Grants talk:PEG/Marc LaPorte - Wikimedians in Boston/RecentChangesCamp2011 Boston/Report

Reflecting on lessons learned

Thank you for your report, and glad to see you took the time to reflect on a few things you could do differently next time. Please provide a few more details:

• Difficulties with timing and location: (Due to the timing and location of the conference, many of the West Coast attendees who usually attend Recent Changes Camp couldn't make it this year.) Could you elaborate upon the difficulties? Why was the timing and location of the conference this year a barrier to attendance?

The event should be decided/announced a long time in advance, and should be picked so as to not interfere with other events, or even better benefit from other events (ex.: co-located). There is a quite big wiki community in Montréal, where several RCC events took place. Boston is only a 5-6 hour drive away and thus, we could have expected a contingent of 20 or 30 people from Montréal. Unfortunately the RCC date conflicted with the confoo.ca conference in Montreal, and this affected participation. We knew the date was not ideal, but we had no better option where the venue was available.

Going forward, RCC should consider colocating with larger events, like WikiSym often does. (ex.: WikiMania)

• Local involvement: (At least three locals should be involved in organizing future Recent Changes Camps -- this should be taken into consideration when choosing future locations.) Sounds like good advice, but I'm just curious about why you arrived at the number three.

By picking Boston, we were hoping to get some help from local people known to be involved in FOSS and the wiki world. However, our hopes didn't match up to reality. Why 3? Because people are volunteers and it's too much work for just 1 or 2 people and too risky that problems will arise.

• Well-known figures: (When planning future conferences, we should give priority (if at all possible) to dates and locations that allow more well known wiki figures to attend in order to attract more attendees.) Also a good point! How do you think you would go about things differently when planning a future event in order to make sure this happens?

This is a tough one. If you try to get people to commit to coming "if something will happen", they will ask to know the date (at least) before to commit). I think the better solution is to pick venue and date at least 9 months in advance and there is a very high chance the calendar is still free for these "Well-known figures".

Wolliff 19:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Measures of success

Please follow up with a few points outlines in your original submission:

1. Attendance: (The event should have at least 100 people attending it.) Did you reach this goal? What was the actual attendance?

It's been a small turn out (about 20 participants) but a high percentage of people who'd never been to RCC before, and they all seemed really happy that it was a small gathering. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AnneGoldenberg (talk • contribs) 19:14, 31 January 2012‎ .

1. Resources: (Video, pictures and blog posts will be created documenting the event. These resources will be usable by the wider Wikimedia community, including projects like Wikiversity) Please provide a link to some of these resources in your grant report.

http://recentchangescamp.org/wiki/Boston/Agenda http://www.splitbrain.org/blog/2011-03/19-boston

Not much online notes taken ... It's been a small gathering and because of that the sessions have been very involved and no one happened to tweet or take notes during our conversations. but here are some pictures http://www.flickr.com/photos/ttrimm/sets/72157626144598891/with/5528389866/ —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AnneGoldenberg (talk • contribs) 19:14, 31 January 2012‎ .

1. Female participation: I hope you will be doing some follow up with the attendees (especially those who were not active Wikipedia editors before the conference) to track exactly if and how they're planning on getting more involved with any Wikimedia projects and staying more involved over time. Please update your grant report in a few months when you have some of this information!

Female participation was great ! Gender gap has been one of the main discussion topic and the organiser and the facilitator are now getting involved in a gender related wiki event called wikiwomencamp —The preceding unsigned comment was added by AnneGoldenberg (talk • contribs) 19:14, 31 January 2012‎ .

Wolliff 19:38, 12 January 2012 (UTC)

Report accepted

Thank you for the additional updates. We've moved this report to accepted. Feel free to keep in touch if you have any other insights to share. Wolliff (talk) 17:43, 26 July 2012 (UTC)

Budget details

It's a best practice to keep these on Meta, so I've added some of the budget details from the recent changes camp wiki here:

Final budget US$ 1200+$1200+211.50+375+315.50+315.50= $3167.50 for rental of location and for food (paid by Marc) $US 115.42 for material (paid by Anne) $US $297.86 for furniture rental (paid by Nicole) Total: $US 4030.78 Sponsors: US$ 3500 Deficit: US$ 530.78

Cheers, Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 19:39, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

Documentation of expenditures received

Receipts were received on 27 October 2011. Winifred Olliff (Grants Administrator) talk 19:39, 12 February 2013 (UTC)