loves monuments event for January. Dkoukoul (talk) 09:23, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Hey Dkoukoul, as you describe it, the conference will have a general topic (free knowledge, P2P economy), yet be 100% funded by the Wikimedia organisations. I personally don't think this is the best approach.

Secondly, as you only have no involvement in the Wikimedia movement, I would advise to team up with on of the existing chapters (eg. Macedonia, Serbia) in order to establish a strong link with our movement. MADe (talk) 18:08, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your suggestions. On your first note, the requested funds are not the 100% of what will be needed for the festival and its events (more on the comment below Kevin's). Also I have to add that although the festival is on a general topic I think it aligns very well with the mission of Wikimedia. We just want to present other organisations, projects, teams and individuals who are actually working on similar missions and thus introduce them to each other in order for all of us to help each other and thus the mission itself. We have a strong link with the Greek Free/Open source software organization (www.eellak.gr) which have been running many Wikimedia events here in Greece. Dkoukoul (talk) 18:47, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

I more or less agree with MADe here. This sounds like a cool proposal, and I can see how it would be worthwhile for us to fund at least part of its costs, but I don't believe that the Wikimedia movement should be the primary/only funder of the conference. Kevin (talk) 20:57, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Kevin for the comment. The funds that we ask for will probably make half of our expenses. Unfortunately the situation in Greece is not the best in order to get sponsors that is why our other fund raising will be crowd funding campaign and donations. It is difficult for us since we are not a legal entity to apply to most other organisation that provide such funding. We will have to cover many travelling expenses, mostly tickets, and probably extra accommodation that is not included for many speakers, we will also have to try to cover expenses for many workshops (natural building, natural farming, electronics and more) that are not within this proposal and we will have also expenses for several events prior to the main festival event which is described on this proposal that will be covered by donations. We want Wikimedia to be seen as a main contributor because we see it as an organisation that is actually helping all other aspects of what we promote on the festival because free knowledge that Wikipedia and the other projects provide it's the base of all the commons projects that we will be presenting. For example without the knowledge that Wikipedia offers many individuals and teams would not be empowered with knowledge to pursue other open source/ commons projects, from building and farming to electronics and software. I understand and respect your thoughts and would be more than happy to take any suggestions that you may have. Dkoukoul (talk) 18:47, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

As you can see from the global contributions of the organizers, they have nothing to do with the wikimedia community. The events include a variety of irrelevant issues (natural building technologies, workshop of weaving and puppet theatre) and one related presentation. It is clear that this event is out of scope for wikimedia. --FocalPoint (talk) 23:27, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks FocalPoint for your comment. Allow me to point out that although we may not have many people from the Wikimedia community in our organizing team, although some of us have been actively contributing to wikimedia projects, we believe that the project is aligned with the mission of Wikimedia. Which is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. Our mission is exactly that! To show people how this freely available educational content that is created within Wikimedia projects and outside of them can empower teams and individuals to create and manage common goods. How for example a hackerspace community was able to build a 3d printer because of the access to freely available knowledge and many more examples. By showing examples in real world of how people use this freely available knowledge and create digital and even non-digital things, we show why it is worth for people to contribute to the Wikimedia projects and other projects that have the same mission of creating freely available knowledge and of course to disseminate that knowledge online and this way making it available globally. How will we encourage people who have knowledge about building techniques or farming into getting time to get involved into Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects if we can not show them the value that the whole world will get from providing their time and knowledge to contribute to these projects? Unfortunately there is a digital divide and one of our goals is to try to fill this gap by bringing together these people from online communities and local communities to share knowledge collaborate and educate each other so that more people learn how to contribute to online communities and find value into doing that.

Concerning the discussion happening above I would like to ask for a full budget to be included in the application - like a list of all the planned expenses, total of expenses, a list of all income (participation fees, booth rents, this grant request, futher sponsors...), total of income, remaining contingency (income minus expenses). As an example see this grant request: Grants:PEG/WM AT/WikiCon 2012#Budget breakdown. Now, about the project itself: I like it very much and I tend to approve it. Just note that 1.500 visitors is a huge number! Our annual Wikimania conference has about 1.000 participants and takes more than a year to organise. Your advantage is that, as far as I can tell, don't have to take care for any accommodation and catering apart from your speakers. Maybe you want to reconsider if 1.500 visitors is a realistic number. --Manuel Schneider^(bla) (+/-) 13:27, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Manuel for the contribution to the discussion. We will try to add a full budget list as you request although the reason we did not do it in the first place is that most of the other events are not planned yet. We firstly focus on the needs of the main event. But we will try to estimate what will be needed and what we might get as income from other sources as well in order to be more analytical. Thank you for the helpful example. About the number of visitors apologies for not being clearly stated that this is the total number we expect people to attend at all events/talks/workshops and exhibitions and not only during the 3 day talks/workshops. Last year during the talks we had at least 300 each day. Few people come and watch all the talks/workshops because of the long hours, remember it is not a conference. Most people tend to come and watch 1 or 2 talks/workshops and also spend some time in the exhibition or the other way around. People get to see stuff in the exhibition, ask about them and then curiosity kicks in and will come back to watch a talk/workshop. So I believe it is a achievable number for visitors, again this is a number of unique people that we estimate will attend a talk/workshop/discussion or the exhibition. But I will forward your concerns to the our team and come back to that.

Manuel I happen to have grown up in the city. I visited the event and assisted since there was help needed. The visitor count was while I was there, last two days' at least at 300-400 people therefore I find the figure being quite realistic. The audience is generally broad therefore it is no surprise. If it was up to me I would support the project. Especially if you consider how unknown the and small Greek wikipedia is. Madonius (talk) 15:14, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid that if we exclude Dkoukoul, the other organizers have nothing to do with Wikipedia community, nor they have notified about the project, their intentions and activities, or ask Wikipedians for contribution and help. I'm also afraid that, strictly speaking, these activities are out of the scopes of Wikimedia Projects. --Ttzavaras (talk) 20:53, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your contribution Tzavaras. I have to note that I am not the only one who is active in the Wikimedia community, Zeptomoon and Sperxios are contributors as well. You see only me being active here because we have delegated duties in the organizing team and i have been chosen as a coordinator for the grant proposal. this does not mean that the rest are inactive or unaware. Our intentions as far as the proposed project is concerned are the ones stated with in the proposal, as a team we do not have any individual intentions. Also I respect your opinion but I have to note once again that our activities seem to be more general than those of the wikimedia community but I believe that they are totally aligned with the mission of the Wikimedia foundation and thus the project could be considered for funding.

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC Members who approve this grant request

1. --Ilario (talk) 13:07, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Not funded

Thank you for offering us this opportunity to fund your event. We do not see sufficient impact for our mission, and so will not be funding this. We recommend seeking a closer relationship with the active Wikimedia editing communities in Greece to see if you can work more closely together. Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 00:11, 25 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you all for your time and feedback. We would like to ask you if you will consider supporting our project with any of the non-financial requirements that are in the proposal despite the not-funded decision. Dkoukoul (talk) 13:16, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

The easiest way to get an experienced speaker from the Greek Wikipedia is to contact the community directly, by posting at the Agora. I'm afraid we won't be sending merchandise or give permission to use the Wikimedia trademarks without an endorsement from the editing community. You can seek such endorsement on the Agora as well. If you can show evidence of significant community support, we will reconsider. Good luck with your event! Asaf Bartov (WMF Grants) talk 04:21, 3 January 2014 (UTC)