Grants talk:PEG/WikiBilim/Turkic speaking wikimedians conference

I support this grant with all my heart. I think its goals and benefits are obvious. Anyway, I would suggest to put more details about the place, venue and program of the meeting. Polimerek 20:37, 21 October 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks for your support. The venue is w:Hotel Kazakhstan. This place is our long time friend, at the very beginning of our project we held several events there related to WP. If our guests stay there conference rooms would be provide as a sponsorship. Also there is a good discount for accommodation fee. The Hotel conveniently located in the center of the city. Please find program of the conference on application page.--Rauank 06:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

• Apparently, Kazakh Government supports Wikipedia. Do you expect any contributions from it and any other sponsors?--Victoria 08:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, our Government supports us and Wikimedia movement. Particularly, they provide wide media coverage of the event and for whole project. Also they agreed to provide us with transportation to commute within the city. Besides thanks to their support we are running wiki-contest for 100 article (each participant have to write 100 articles) and for Featured article. First 100 editors who write 100 articles will get laptop from Samruk-Kazyna National Foundation ([1]. Another 50 active editors will get phones from NOKIA Kazakhstan. Also representative of the Ministry of communication and information and one MP willing to join us during the conference to give a talk.--Rauank 06:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

• How are you going to invite and select participants? Are you planing to invite somebody from the Wikimedia Foundation?--Victoria 08:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

We are not selecting people, we invite active editors, admins and bureaucrats, community leaders from Turkic WPs. As far as representatives of WMF, we will be happy to welcome people from WMF who are interested in participation to this event. As you all know during the Wikimania-2011 in Haifa Jimbo announced his grant to organize this conference. We will appreciate if he personally will be able to join us. We sent an invitation letter to him and waiting for confirmation.--Rauank 06:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

• I think such big sums should be accompanied by more detailed itinerary, for example, do you have a venue and hoe much it would cost? What hotel are you planing to use? --Victoria 08:55, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

We believe we have already answered the question related to the venue and detailed budjet will be provided soon in grant application.

• Also I think that is is unrealistic to plan this conference in November, even if the money approved immediately, you need to plan, arrange and invite people and give them time to prepare for the conference.

People are ready to go, only thing they are waiting for confirmation that we will be able to cover traveling and accommodation expenses. We are communicating with all prospective participants of the conference except Turkmenistan which very closed country with low activity in WP. Our friends in Uzbekistan can not join us because as we have been informed WP in Uzbek language is prohibited in Uzbekistan. People are afraid of suctions from the government. We believe nothing is unrealistic. We have full time staff (3 person) working on our project.--Rauank 06:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikimedia Merchandise

You are budgeting $1000 for Wikipedia swag and on the other hand, you are requesting for some merchandise from the Foundation (under non-financial requirements). If you can get the swag from WMF, I suggest you remove the budget for swag. Abbasjnr 18:27, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

This sum covers expenses related to paper handouts, flyers such like we saw during the Wikimania 2011. Probably we will agree with your suggestion. Thanks.--Ashina 12:41, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

My thoughts

It's great to see collaboration happening in the Turkic-language space, and delightful to see the Kazakh community taking the lead in organising this. I do have a couple of questions:

• I make it $19,300 USD being asked for, and that's without the costs of travel for two people from the United States. Are there any other potential sponsors who might cover some of these costs?

Currently we are working with several potential sponsors. However, looks like we have already got support from main sponsors. For example, cost of wiki contest only is mote than 100 000 USD. We think upcoming conference would be an excellent promotion event that will be helpful to attract more partners and sponsors for our movement. Support from WMF will give us more confidence in negotiations with potential sponsors for the future. Please bear in mind that this conference is also a part of our fundraising strategy. As you know budgets for the next financial year usually preparing at the end of this year.--Rauank 06:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

• Why Andrew Lih and Sumana Harihareswara in particular? Is there anyone closer (for instance, Europe) who could fulfil those same functions?

We have been discussing this with Andrew since Wikimania-2011 in Haifa. Sumana was mentioned as a contact person who can help us find someone from developer team. If we can have someone from Europe or Asia that would be fine for us.

Sumanah is an employee of the WMF and therefore I don't see the logic of her expenses being covered in this grant. If she is to come to this conference, then WMF should be responsible for her travel expenses, and not the chapter. Abbasjnr 10:12, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Correct, she was mentioned as person who can advise any volunteer developer available to arrive from the nearest city. --Ashina 03:53, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry I think I'm not getting you -- is the grant covering Sumana's expenses or another volunteer developer? Abbasjnr 07:54, 31 October 2011 (UTC)

Having talked to Sumana about this, I'm afraid no developer is available to deliver the tech outreach talk at this event, so the point is moot. Ijon 02:52, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

• I am very concerned by the fact that the conference is pencilled in for next month, but you're only asking for money now. What work has already been done? Is there a fallback plan if the grant is not approved?

We have been preparing for this conference from August 2011. There is no problems with the venue or with participants. Dear friends, we hope all agree that Kazakh wikipedians have done a great job. Number of articles reached 100 000 starting from 10 000 just 5 month ago. Number of active editors overcome 200 people which was 4 people at the beginning. We did not ask for any money from WMF so far. We need money mainly to cover travel and accommodation costs. If WMF refuse this application we will try organize conference without external participants. We believe that from this milestone we need to improve the quality of our content. We need more people and share the experience from others as well. Also we would like to be recognized as Wikimedia chapter thats why we want to involve more local people (Turkic speaking) as well. There are a lot of Turkic people (Azeris, Tatars, Bashkirs, Uigurs, Uzbeks and Kyrgyzs, Turkish etc.) who live in Kazakhstan. We can convene them but it might be difficult to find active wikipedians among them. Hopefully people from our provinces will come to Almaty on their own.--Rauank 06:42, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

• Some details as to how the amounts were arrived at would be welcome. For instance, how is $3,000 for accomodation calculated, or is it just a rough estimate?Thanks, Craig Franklin 00:49, 25 October 2011 (UTC).

Sure. Detailed budget will be provided on application page.--Ashina 12:40, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Program of the conference

I strongly support any conference of this kind, but is it possible to get more information of the planned program within the schedule of the conference? It's always good to make this things transparent, so other parties are able to benefit of them. Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski 12:35, 25 October 2011 (UTC)

Program is on application page.--Ashina 12:40, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Using Polimerek words: "I support this grant with all my heart. I think its goals and benefits are obvious". But I have a small question: Are you counting the food, transportation inside the city and accomodations also for the people comming from USA. Looking at your page I only see the request for the flight tickets. Béria Lima ^msg 15:41, 26 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes we counted that as well, the flight ticket will be around 3000 USD (depends on time we will book it) accommodations will be included in general accommodations and meal. --Ashina 04:09, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

I really like the idea of this conference, but here is one suggestion: for such a short conference, the program looks too packed with "lectures" and similar one-to-many flows. I suspect you would feel more productive and fulfilled by having shorter lectures and more conference time dedicated to interpersonal and interactive formats, like discussions in smaller interest groups and round tables. Other simple practices, like having a public board to chart ideas and anxieties, come to mind. Focus your efforts in helping mutual recognition and reasoning together. Hour-and a half lectures by external representatives are usually not as interesting or engaging as people imagine. Nevertheless, keep on and do good! --Solstag 04:11, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Update

Thank you guys for your support and wishes. Recently, we conducted the press-conference regarding to the milestone of Kazakh WP which reached 100K articles. We announced that further work will be dedicated to increase the quality of articles and involve more active editors. So we have huge media coverage, which helps us to attract more contributors. During the 1 week the number of active editors increased from 220 to 250. Also we implementing some tech tools (filters) to improve the quality of new articles. During the press conference Prime Minister of Kazakhstan announced that he will support all projects of WikiBilim and KK Wikipedia movement.

However, we were informed that the person from WMF is not able to participate in our planned conference. After several discussions with the members of our community we decided that if we are planning to spent the money (grant from WMF) we'd like to increase the final output. So we decided to move the dates to spring 2012. We hope it will be possible to get someone from WMF who can introduce plans, projects, programs, tools, trends, updates etc. from WMF by this time. Also, we would like to find additional sponsors who can contribute to this event as well.

Thank you again for your support! --Ashina 09:23, 8 November 2011 (UTC)