Grants talk:PEG/WM MX/Annual grant 2014-2015

Evaluation by the GAC

GAC members who support this request

1. I think that a greatly reduced travel budget is in order, and also the surplus should be 5% or less. But to everything else, agree Alleycat80 (talk) 22:31, 30 September 2014 (UTC)
2. --Ilario (talk) 23:28, 1 October 2014 (UTC)
3. --3BRBS (talk) 04:12, 2 October 2014 (UTC) *See comments below

GAC comments

Lena's questions and remarks

Hi everyone and sorry for the very late questions and remarks, I hope you'll find time to answer :)

It might be obvious, but I guess all the actions are targetting Wikimedia projects in Spanish and not in other Mexico languages ?

You are working on raising awareness about Creative Commons licences, which is very important work :) Do you have help of other organisations or are you alone on this topic ?

I love the public relations part, especially since the work will be done by an external graphic designer. Getting professional help when needed is a very healthy way to spend money ♥ Do you plan on sharing this work with the whole Wikimedia movement through uploading some blank graphics on Commons ?

Some more love for the education programm aiming teachers ♥ and the swag programm ♥

For the corporate address, do you plan on having one in the future, and what is preventing you from having one right now ?

Thanks for you time :) Léna (talk) 08:33, 21 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your questions Lena. The constructive feedback never comes late. ;)

Languages: As you can read in the report of our last grant we had some experience with minoritarian languages during past years, specially in indigenous ones. Althought it is still a priority to us, now we changed a bit our focus to try to develop activites that allow us make strong our community. Obviously that gives to our strategy a slight emphasis to Spanish projects. Nevertheless, some of the activities descripted in the grant will benefit other languages, as an example, we already have an invitation to be part of some indigenous meetings and forums in Veracruz and Tabasco, but we are not certain about the specific place, for that reason there are an item about travels (item #10) that are open to those kind of events. We are totally open to work with indigenous languages, and, although is not specifically said, the work on that topic is included in the section called "Outreach".

CC licenses work: Maybe we are the most important organisation that promotes CC licences. Unfortunately the CC oficial affiliates are not so active in outreach and raising awareness as we would like. That doesn't mean we are totally alone, since there are other free-licenses-based organisations as Mozilla Mexico or Open TIC, who we are working with.

Graphics: Of course we are going to share! We are wikimedians! :D We love publics relations too and we already have done work on that. Many of our works are already in Commons [1] and in the past we have offered blank graphics to public use [2]. Definitely we want to get material that could be used and reused for the whole community.

Corporate address: We do plan to have one, certainly. The only issue is money. Part of this grant will focus on getting a nice hut for WMMX :P That's the item number 4 of "Follow-up and development" section.

Thanks to you for reading and asking. :) Salvador (talk) 04:04, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Alleycat80's comments

Hi, thanks for submitting this. I truly am astounded by the amount of great work being done by WMMX's volunteer team.

A meta comment - I could evaluate this better if I could have financials from last year(s) - is WMMX spending in recent years close to the current request? How efficient is the spending? How much of it goes to programs, and how much for infrastructure?

I have a few questions/suggestions though:

• Isn't the iberoconf travel budget already covered by the Iberoconf proposal? I checked and it is, and in that case, I strongly urge you to reconsider - your grant is focused on strengthening the community inside Mexico, one or two reps in Iberoconf should be enough for now. Moreover, the amount of US$ needed for travelling is double than what the Iberoconf organizers estimated, and they seem to know what they are doing.
• I also am not sure about the travel to non-wiki events, for the same reason. If they don't directly correlate with your on-wiki activity (or the activity described in your text part of the annual grant request, for me it's an alarming sign. Please consider cutting this in half or strongly justifying.

The above two items consist of ~20-25% of your grant request. Please understand that I do treat this heavily due to the fact that I don't see enough value created from investing in travel while your focus is clearly inwards. Moving on...

• Surplus ("unexpected") - 10% seems to be quite a high sum, which indicates you're not sure in your planning. I would consider reducing to 5%, or even less. I trust the Grants' Team could always help if things go awry. Why do I say that? I think that at the end of the grants' year, there is a tendency to sometimes overspend, including some surplus. Limiting that means you'll be thinking carefully before going over budget. Again, I'm not saying this about WMMX, this is a general reference to human nature....

• A side note about your digitization plan - I would very much like to see a detailed digitization workplan or some documentation about this, if you could share it in the future. Digitization projects are hard; they require a lot of effort and the scanner is the easy part of the project (I used to run a ~1 Million$/year digitization lab at a National Library). I would encourage you to consult with WMAR about software that automates metadata creation and upload to commons as well, and if that's needed, update the budget to include things for these. I would also like to see edit-a-thons dedicated to including the materials in your plan, if I could point out a way to make the digitization more impactful.

I hope these comments help you. Please don't deduce from the fact that I am urging you to reduce some spending, that I underestimate your great work. I strongly agree to granting this grant, with some amended budget items, and hope you carry on and grow as you are planning! Alleycat80 (talk) 22:30, 30 September 2014 (UTC)

• Thanks for the comments, Alley. We share your opinion it be useful have that analysis of past expenditures, we will try to have but it can be at the end of the year, not for this moment.

• About Iberoconf 2014, we want to give this opportunity to two members of the WMMX board to assist and get involved in the conf's discussions, in addition to User:Wotancito and me. Some other chapters add to their own budget the assistance of part of their boards to international events as Wikimania or Wikimedia Conference for begin the training and the experience for other members of the organizations for this kind of events. But as the meeting approaches, the flight costs increase dramatically every day and we have our participation is secured in the meeting, this item may be dispensable.
• Related to other free culture events. Our chapter have an active role in Mexico in the promotion of the free culture and Creative Commons licenses. In some months we did more CC talks and/or related events than the official chapter in the country. We want to learn more about other experiences and share our learnings in this kind of summits. In previous years we had invitations but abstain for participate due to lack of funds. In both cases, we understand that this costs are high, but have positive results in people attending and learning that can be generated from them.
• Surplus: we had bad experiences with volatility of costs between the requested funds and what you have to spend after you receive the funds. 10 percent seems reasonable to us and we will be careful about tracking the use of funds.
• Digitalization: unfortunately we don't have more positive feedback in recent weeks about our stakeholder of digitalization plan in UNAM. So, we can remove this amount from the budget.

Thank you for your kindly feedback! --ProtoplasmaKid (WM-MX) (talk) 08:54, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you, [User:ProtoplasmaKid]]. I see some of my questions were actually answered in the correspondence with Alex below. I still question all the other cultural events, but realize that it's your choice, and hope that you and WMF grants team will come to an understanding about the right mix. Cheers! Alleycat80 (talk) 10:21, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

3BRBS comments

Hi, just a brief note. The budget seems pretty solid to me, my only two concerns are the Iberoconf travels (10.c), since, as pointed out by Alleycat80, it seems reasonable to understand why, two more people is being considered for this participation? And the second one, is about the "travels for Non-Wikimedia events related to Free Knowledge world" (10.d.), It seems a bit general, and if specific events could be pointed out, so we can understand better how they relate to the activities of Wikimedia México, it would be really helpfull to see if this is an item that could/should/would be funded. About the unforseing expenditure, in my opinion, and based on my experience, a 10% is reasonable. There are many things that change in terms of cost during the whole process (which includes the original budgeting, it presentation, discussion/approval, getting funded and receiving the money). Usually several prices change from the moment you prepare a budget and the moment it can actually be executed, the rate of exchange for a currency changes, products run out or providers run out of stock, and then you have to look for another provider, and get another price, or simply things get more pricy, etc. Also, it is simple not possible to forse every aspect on how reality behaves, and this gives space to cover this. I've encouraged people in the past to inlcude this item line, and also to consider a 10% for it :] --3BRBS (talk) 22:45, 2 October 2014 (UTC)

Hi 3BRBS, thanks for your kindly input. We want to give the opportunity to other members of the board also involved in Iberoconf 2013, to have their participation in the meeting in Buenos Aires. User:Wotancito is the current coordinator of the initiative and I will support doing facilitation of the whole sessions. So, in addition to the opportunity of the participation of two more members of the Board, we want to delegate the discussions to them, if it is possible. Regarding to the other events of Open Knowledge, we put a little note about some examples (Creative Commons Annual summit, Open Access meeting, Open Source Bridge), because we want to expand our links in regional and international events in this track. Actually we are really few organizations including our chapter which have in Mexico a periodic and constant work on the spread of the Creative Commons license and we want to learn more and share our experience. And thanks for the comment about the percent that we are proposing! Regards, --ProtoplasmaKid (WM-MX) (talk) 05:53, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

DSLR

Hello, I have a question about chosen DSLR - what led you to choose the Nikon brand? I don't want to imply the answer by specifying the details, so I am intentionally serving the question quite vague. (No brand fight, looking for the practical reasons behind.) Thanks.

— Danny B. 10:33, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

We don´t have any preference in choice Nikon or other brand if we have similar features for the same low price. Fortunately in Mexico, due to the proximity of the States, all the cameras have cheap prices compared to to other countries. Personally I used this model and have a good quality in DLSR video recording, but need an external audio source. Thanks, Danny! --ProtoplasmaKid (WM-MX) (talk) 04:59, 9 October 2014 (UTC)

Just as Ivan said, there is no special reason for choosing Nikon, besides our own experience :) --Padaguan (talk) 05:58, 20 October 2014 (UTC)

Community comments

Tony1 comments and queries

Salvador and Iván—I presume this application is open for review (memo to grantmaking staff: could there please be an "open for review" date at the top of the application form?).

Tony, when the status is set to "open submission" that means it is open for review and commenting. When the status is "draft" it means they are still working on it. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

The project start date was last week: could you please change this so that it's not retrospective? I suggest 1 October, or better halfway through October; this is a sizeable application, and the review process will need some time.

Could you put US$ or € in parentheses after the Mexican currency in the budget? It's not an easy conversion to do mentally. Tony (talk) 03:47, 6 September 2014 (UTC)

Hi Tony1. Yes it's open. I sent the mail to grants team last week. We were waiting for an answer. Thank you for asking.

Date updated. I agree with October 1. Let's see how much time will take.

About the currency: are you suggesting to put the US currency conversion in every item? Salvador (talk) 01:20, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, that would be good; but I guess just the last column (Total budget). For minimum clutter, you might consider removing the parentheses from (MXN) at the top, and for that total budget key, second line, write MXN (US$). That way, you could just add like this:

1,020 (84)

I just came up with that without converting. I suggest rounding the US$ values to the nearest $10, and certainly no cents. That would be great! Thanks. Tony (talk) 01:43, 7 September 2014 (UTC)

We just followed the instructions. The conversions were in the table but now are where and how you suggested. I hope it's like you wanted. Salvador (talk) 16:46, 8 September 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Salvador. I normally do the conversions for USD on budget tables to save volunteers time. But I was on vacation last week so did not get to it! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 16:19, 10 September 2014 (UTC)

Please note I have added USD conversions for each line item. Hopefully this is helpful for the GAC! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:40, 12 September 2014 (UTC)

Thank you Salvador, Iván, and Alex. I haven't looked at most of the proposal yet (critically the budget). But as a first question, your first "General goal" is "To increase the participation in the Wikimedia Foundation projects in more states of the Mexican Republic." This implies that coverage throughout the nation is an issue. I see your point that two-thirds of Mexicans have no access to the internet; you deal with what you've got, I suppose, so my questions are: what have you got!?

To help us to grasp the demographic–technological challenges you'll be facing, are you able to give us a few more details about the state of internet coverage and participation in Mexico, and how this plays into your strategies for increasing reach:

1. Do you expect contributions mostly from mobile devices, for example; is the quality of non-mobile connectivity reasonable in big cities, and dreadful in outlying regional areas?

That's probable. I would like some statistics from WMF to know the number of mobile-done contributions coming specifically from Mexico. It's a good topic to develop. The connection is like you say, sometimes even, is kind of ghastly in the city also. Salvador (talk) 04:11, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

1. What is your target group for engagement in terms of geographical location, age, and gender? In this respect, I suppose I'm wondering whether you'll concentrate on what (in English) are called "low-hanging fruit"—that is, will the biggest increase might come for the smallest investment among age 20–40, females and males living in Mexico City and a few large secondary cities? That's not my assumption, but just an example.

According to official statistics, among those who have internet access in our country 74.3% of them have less than 35 years. A bit more than 50% of internet user are between 18 and 44 years. (Inegi. Statistics on Internet Day. National numbers) Besides, according to our own experience most of people that we have reached are inside that margin and most our member in our chapter coincide with that average. Finally, we should remark that, in general population statistics, such ages mean almost 60% of total population. (CIA Factbook. Mexico) So, yes, we are focusing (but no limiting) mostly to people between 18 and 44.

Please respond by interpolating under each number question if it's easier for you. Tony (talk) 02:16, 13 September 2014 (UTC)

Salvador, what about your geographical strategy? Do you have a prioritised plan for concentrating on specific regions, cities, towns in relation to internet availability? Tony (talk) 08:41, 17 September 2014 (UTC)

As we explained in the intro to the grant, we will focus in the cities where we already have community, specially those different to the capital, that means: Guadalajara and Puebla. Those are our prioties, although part of our envision is to develop some activities in the North and South. We already have some members in the northest part of Mexico, but they are no so active, anyway this region is our second priority. In long term we want to have presence in the South. Guadalara, Puebla and the cities in the north, are, at same time, urban places with an excelent conection. South is the part with less access to internet we will to develop a specific strategy for those regions. Salvador (talk) 03:23, 23 September 2014 (UTC)

Well, I'd be happy if the details of your geographical–connectivity strategy were briefly outlined somewhere in the plan.

Budget: "graphic identity manual"—I'm unsure what this is.

In my view, there's too much physical paraphernalia, printing, for an essentially online aim. Your physical items aren't going to encourage anyone to get connected; so the point is, why not focus the funding on promoting your activities on social media?

US$908 is quite a lot for a book scanner (and I do appreciate the need for this if you're providing packages of "source material" for workshops. But nowadays you should be able to get a good scanner for a fraction of that.

Office: well, again, the consumables are full of items I'd consider ephemeral: folders with the logo on them? Isn't it an online organisation? Lots of printing? Letterheads? Why 200 printed booklets of the annual report? (Why not just post it online, so everyone in Mexico can read it?) The ubiquitous stickers? why are you prining 500 copies of your annual report? 500 pens???? Wikimedians use keyboards now.

Travel to Iberocoop seems to be very expensive. Where would the other "free knowledge" trips be to?

In my view, the budget should be cut back: I'm having trouble seeing proportionate impact here, whether in a month, a year, or three years; and I note Learning and Evaluation's recent messages that impact per dollar is tending to be greater the smaller the grant. Tony (talk) 01:23, 1 October 2014 (UTC)

"Too much paraphernalia" If you are asking that so you don't know very well the Mexican society. It's true that we work in an online project but at the same time we work with people who are atracted with this kind of little details. We work in schools, museums, public places, hacklabs, lan parties, and so on, where we are easily located thanks that lovely paraphernalia that also motivates people to stay, to ask, and to remember what Wikimedia Mexico is and does. "Your physical items aren't going to encourage anyone to get connected" Why are you so sure? Maybe you are talking "connected" only in a merely internet-slang meaning, but what is true is that physical items are trully appreciated and encourage many people to get in touch with us. We work both: social media and physical media, Form and Substance.

This predominance of the closed over the open manifests itself not only as impassivity and distrust, irony and suspicion, but also love for Form. Form surrounds and sets bounds to our privacy, limiting its excesses, curbing its explosions, isolating and preserving it. Both our Spanish and Indian heritages have influenced our fondness for ceremony, formulas, and order.

— Octavio Paz, The Labyrinth of Solitude

Actually, $908 is the price for 2 book scanners. That means you are right, we can get one only for a fraction of that: 50%. But if you can give us a link of a scanner of the same good quality and better price, we could change the price happily. :) I think I didn't understand very well your pount on "source material" and "workshops".

It's true that we are asking for a lot of printed material. In Mexico that kind of sources are really important, specially when not all tramits and presentations are digital. Here is still a good manner to send a letter to authorities for certain tramits with letterhead and to give on talks some sheets inside a folder. Yes, we are an online organisation but I can swear you that even me I still like handwriting to take notes.

We will post our report online for sure, but the printed material it's also to give it to our cultural partners, authorities, non-wikimedians, organisation own archive, fiscal porpouses, etc. Yes, I do know wikimedians use keyboards, I can see they specially like to use many question marks at final of sentences. :D

Going to Iberoconf —not Iberocoop—, it's expensive but it's worthed. We learn a lot in that meetings. The most of our activities and methodologies has been inspired and encouraged there.

If you read carefully (Commentary below the item) you will aware that other free knowledge trips are: "Creative Commons Annual summit, Open Access meeting, Open source bridge, and so on."

I left the point about "Graphic manual" to Ivan, who is the expert on that matter.

Thanks for your comments. Regards! Salvador (talk) 06:09, 5 October 2014 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your valuable comments, Tony. About the Graphic manual, every professional organization needs to have their own image and Wikimedia organizations have a deep lack of professional and more homogeneous image to the exterior. In past years I donated my skills and time as graphic designer and communicator for my chapter and not only. I helped to other Wikimedia organizations to have professional and quality designs. But my time now is less and we want to have a revamped graphic presence as a organization in an open manual who can be used indeed for other organizations. Regards, --ProtoplasmaKid (WM-MX) (talk) 09:05, 7 October 2014 (UTC)

WMF comments

Thank you for this grant proposal and your engagement with the discussion. It's great to see WMMX is expanding based on your previous success. It is an ambitious annual plan, especially considering you will also be hosting Wikimania 2015, but from our conversations, we understand you are very aware of your volunteer community's time and resources. We have a few remaining questions and look forward to your response:

Public Events

• Number of attendees: We would expect this number to be much higher than 120 considering the number of events planned. 120 is just expected for the 12 monthly workshops.

Yes, we also expect a higher number, but we wanted keep ourselves conservative. And yes, the number is based only in the workshops attendance which is more or less constant. We choose quantitative goals that we are sure we will reach. Salvador (talk) 03:23, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

We would encourage you to actually be ambitious with your numbers. We do not consider your projects a failure if you don't meet your metrics. Instead, it is better to aim high. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Well, I did it. I changed the goal to 600 people, that means 50 per month. Salvador (talk) 01:08, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

• Number of new users: This number should also be higher than 5 considering the number of events planned. Is this metric the number of people that create new accounts?

Yes, we are considering people that creates a new account but also who stays editing at least one month. 5 it's also a conservative but it's a realistic considering the average of new editors retention. Salvador (talk) 03:23, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Please see our comment above. Our long term goal is editor retention. We know this is difficult, but 5 editors who continue to edit for just one month is not many. 5 "active editors" (more than 5 edits/month) over a period of time (6 months) would be more appropriate. Otherwise, we'd encourage you to increase your goals and think about event follow-up strategies that would encourage retention -- like on-wiki check-ins or mentoring for people that have created new accounts during your events. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Done. I made a distinction between the goal of new members and active editors. The first one was rise to 20 per month and the second one was set at 10. Salvador (talk) 01:19, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

• Editions to Wikimedia projects: Please clarify if this is new articles, improved articles, new media, etc.

Since we have an specific metric for Wikipedia new and improved articles (2 lines below), we focus this metric as a general one. It implies any other kind of edition to whichever project diferent to Wikipedia. Salvador (talk) 03:23, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

• New Partnerships: Do you have an idea of who you would like partner with and for what purpose?

Due to Wikimania 2015, we are on talks on a main agreement with a major government entity. In addition, we have the interest of at least four new GLAM agreements and one related to Indigenous Languages. Because the agreements cannot been announced yet, we can inform you privately. During this grant discusion, we reached one cultural partnering with Centro Cultural Tlatelolco of UNAM and started talks with El Colegio de Mexico's library.

Thanks for providing this info. General partnerships, in terms of getting in-kind donations (venues) and raising awareness, are definitely useful. However, we are particularly interested in GLAM partnerships that result in content donations. Will these potential partnerships contain an element of content donation? Do you have an idea of what kind of content and how much? Your metrics for GLAM should include some type of content metrics. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

To the first question: Yes, ordinaly we intruduce our work-plan to potencial GLAM partners with that donation clause.

To the second question: Since our current and potential GLAM partners are museums, we consider the donations will focus on photographs of in-public-domain art works. The number can vary, i.e. Soumaya museum has uploaded 150 files until now, but I think that at least 75 single archives per partner it's a good number considering that we also are open to work with small museums. I'm adding this metric to our grant. Does it make sense? Salvador (talk) 01:57, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Public Relations

• You've budgeted for 800 (bus) trips for participation in public events. This numbers seems very high. Is it similar to last year? Increased by x%?

Sorry, that was a typo, we will write the right number. Certainly is really high. Salvador (talk) 03:27, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Done. Besides I should say that this is a new item thus is not similiar to last year. Salvador (talk) 02:04, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Education Program

• Measures of success: In the end, the impact we hope to have with education programs is an increase in quality content. It's not about how many teachers participate, but how much and what type of content is added to Wikipedia and the sister projects. It would be great if you could set your measures of success so they align with that objective. For example, a goal could be "have students add x bytes of content to WP" or "increase bytes added by students by x% in 2015 respective to 2014".

Ok. We will check and adapt. Salvador (talk) 03:30, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Great, please add to the request page. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Done. Our metric says now: "9,000 bytes per student added to Wikipedia articles." It was calculated based on a Educative Program developed last year in Puebla, where the average per student (in a group of 26) was 9,072.07. Salvador (talk) 02:11, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

• What information do you hope to receive in the "reports from participating institutions"?

At least the number of bytes added, students new accounts created, articles edited and experiences gotten. Salvador (talk) 03:30, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

• According to the Spanish Education program page, WMMX now has two campus ambassadors. Since you are thinking of scaling your education activities, it might make sense to invest time and effort in recruiting more campus ambassadors, who can take some of the burden of the day-to-day management of questions in class off of WMMX.

Right, we will try to get more people, but is not easy recruiting devoted people in the schools with more commitment than simple participators in the program. Salvador (talk) 03:30, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

An alternative idea for recruiting new teachers (rather than giving 10 lectures) would be to focus on getting more professors at institutions where you are currently running programs. This will make it easier for volunteers and ambassadors to coordinate support. Another value to growing programs at existing schools is that you can consider training librarians who can assist students in their coursework. This has worked well for other education programs. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

If you do grow the program, it is important that you begin to use the Education Extention to register classes and track student work. This will make it much easier to demonstrate impact and track program progress from a distance. The extension needs to be translated into Spanish still, but hopefully program leaders at IberoConf will collaborate on this and put out a call for translation if necessary. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

In our previous experience is truly more useful and possible to get teachers as embassadors or coordinators. For that reason one metric is based in getting more educators to our program. We already are experimenting with that extention [3]. Salvador (talk) 02:19, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

Budget

• As mentioned in the comments above, the amount of printed material seems high. We understand the need for the WMMX brochure, WEP manual, Annual Report, and GLAM brochure, but the amounts seem inconsistent with the number of potential partnerships and education activities. We have found with many chapters that printing hundreds of copies of the Annual Report does not have a considerable impact. Please print only enough for your partnerships/government needs. Similarly, the amount of folders and letterhead seem high, but these are materials that can be used over a number of years as long as you have some place to store them!

Please consider that with start-up grant we weren't able to buy that kind of basics due to administrative problems with the bank. So, we are taking this opportunity to get them to build up our corporative identity.

Besides, we are considering the use of this promotional materials not only in the day-to-day activity of the chapter but in the context of Wikimania 2015. They will be used for the promotion of the chapter during the event, which is a singular opportunity to do it. A hundred of printings sounds high, but in productions terms it's really closer the price of printing 1000 units to 500 rather. Thinking about saving funds, we can sum up in the design of a single brochure, the chapter, WEP and GLAM information.

If you can create a brochure that covers all the information effectively, that would be great. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

• Legal: Just for clarification, can you please provide more details on the legalization of the assembly acts?

The mexican civil law requires us that every assembly act shall be registered before notary. The celebration of an assembly have plenty internal efects for the non-profit but not before third parties if it's not registered in that way. Our last assembly celebrated on last April] is not registered yet. Obviusly every registration implies to pay the fees to the public notary which is what we ask for in this grant. Salvador (talk) 04:20, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

• New communities travel: From the proposal, it sounds like your activities outside of Mexico City are focused on Guadalajara and Puebla and you have one board member in Guadalajara. Is this travel budget for those cities or new communities? It seems like focusing on those three cities is manageable for the next year and that expanding to additional cities might be a large strain on resources and time.

Considering you already have budget for Puebla travel and your ambitious plan for the next year, we don't think it's a good time to spend time and resources on additional expansion. Please remove. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Sorry if we insist on this, but you are considerating this item only from the perspective of new communities, nevertheless, as you can read, the item it would be used also for travels to give talks, workshops or activities in other cities. How can we spread on Mexico WMF's goals if we can't travel around our country? Regardless we create a community or not, we are constantly requested by universities, museums, local governments, and other cultural institutions for giving talks, and not all the organizations have the money to afford our travel, just now we have an excelent proposal from a group of 4 museums in Monterrey to give a seminar about GLAM, should we reject for lack of money to travel? Refusing this item is condemning us to immobility. Salvador (talk) 03:17, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

We are willing to support this reduced travel budget so you can remain flexible. We realize that this increase in opportunities is all due to WM Mexico's great success in holding events and workshops and we'd like to congratulate you on that! However, please be strategic in the types of requests you agree to. Will that meeting possibly lead to a partnership? What would be the result of that partnership? Do you have local volunteers who can follow-up after you leave and keep the communication/partnership/project going? All good questions to ask yourselves. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 14:10, 23 October 2014 (UTC)

• Iberoconf travel: We are open to considering an additional participant from WMMX if you can provide more information on who that person would be, their experience/interests, and how they would add to and gain from the this year's program. For example, someone managing the education activities might be best positioned to benefit from the meeting. According to the flight bookings currently being made for the meeting, a Mexico City-Buenos Aires flight should be no more than $1,500.

We desire to take to Alan Lazalde to Iberconf since we want to engage him to this kind of events. Alan wants to share his experience on Ibero-American Civic Innovation Meeting, a multinational space for digital citizen projects organized in the context of Ibero-American Summit. Besides, he's currently leading a voluntary revamp in the Wikimedia Mexico processes and strategy aiming to improve projects managing. He wants to give a workshop during Iberoconf about this.

Considering Alan Lazalde can no longer attend the meeting, please remove this item from the budget. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Removed. Salvador (talk) 02:57, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

• Non-Wikimedia event travel: You have listed 3+ possible events. What is the priority and why? Please note that individuals can apply to the Travel & Participation Support grants program to participate in non-Wikimedia events. If you are not sure which events will be the most beneficial, it might be best for individuals to apply for a TPS grant to participate.

Actually the events listed are in the order according to our priority. Since we are the most important organization in promoting Creative Commons licenses, we think Creative Commons Annual summit would benefit us to learn and make contacts related that topic and profesionalize our work on that matter. The Open Access meeting would have the same effect but focused to the OA topic which is a big lack in our country. Since, that meetings are fundamental to our current work we would prefer to send by ourselveves some members to get directly the reports and benefits that those meetings would generate. Anyway, if you still consider this a problematic item we could shrug and aim for TPS grants. Salvador (talk) 04:20, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

We think it's best if you remove this item from the grant request and apply for a TPS grant when you know exactly which conference, who will attend, and how they will participate. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

So be it. Removed. Salvador (talk) 02:57, 21 October 2014 (UTC)

• Please clarify what the "simple structure" for a DSLR is - I think this might a translation question.

We refer to a shoulder mount rig with focus control, that helps to mount a conventional camera and perform more profesional shoots.

Looking forward to your responses. Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 18:30, 8 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your questions. I hope you will find our answers interesting. Beforehand I tell you that answers were elaborated in a colaborative way, for that reason the grammar might sound weird some times. Please let me know if you have doubts. Salvador (talk) 04:20, 13 October 2014 (UTC)

Thanks so much for the clear responses. Hopefully you can update the proposal soon so we can move forward. We are very excited to support the great work you have planned for the next year! Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 23:11, 15 October 2014 (UTC)

Aggregated feedback from the GAC (to be completed at the end of the discussion)

Key:

• 1 = very weak or no alignment
• 3 = weak alignment
• 5 = passable alignment; room for significant improvement
• 7 = reasonably good alignment
• 10 = excellent alignment

Scoring rubric	Score
(A) Impact potential Does it focus on one (not all) of Wikimedia's strategic priorities? Does it have potential for impact on Wikimedia projects through new or improved content? Can it be sustained, scaled, or adapted elsewhere after the grant ends?	8.2
(B) Measures of success Are there both quantitative and qualitative measures of success? Are they realistic? Can they be measured?	7.8
(C) Ability to execute Can the scope be accomplished in the proposed timeframe? Do the participants have the necessary skills/experience? Are there any external factors that may promote success?	8.4
(D) Budget quality Does the budget match the program scope? Is there strategic justification for material costs (printing, merchandise, etc.)? Does the budget reflect responsible growth for repeat grantees or a reasonable first investment for new grantees?	8.4
(E) Community engagement Does it have a specific target community and plan to engage it often? Does it have community support? Does it support diversity?	8.4
Comments from the GAC: The three main project areas are well thought out and show the organization's maturity. Concerned that the organization of Wikimania will need a lot of volunteer resources and they may not be able to execute on all their proposed plans. Happy to see the travel budget has been greatly reduced. Measures of success are a good balance of being realistic and ambitious. Will be interested to see what kind of partnerships are developed or expanded with the rest of the free culture and Creative Commons community. Hopefully we can learn from any successes in new volunteer recruitment and your volunteer development program.

Grant extension request

By means this post I formally ask for an extension in the time of application of this grant. We still have some sources to be expend due to delays in the grant approval and Wikimania 2015. Thank you. --Salvador (talk) 02:56, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Salvador, thank you for posting the request for extension on Meta. In order to approve an extension, we need a new end date for the grant. When do you expect to finish activities approved in the grant request? Thanks, --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 17:53, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi KHarold. The leisure contract of our office finishes at February 30, 2016, by that time we expend our last items related to services of our office. So, I think such date is OK for us. --Salvador (talk) 05:43, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Hi Salvador, your request for an extension through February 29th is approved. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 05:33, 21 January 2016 (UTC)