Grants talk:PEG/Wikimedia Community Ireland/WLM Ireland 2015

A decision has been made on this grant. Comments are still welcome on this page.

GAC members who support this request

1. IMHO the first year is not representative for an evaluation, there are several problem of setup to be considered. For WLM the first year must be considered as "investment" and there is no sense to stop an investment to have an unfruitful event. The budget is appropriated for a contextual evaluation (in Ireland I don't think that it's possible to run an event with a lower budget). --Ilario (talk) 09:07, 24 August 2015 (UTC)
2. Support this grant proposal, as I feel enthusiasm of organization team and compared to previous year budget is well prepared I think. They also have financial support from Department of Arts, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht which shows that they are trying to do it better than last year.--Wertuose (talk) 13:14, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

GAC comments

PR firm

Hi and thanks for your application :) It feels like it is a great balance between images and outreach. Really nice to organise so many photo rallyes ! I think it is a really good idea to hire a PR firm, it really helps a lot. However, It is missing from the budget table. It is because this expense will be input on another budget than this request ? Léna (talk) 14:47, 15 August 2015 (UTC) Ok this was written in the next paragraph about additional ressources. Sorry :( Great that you managed to have a grant btw :D Léna (talk) 14:53, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments. We've had great support from some government agencies here in Ireland, mostly because they see the potential increase in tourism due to the contest.Sameichel (talk) 11:02, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

Schedule

Thanks for the submission. I see that the starting date for these activities is 23 August and the Launch Event is scheduled for 29 August. Could you please tell us more about whether this event took place, provided that some of the projected expenses may have been assigned to this particular activity? Could you also make a schedule of the other planned activities until 30 November. Best regards.--Kiril Simeonovski (talk) 09:21, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for your questions. The contest began in Ireland on 23 August. The last full week of August is National Heritage Week in Ireland and several of our key sponsors also sponsor Heritage Week so it made sense to start early. We did have our launch on 29 August as part of Heritage Week and we felt it went very well. We were part of and Archaeology event, which increased the attendance above what we would have gotten on our own. The items on the budget table relating directly to the launch are the venue rental for €345 and the Staff shirts for €155.05. The PR budget, which was funded by the Department of Arts, Heritage and Gaeltacht, was very productive, broadening our reach throughout Ireland. They will also organise a press release for the winners in early November which will hopefully encourage a larger turnout at the awards event.

As far as a schedule for the rest of the events, I don't have any further information than what is listed under the activities on the grant. We are still negotiating for a free venue for our upload event which will also determine the date of the Dublin photowalk. We are still looking for a venue for the awards ceremony, which will determine the date for that as well. Sameichel (talk) 15:11, 31 August 2015 (UTC)

High number of uploader and low of pictures

Hi,

For some reasons - your contest has relatively high number of participants but relatively low uploaded pictures. Any ideas why is it so? Polimerek (talk) 19:15, 15 August 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the question. Actually, I thought it was the other way around. With 256 participants uploading 2015 images that's almost 8 images per uploader. I would have expected less. That being said I would guess due to a majority of our monuments being outside of cities and towns, isolated from each other, that would lead to lower upload rates. We also only had 503 monuments on the list last year. We've tried to address this by adding more monuments to our list this year. Since last year was our first year we don't have any comparison. The output from the contest this year will give us a better idea. I hope that answers your question. Sameichel (talk) 10:38, 17 August 2015 (UTC)

WMF comments

Hi, Rebecca and Shannon, Thank you so much for this request and for your engagement in the discussion so far. We are excited to see more activity in the Irish community, especially considering the success of last year’s WLM. We have a few questions below and look forward to your responses.

Hi, KHarold (WMF). Thank you for your comments. The answers are in bold.

Changes based on last year

1. Have you added more monuments to the, if so, how many? We’ve added over 93% more monuments, increasing the list form 503 to 972.
2. Are you mapping monuments again this year? What tool do you use for this?We continue to use Maps Marker Pro on our contest Wordpress website.
3. Is there a volunteer in charge of social media?There is an individual in charge of social media; we are all volunteers. We have also secured outside funding for traditional / legacy PR channels.
4. Do you have a jury tool to use this year?We have evaluated the current options but have not yet selected a tool to use.
5. Have you found enough volunteers to fill roles this year? We have secured enough volunteer support to run an improved campaign as noted in our request.

Goals that need clarification

1. Please add number of image and participant metrics from last year, as well as numbers for goals this year.I have included the new goals on the grant.
2. Using the Glamourous tool I see that 7% of distinct images from last year’s contest have been used on different language Wikipedias. It would be good to see a goal around increasing integration rate this round, especially given that you have three non-photo walk events planned. Consider including an editathon to integrate images into articles, you can even do this after the contest closes.The three non photowalk events are the launch, the upload event, and the awards ceremony. We could possibly include a tutorial on how to use the new images in articles during the upload or award event. We have several events not associated with WLM scheduled in October and November which would limited our availability immediately after the contest. Our mailing list shows the very aggressive schedule of events which our community is engaged. We would welcome running an event of the one described early next year and would not envision that funds being requested under this grant would be necessary to implement.

It is great to hear you have such a busy event schedule this fall. If it seems like participants at the upload event can handle it, you might consider walking them through the steps to add a photo to an article.

1. Are you doing something to encourage participants to photograph new or different monuments from the previous year?We have made a concerted effort to engage with local governments to ensure the monuments encourage greater diversity in the locations selected by participants. Emphasis was also placed on identifying clusters for easy of access and to facilitate photo-walks. The selection criteria for monuments listed was not based on popularity. The list has been engineered to encourage an increase in the coverage of monuments photographed from what is already present on Wikipedia. Due to this we expect that coverage of the monuments to be as diverse as possible.

Choosing clusters of monuments sounds like a great strategy for increasing photo coverage. Please let us know how this goes in your report.

1. Do you plan to have someone give photo workshops before photowalks? How have locations been selected?The locations being selected for photowalks are derived by the volunteer wishing to lead that particular event. What that includes would be up to the individual running the photowalk. The walk in Dublin, which will be in conjunction with the upload event, may include one of our judges who is a photographer himself who could run a workshop.

Sounds good. If someone with advanced photography skills does attend a photo walk consider asking them to give a 5 minute talk on how participants can improve their photography before the walk begins.

1. What will be the 3 additional live events?Again, the 3 live events are the launch, the upload event, and the awards event.
2. Do you have goals around the number of people participating in events and photo walks?No, as most of the photowalks a being planned by members outside the group, we have not set goals for them. For the launch and awards event we would be happy with more attendees than last year, but we didn’t feel we needed to set a goal for that.
3. Do you have plan to measure the effectiveness of reaching out to photography clubs/open content groups, i.e. number of organizations or individuals who participate due to outreach. Consider inviting photo club members to lead brief sessions to share photography tips during photo walks.We have already reached out to key individuals in the groups mentioned. All planed metrics are in reference to contest results, ie. number of photos uploaded and number of participants, which this outreach will help us to reach.

Budget Comments

We are happy to see that you have been able to decrease your expenses from last year.

1. We are wondering if there are any expenses related to transportation, event space or refreshments for the 8 events planned, as they are not included in the budget.We anticipate obtaining use of a free venue for the upload and award events. We have requested funds to cover the rental of a tent for the launch event and refreshments for the award event. We do not expect to need any travel funds or additional venue costs.
2. What is the status on finding free venues for the upload event and award ceremony? Do you have a contingency plan if you are unable to find a free venue?We have identified a number of options for free venues however, each venue has some limitations. We are hoping to find a free venue without any limitations. If that is not possible, we will go with one of the venues already identified.

Other comments

Given that this is the first week of September, you should go ahead and schedule all photo walks and upload events, and begin promoting those. As noted previously, you might consider hosting an editathon after the competition has closed in order to increase the number of images integrated into articles.

Resources you may find helpful

• Grants:Learning_patterns/Use_Social_Media_for_Promotion
• Grants:Learning_patterns/Promote_photo_contests
• Grants:Learning_patterns/Improving_your_building_photography
• Organizing a 'Wiki takes' event
• Grants:Learning patterns/Plan a Wiki Expedition

Please let us know if you have any questions about the comments above. Best KHarold (WMF) (talk) 22:21, 2 September 2015 (UTC)

Again, thank you for your feedback. I hope I have answered all of your concerns. Sameichel (talk) 11:47, 4 September 2015 (UTC)

Everything sounds good, I left a few comments on the upload event and photo walk. The increase in number of listed monuments is quite impressive and it sounds like your team is well on their way to having a great contest this year. --KHarold (WMF) (talk) 20:02, 4 September 2015 (UTC)