Grants talk:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/First Global Wiki Advocacy Meet-up:Opportunities and Challenges of Internet Regulation for digital rights advocates.

WMF review and feedback

Hi @PDiazR (WMCL) and the Wikimedia Chile team,

Thank you very much for this proposal and for your initiative in organizing the first in person Wikimedia Advocacy meet-up. I highly appreciate the time and effort you put into this proposal. I have reviewed your proposal along with colleagues from the Global Advocacy team and we have some comments and follow up questions.

General feedback:

• This conference meets a need in the movement and we appreciate your initiative. A conference dedicated to advocacy and run by affiliates is a good idea and an excellent time for Wikimedians interested in advocacy. We think the decision to organize this event against the backdrop of an international conference (UNESCO World Press Freedom Day), as this offers opportunities beyond the aims of the meeting for Wikimedians to get more involved in global discussions of interest to the movement.
• Referring to the title of ‘Opportunities and Challenges of Internet Regulation for digital rights advocates’ -We are wondering (and this is in line with the second target group comment) if it makes sense to talk about digital rights advocates when it looks like the event will mainly focus on strengthening the exchange of knowledge and skills related to advocacy among members of the Wikimedia community. The proposal currently indicates this is more of an in-wiki interest (at least for now), and we think that’s the right call, but we don’t feel like the title does justice with the intention.

Objectives and Strategy:

• ‘Identify collectively the main topics for the Wikimedia movement regarding public policy and Internet regulations’ - we see great value in such objectives and goals, but this presents the assumption that there was no work being done by now in the areas of public policy and Internet regulations. When in fact there was already some work being done by policy-interested individuals in the movement, such as prioritizing, building shared resources (see copyright resources table and disinformation). As I guess you know, there were also some peer learning programs and community conversations such Let’s Connect. We think this event is a great opportunity to build over those fundations and to start digging into the details and ironing out some real challenges and needs that the community have identified together over the past two years. In simple words - if you want to lead this effort and new platform for gathering under those topics of interest, we think it’s important to acknowledge the work that was done and to try and incorporate it.
• Target audience - who are the ‘other regional organizations’? Do you mean those are non-wiki partners and mission aligned organizations?

If so, we feel that the stated objectives do not justify the second group of target participants. Instead, this group seems to be an incidental participant, but not the main one. Am I right to assume that they are more a possible resource to enrich the discussion?

• 45 total participants - I feel this might be a topic of interest to many communities. Will you consider having more people? Is there a reason why you decided to keep it relatively small?
• Different countries have different definitions and regulations on public policy activities. How will you address these differences in the context of global alignment? If at all.
• Do you currently work with UNESCO or other organizations?

Logistical Aspects

• No need to include medical insurance as part of the scholarship because all scholarship recipients (who are traveling outside their home country and that you are paying for their flight) are covered by the WMF health insurance. So you can remove this specific budget item.
• What will be the criteria for ‘global and regional professionals and digital rights advocates’? How are you going to assess their experience and relevance?
• 25 scholarships but 45 total participants. Who are the other 20? I assume some of the organizing team and WMF staff but it still feels a bit much for 20. Can you please clarify?
• How many people do you have on the organizing team? As you wisely pointed out, burnout is a huge factor and even though this event will be organizers by Wikimedia Chile’s team, we would not want it to harm your day to day work and stretch your capacity to perform and achieve your annual goals (and organizing a global conference is a lot of work as you know).
• Can you please elaborate on how you are planning to engage with the UNESCO conference and what is so crucial to have it at the same time to the extent of potentially canceling or postponing the event in case the UNESCO conference will not take place?

Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

• ‘How does the development of this event promote the strengthening of digital rights advocates within the Wikimedia movement’ - do you have a plan or any thought on how to evaluate this?
• I see you are targeting 25 people as ‘first-time participants in a Wikimedia global event’. Why is this needed? As this conference is quite small, and the level of engagement and expertise in the Wikimedia world required is quite high, I expect many participants will not actually be newcomers or first time participants. I also tend to think that you better have more senior/long time contributors given the topic in mind, so I'm a bit confused by these metrics and numbers.
• ‘The number of new partnerships or concrete projects that result after the event’ - how will you track that? Do you have the capacity and intention to keep tracking and following up with participants after the conference to ensure that?

Budget

• I see a budget item for 21 single rooms - does this align with the number of participants and scholarships? I understand the 20 full scholarships but what about the COT? Are they all locals?
• I suggest adding dinner at least to all the scholarship recipients because the basic scholarship usually includes meals as well.
• Generally speaking, the budget request is quite high for 45. I suggest you consider growing the scope of the event to have more people so you can utilize the budget for a greater audience. Or to look at which budget adjustments you can make to reduce the budget a bit.

Thank you again for this proposal. When you're able, please respond to the questions above and revise the proposal on Fluxx if needed. These revisions will be due by October 2nd, 2023, after which the Conference Grant Committee will begin formal review of the proposal to make the funding decisions. Thank you, CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 19:29, 23 September 2023 (UTC)

WMCL responses and comments

Hello @CAlmog (WMF), Thank you for your feedback regarding our proposal. We would like to precise some elements a little bit better; we hope that may help you and the committee to better understand our goals and context.

1. General feedback:

There are two reasons why we want to organize this meeting in this place and at this specific time. The first has to do with the need and interest that the Wikimedia community has shown in working on public policy and advocacy collectively and in an aligned way; the second, has to do with the UNESCO´s conference that will take place in May in Santiago, which is a unique opportunity to facilitate connections between Wikimedia advocates and regional and international digital rights advocates that will be in Santiago because of the Unesco conference. This connection, which at least in Latin America is quite weak, is essential to create meaningful digital rights advocacy collaborations that consider the particularities and concerns of the Wikimedia model, especially within territories that lack Wikimedia affiliates but have prestigious digital activists, such as Paraguay. Our title proposal aims to unite those two worlds, but we have no problem changing it for something that resonates better with the community.

2. Objectives and Strategy:

We acknowledge previous initiatives in this field that have identified themes relevant to the global movement. However, we believe there is room for improvement in terms of inclusivity and transparency in these efforts. For instance, some past meetings lacked open calls or applications and didn't involve Wikimedians from South America.

Furthermore, we think it's essential to prioritize and address these relevant themes while considering the unique characteristics and specific needs of various territories and communities engaged in public policies and advocacy initiatives. This aspect has been somewhat overlooked until now.

While we appreciate the value of previous endeavors, such as learning about affiliates working in different contexts, our goal for this meeting is to create an open and inclusive space that fosters collaboration among individuals and voices from both the Global South and North.

In this line, we would like to make the following amendments to the objectives:

• Replace “Identify collectively the main topics for the Wikimedia movement regarding public policy and Internet regulations” with “Facilitate a space for community discussion to identify strategies and tactics that take advantage of the opportunities and address the challenges posed by Internet regulatory developments that have been identified as a relevant around the world for the Wikimedia movement”.
• Replace “Discuss and form community capacities that help face these discussions and their effects on the Wikimedia movement” with “Continue improving advocacy capacity building and knowledge sharing among Wikimedians to influence Internet regulatory processes to protect and promote Wikimedia projects and their communities”.
• Replace “Contribute to the creation of a network of Wikimedians dedicated to advocacy and public policies that encourages the exchange of experiences and collective work, in conjunction with other global and regional specialists” with “Contribute to the strengthening of a network of Wikimedians interested in advocacy and public policies that is based on previous and existing efforts and encourage the exchange of experiences and collective work in liaison with other global and regional specialists”.

• Target audience and other regional organizations:

We acknowledge this is not the main group, but it is an important group as we believe partnering with external organizations would bring specialized knowledge and experience, and would give us the possibility to build or strengthen alliances with organizations that share similar advocacy goals (especially in those countries where Wikimedia is not present) and could create valuable networking opportunities for Wikimedians to connect with like-minded individuals and groups. We also noted them as a target because we need resources to motivate and facilitate their participation in the event.

• Participants:

45 participants is the total number of people who will be present in the event and that includes representatives of international Wikimedia affiliates, WMF staff members, WMCL staff members and community members, and representatives of regional organizations. We kept it at that number mainly due to budgetary issues. Adding more people means increasing the budget even more.

• Advocacy definitions:

We consider sharing basic resources with elected participants before and during the meeting, in order to be clear that we are on the same page regarding specific concepts like “public policy activities”: a wide range of actions, initiatives, and processes aimed at shaping and influencing government policies, laws, regulations, and decisions, always acting in an ethical manner and in compliance with local regulation. Creating common definitions around certain topics could be a useful outcome or project for the network we want to strengthen.

• Working with Unesco:

We are currently working on our own but we have been in contact with the Deputy Director of the Government Communications Secretariat and the Multilateral Policy Directorate of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs who are responsible for the coordination of the event in the government. We have also been in contact with representatives of the Association of Journalists, the Network of Migrant Journalists, Reporters Without Border, and the Right to Communication Observatory. We have tried to reach out to UNESCO Montevideo (where the event is being organized) but up to date, have not received a response.

3. Logistical Aspects

• Medical insurance:

We will take that out of the budget.

• Criteria for choosing digital rights advocates:

We will launch an application form with specific questions in which we will evaluate:

• Suitability of the applicant's professional background, qualifications, and experience.
• Ensure that the applicant or applicant's organization shares the core values and principles of Wikimedia.
• Special consideration of the applicant's track record in advocating for digital rights and related issues (participation in successful advocacy campaigns, policy changes, or contributions to the field).
• Assess what potential particular contributions the applicant could make to the conference and the network of Wikimedians. This might include belonging to organizations where Wikimedia is not currently present such as Paraguay.
• Ensure the group's diversity and inclusivity, considering a diverse range of perspectives and backgrounds.
• Consider the quality of references from trusted sources who can vouch for the applicant's expertise and contributions to digital rights advocacy.

• Participants' profile:
• 20 members of the Wikimedia community
• 5 regional digital rights specialists
• Around about 5 WFM staff members (we proposed a list)
• 5 people from the local digital rights community (who do not need a scholarship)
• 10 people from the WMCL community (staff and chapter’s members). They would not necessarily participate in sessions but they will support the organizing team and will be considered in coffee pauses and meals.

• People on the organizing team:

There are currently 4 people from the WMCL staff involved in organizing the event. We are considering engaging two more people (1 FTE) who will be in charge of managing the event and organizing the sessions. During the days of the event, the entire WMCL staff will also be part engaged in the organization to help.

• Engaging with Unesco:

UNESCO’s conference will consist of panel discussions or roundtable talks that will bring together journalists, digital rights advocates, policymakers, and other organizations interested in open knowledge to discuss the challenges and opportunities in promoting press freedom. Platform regulation and misinformation will be one of the most important topics debated. We believe that organizing this Wikiadvocacy conference as a side event presents positive synergies for attendants to participate in this important international event, strengthening the movement’s presence on a global level and also achieving the goals already pointed out in our application.

4. Learning, Sharing, and Evaluation

We aim to generate specialized products from this meeting such as a resources repository; a policy brief and communicational pieces that summarize the discussions held during the meeting around the main topics, needs, and opportunities for the Wikimedia movement regarding public policy and Internet regulations around the world; or even documents or guidelines that may define the network’s objective. We would also like to decide together when and where the next meeting will take place. We want tangible results from the summit. To keep an eye on this, we will organize an online session or online survey to summarize the experience and point out what are the next steps. We will measure the level of engagement and participation of the attendants in this activity.

• First-time participants:

It is expressed in percentage: 25%

• Tracking new alliances and projects:

Since our intention is to generate and solidify networks, we intend that after the event the creation of a program, event, or resource together with other organizations can take place, one year after its completion.

5. Budget

• I see a budget item for 21 single rooms - does this align with the number of participants and scholarships? I understand the 20 full scholarships but what about the COT? Are they all locals?

All locals.

• Adding meals for all scholarship recipients:

We totally understand that but how do you recommend that we should include that in the budget? as a per diem for instance? or should we organize dinners for them? That will have an impact on the budget though, but will add it to the budget sheet.

• Adjusting the budget or adding more people to the event:

We would love to have more people (especially regional advocates) at the meeting but that will only increase the budget. Chile is a very expensive country and all the items that we are considering in the budget are quite average (we are not including any not-extremely-relevant item on it). We could consider lowering the budget for travel tickets (the main item) but that will have an impact on the representation and diversity we expect to have during the meeting.

Thanks again for your help and guidance. Please do not hesitate to contact us for further information. Kind regards, PDiazR (WMCL) (talk) 01:32, 29 September 2023 (UTC)

Conference proposal approved

Hi @PDiazR (WMCL) and the Wikimedia Chile team,

Thank you for your work on the funding request and responding to our comments. On behalf of the Conference Fund committee, I’m happy to tell you that we've reviewed the final proposal for the Wiki Advocacy Meet-up and will be happy to support the event in the full amount requested of 58,694,200 CLP (72,780 USD). In the coming weeks, I will contact you to set up our first meeting. This will be followed by a regular monthly meeting. Looking forward to working together! CAlmog (WMF) (talk) 17:20, 31 October 2023 (UTC)

Thanks so much for this info Chen. We are very glad with this news and we are also looking forward to working together again! Let's keep in touch. Kind regards, PDiazR (WMCL) (talk) 15:47, 8 November 2023 (UTC)