Grants talk:Project/Rapid/WCUGA/Wiki Weekend Tirana 2018

Hello NafiShehu thank you for submitting a grant request for Wiki Weekend Tirana 2018. I know you had great success with Wiki Weekend Tirana last year so it's great to see this being organized again. I have a couple of questions regarding your budget:

• I see that you have included Professional video for $450 this year. In reviewing your grant request I don't understand the need for a professional video to recap the conference. You mentioned in your activities that this event is organized for existing contributors who will have the chance to meet and discuss. This means that the participants are already known and interested in joining this weekend. In addition, the video you shared in this proposal can be used to show the benefits of gathering at such events. Given all of this I would like to remove the professional video from your budget.
• Secondly, I see from your previous grant that you spent around 14,000 ALL for transportation costs last year. But this year your budget is rather low, approximately 3,700 ALL. Is there a reason that this amount is significantly lower than last year?

Please let me know your answers to these questions and we can move forward with this request. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 01:01, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Hello WJifar (WMF) and thank you for reaching out. Regarding to your questions about this editions budget of WikiWeekend, I'm giving the details on this changes as below.

• Regarding the budget for video production

We believe that a video shared on our social media channels has a better potential to spread our message across than text and video, mainly due to the algorithm of the main social network websites that favour video over photos. We could also use the video when we organize and promote future events related to the Wikimedia project, and this could be a good strategy to also caught attraction of people and make them part of our activities. More specifically about the video production cost: 1 - We have been organizing WikiWeekend for some years now, and it is one of our important yearly gathering which brings new people to the community and helps us keep in touch with the old ones. So far documenting Wiki Weekend with a pro photographer has helped us in many occasions to showcase and promote Wikimedia projects at a local level, especially when we need to communicate and show our work with outside partners. On the other side, after all these years, we strongly believe that we are missing a god promo video that explains what WikiWeekend is all about and show this to interesting third parties such as:

- Local and international media. In the past we've tried to reach out to local media but they don't seem willing to attend our events and record some sessions at feature them at local news. It is our understanding that they do not have a clear understanding of what our activities are and what the Wikimedia movement is about. With a video recorded during WikiWeekend we could publish it on our communication public channels, also send the file to other media for publication and make it easier for them and their audience to understand what we do. That way we can have a wider reach of our activities and promote Wiki Weekend and the Wikimedia Movement.

- potential new Wikimedians that do not have a clear idea of what happens during the event; adding a professional video as part of the documentation of the event for the first time is a great way to promote our activities on local level and people can see how an Wikimedia event is run and understand better what exactly we do in our activities and to join Wikimedia projects before showing up at events.

- GLAM and Education related institutions that are somehow not clear of what we do not only during the event, but also during different edit-a-thons. This is a special edition of Wiki Weekend since we are expecting to have signed our agreement with National Film Center as we have asked for grant here at Wiki Weekend which is a moment that would really help other GLAM institutions easily understand the value of partnering with Wikimedia user groups. Having all this in the video would really make our job easier in approaching other GLAM institutions.

A good example of such video is the one produced by the local free libre open source community for the yearly gathering of LibreOffice conference which you can see here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMtyFDcZEUg. The video we would like to produce (if the budget is approved) is of similar quality, featuring also interview, but at a much lower price based on the offer we have.

Overall, we do think this is a valuable contribution, but in case you don't see it fit, we could proceed with the same strategy of documentation as we did the other years.

• Regarding the transportation costs:

At our report last year we had:

Transportation costs(bus + taxi): 14,694.4 ALL
Accommodation (Hostel): 16,020.00 ALL

We have calculated all transportation costs inside the city and outside the city in the Transportation costs for which some of them were part of the budget asked for travel and accommodation.

And this year we have:

Transportation costs inside the city (estimation based on previous activities): 35$
Travel and accommodation (for participants and volunteers outside Tirana):300$ 

At the section transportation costs we have calculated only the costs of transportation inside the city, which in our previous experience we have used to transport materials or any other logistics issue during the days of the conference. And for the Travel and accommodation also the costs of people outside Tirana who will have transportation costs.

Thank you for your time,

NafiShehu (talk) 18:29, 23 November 2018 (UTC)

Approval

Hello NafiShehu, thank you for your detailed response on this discussion page. I understand what you mean regarding the professional video but it looks like you're trying to accomplish two different things with your video. One being recruitment and the other being awareness of your work with GLAM institutions. We have decided not to fund the video portion of your grant because from the success of previous Wiki Tirana events I understand that they are well attended and this item doesn't seem to be needed at this time. On the second point of raising awareness with GLAM institutions the video you shared and are using as an example caters more towards the attendees and what they get out of the weekend as opposed to why a GLAM should partner with your group. So if you would like to do a video for that, it would need to be a very different type of video about your work and how it relates with GLAM institutions. I have left the professional photo item in there so you are still able to document your activities. You will see I have edited the budget on your proposal and I am approving the new budget of $1545 USD for your project. Please let me know if you have any additional follow up questions. Best regards, WJifar (WMF) (talk) 20:56, 29 November 2018 (UTC)