Grants talk:Project/Rapid/IMD/Indic Hackathon 2022

Thank you for applying to host a local meetup at the Wikimedia Hackathon! We are so grateful you took the time to put together a proposal, and are highly impressed by your work. We have some questions regarding your application. Please address these questions as soon as possible.

1. The goal of local meetups is to create social spaces to help participants take part in the online Hackathon; this grant will not support the creation of a separate or independent event. How will you ensure that your attendees take part in the planned online events?
2. There are two Hackathon committee members in your organizing group. How do you plan to balance supporting the online event while also running this event locally at the same time?
3. There will be another local meetup happening in India. How will you coordinate with this group to ensure that your meetups complement and do not compete?
4. Would you be interested in having a WMF staff member attend or support the event? (This will not affect your application).

Thank you again for your proposal and all the work you have put into this.

Our regards,

The Hackathon Local Meetup Committee

@HLepp (WMF): Hope you are doing well, and thank you for reviewing our proposal. I am Krishna Chaitanya (User:KCVelaga), one of the volunteer organizers for the proposed Hackathon meetup, and I am writing this response on behalf of the team, and the responses are point-wise:

• Indeed, we strongly consider this event a social space and an enabler for participants to take part in the main Hackathon. Going into the details of the program, we would consider it in two main tracks: the sessions track and the hacking track. In both tracks, we will be providing opportunities for participants to sync with the main Hackathon. As 2022’s program and schedule are not up yet, I will take some examples from 2021.

• The hacking track which will form the core of the program is more fluid, letting participants decide what they will work on. But for those interested, we will facilitate this work to be done with users or groups participating remotely. For example, 2021’s hackathon had a Phabricator board, we will ensure that participate are aware of the board for 2022 and can collaborate on those tasks, and also ideas that emerge from the local meetup are listed here so that others participating remotely can collaborate on them.
• The session’s track is tricky to be in “complete” sync with the main Hackathon program, largely related to the concern around timezone. Again, wherever possible, we will ensure space for participants to watch live sessions from the main hackathon. With reference to the 2021’s program, on Day 1, the opening sessions started at 17:00 UTC which is almost 00:30 am in Indian time - in such cases, we will leave the decision to the attendees if they would like to participate or not, but there will space at the event venue if they wish to gather and watch it live. Another example from Day 2, there was a session about “Wikibase, starting from scratch” which is a convenient time for India to participate in. In these cases, we will stream the session to those interested. As it is with the main hackathon, the hacking will continue in parallel. We will ensure that the event venue has 2-3 spaces to help attendees participate/work according to their interests.

• The responsibilities are currently divided as: Sarthak and I will handle the on-ground logistics related event venue, conferencing facilities, travel etc. and Gopa and Jay will be helping pre-event planning and during the local meetup they will largely be involved with supporting groups/individuals as they work on technical issues. They will pretty much be online during the day and can connect to the main hackathon according to its commitment.
• That’s a good question and thanks for the heads-up about another meetup in India. Actually both, which are being proposed to merge into one, will take place in Chennai in the state of Tamil Nadu. They are taking a more regional approach by focusing participation in around the city and from the Tamil community to an extent. Our focus for participants is across India. As we have mentioned in our proposal, we will be having an opening call for participation from all language communities in India and provide necessary travel and accommodation support. The goal for us is to make it cross-community and help form those social connections, which used to be one of the big advantages of in-person events before the pandemic. To add some context about why we mention language communities rather than technical communities, as you may already know, India has many languages, and there are more than 15 active Wikimedia communities. The majority of the technical contributors in India are heavily involved in their respective language projects, providing technical support to specific language projects and issues around, rather than MediaWiki at-large. By making sure that we have participation from 6-8 language communities, we will make sure that there is enough representation from across the country.

• In addition, we will coordinate with organizers of the other meetup to make it effective in terms of resources. For example, if a person expressed interest to participate in another event who is based in Tamil Nadu, we will suggest that they participate in the other meetup as travel would be easier. We will also make sure that we don’t end up duplicating efforts during the program. For instance, as I mentioned in my previous point, if we use Phabricator effectively that can be ensured not just with this meetup but across the hackathon.

• Yes, we have invited Satdeep Gill, given his expertise with Wikisource and technical challenges of the project, which will be helpful in brainstorming about issues to work on. Rachit Sharma might also be participating virtually depending on his availability to connect with community members. I will be participating in my volunteer capacity as a member of the user group.

I hope these responses are helpful. Let us know if you have any further questions. KCVelaga (talk) 10:16, 4 April 2022 (UTC)

Committee Decision

Congratulations! This proposal has been funded. A few next steps:

1. If you have not already been in touch with the Wikimedia Grants team, please respond immediately.
2. Post your meetup on the Hackathon Local Meetups page.
3. List yourself as a participant.
4. Get started implementing your event!
5. Don't forget, you will need to submit a report summarizing your event by the end of June.

Again, our sincere congratulations. --HLepp (WMF) (talk) 00:59, 26 April 2022 (UTC)