Grants talk:TPS/Sky Harbor/Open Source Bridge 2014

Question about your participation

Hello Josh: Thank you for your submission. It's nice to see your return! In reviewing your request, the Committee recalled your participation at last year's OSB conference and its low attendance (Grants:TPS/Sky_Harbor/OpenSourceBridge13/Report). What would you do differently this year to help increase attendance based on what you learned from that experience? -- Jtud (WMF) (talk) 17:57, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

Well, for one, I will definitely encourage more participants to actually attend my talk (of course by telling them about it), as I didn't do that last year, which I noted in my report. At the same time, I believe the subject matter of the presentation itself would be more interesting to attendees, as it talks about something that transcends our open-source communities, rather than a particular aspect of open source in a particular country, which was the case with my presentation last year.--Sky Harbor ^(talk) 07:33, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

I should also add here that with the subject material being more interesting to attendees, I believe that this will be a stronger draw to my presentation compared to last year, naturally drawing them to attend the presentation, coupled with me actually promoting the presentation during the conference proper. At the very least, I seriously look forward to drawing a larger crowd this year, and a more interactive one as well, as I hope to engage attendees into a dialogue into how we deal with these issues in our communties. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 15:27, 14 May 2014 (UTC)

Request not funded

Dear Josh:

Thank you again for this request, as well as your continued contribution and interest in Wikimedia projects. However, at this time, the committee has decided not to fund your request based on the following criteria, which are explained on the Travel and Participation Support page:

1. Potential outcomes and impact: The committee is concerned that your talk may not yield enough outcomes/impact. There is the lingering concern of whether there would be enough in attendance to make a difference, especially with last year’s turnout. Unfortunately, your replies have not provided enough confidence to convince the committee otherwise.
2. Investment: Considering the doubts about the potential outcomes, the cost of the request appear too high to justify the investment.

We understand that this news may be disappointing, but we encourage you to submit requests for your participation in future events.

Sincerely, Jtud (WMF) (talk) 23:27, 16 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi Janice. Thank you for the decision, but allow me the space to appeal the Committee's decision, based on the following points:

• First, I had the honesty to disclose attendance figures because I figured it was the right thing to do, and I take full responsibility for that: to be frank, I'd rather be honest about the number of people who went to my talk and deal with the consequences, rather than lie about how many people went just to have the appearance a good report, so I did what I felt was right and proper. However, the reason why I did not have a high attendance was precisely because I did not tell people about the presentation while I was there, believing instead that people will go on their own merit (like Wikimania, where there is always an audience). Sadly, I was mistaken, and I am concerned as much as the Committee is with respect to attendance numbers, which is why I've justified a second effort. This is not the first time that I am delivering a presentation: I've delivered presentations in the past and have received good feedback from audience members, and I look forward to doing the same. I believe I made it quite clear in my responses that we cannot determine impact unless we try, which is why I will be making a concerted effort to actually get people to attend my presentation by, naturally, advertising my presentation to conference attendees. Even Sumana advised me to do this last year after the fact. My point here is that it appears to me that I am being penalized for being honest, simply because I had the moral fiber to honestly disclose actual figures.
• Second, I should note that this issue boils down to cultural issues: in Southeast Asia, we normally do not encourage people to go to presentations, or basically encourage our achievements in general, because it may be viewed as claiming that you're 'too good' for the conference, and you turn off people in the process. If the issue is attendance, then please, let me take the opportunity to actually go beyond what are my norms of cultural acceptability and at the very least try to get people. The Committee's decision does not allow me to do that, nor will it encourage other people to do the same. (I am concerned that this sets a precedent: that second efforts are discouraged because of the possibility that what happened before might happen again, even if the calculus is completely different.)
• Lastly, as I also mentioned earlier, the topic is completely different from the previous year. Unlike last year, I am not talking about something that is particular to the Philippines, and I don't intend to bring up Philippines-specific issues which the general conference audience might not be able to understand. Instead, I believe that the issue of collaboration among our communities is something that is profoundly important, and the lessons I hope to bring to the conference (and the lessons I hope to bring back) will justify the expense of me going there, as this is something that could potentially affect all our communities, regardless of background, ethnicity or any other differenciating factor. Editor decline is something that I know the Wikimedia Foundation looks at seriously, and I look forward to exploring ways to solving this issue with other communties to that effect. (In fact, I believe the merit of my presentation - which was approved by the conference's program committee - should be reason enough to justify that this is something worth paying attention to. If that shouldn't be the case, then why approve it to begin with, especially considering that the Participation Support Committee approved the applications of everybody else who's going to Open Source Bridge this year on the strength of their submissions alone?)

If the concern of the Committee is merely with attendance figures, and the confidence of said members to my replies, I hope this gives you the confidence to determine otherwise, and ultimately to reconsider your decision on this matter. Thank you. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 01:49, 17 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your thoughtful reply, Josh. We reviewed your reply, but the points outlined do not significantly affect our major reason for not funding this request: not enough potential for impact with respect to size of investment.

We appreciate that you are honest about the participation you expect, and we do expect all applicants to be honest. We also understand that cultural norms around promoting your work may differ depending on your context: in asking our question we were hoping to gain some understanding on any specific plans or methods you might be considering to help boost attendance this year in order to improve the potential impact on the movement. In future requests, we would encourage you to include some more concrete plans in this regard, because we do agree that the important thing is to learn from past lessons. Although number of attendees is not the only factor we consider in these requests, it does affect the level of impact/outcomes that may result from your participation, and impact/outcomes play a big role in the decisions about making an investment to fund a request. The criteria for decision-making provides guidelines on reviewing and considering requests for participation support funding.

For opportunities that may result in better return on investment, we suggest you look into other conferences closer to home. Here are few coming up, some in the near future:

• Malaysia open source conference http://portal.mosc.my/ -- call for speakers open until 30 June 2014
• PyCon India http://in.pycon.org/2014/
• the HasGeek conferences https://hasgeek.com/
• GNOME Asia next year http://gnome.asia/
• FOSSAsia next year http://fossasia.org/

Sincerely, Jtud (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 22 May 2014 (UTC)

Hi, Janice. If that was the crux of the issue (the issue of advertising), I would have appreciated being told about it as well earlier on, as I've also thought about that question and could have included it in the previous reply. I specifically mentioned in the report that this is something that the greater community (as in the Wikimedia community) needs to talk about, and what I was planning to do was to simultaneously begin a conversation both in Portland and on Wikipedia about this issue.

Unfortunately, as I am not sure of the composition of the conference this year, I am not in a position to simply invite people to come. However, should I be able to go, I will definitely ask Wikipedians who are there to come, and a couple of past attendees who are coming this year (and who have heard about this proposal being rejected from me on Twitter) have likewise been asked to attend this session this year. At the same time, I was planning to go to the conference on the presumption that all that I will be talking about is precisely the issue of community-building, what it means for us, and whether we are doing anything about it. I've also discussed this issue on Quora, and hope to continue engaging through other channels in order to get this discussion moving forward. I've also intended, in the run-up to the conference (and actually starting June 1) to tweet about my presentation (and using the designated conference hashtags) in order to generate interest, and to advertise my talk on Facebook as well to generate interest. If the issue here is really advertising, then at the very least give me the opportunity to advertise: in fact, me advertising on the scale the Committee apparently expects me to advertise is much greater than what other attendees will do to promote their presentations during the conference. However, if that is the only way I can be ensured of funding (and, in the process, joining all the other Wikipedians who are goining, and who are not expected to advertise at levels I'm being expected to do), then by all means, I'll do it. In fact, this has made me accelerate my plans further, if you ask me, and if the Committee would like actual documented proof that I have been able to get more people to come, then by all means, allow me to produce it. Should I fail, I will also submit proof as well, and I will most likely no longer pursue further funding for attending this conference in future years because, yes, I've been unable to generate an audience. These are things that take risk, and for this one time, I strongly encourage the Committee to take that risk.

On conferences closer to home: unfortunately, the subject matter of this presentation is not covered by any of the four conferences mentioned, perhaps excluding FOSSAsia. However, I would like to note that this is a movement-wide issue, and I strongly believe that Wikimedia stands to lose out greatly from this if you want me to submit this for an Asian conference. Wikimedia communities in Asia are significantly less represented at Asian FOSS conferences - which are attended mostly by developers and is a field well outside my core competency of research in the social sciences - and I feel that it's at OSBridge so far that this will generate the most impact, largely because the audience that we're targeting here isn't necessarily just Wikipedians per se, but also those in other communities and, similarly, in other collaborative environments where this is most relevant. I've long lamented about how our movement is still dominated by people in North America and Europe, and I strongly believe that real change in our community - in our movement - is possible only by discussing these issues with them head on. This is why I also submitted a Wikimedia-specific version of this presentation at Wikimania (to which my participation is in doubt because I was not extended a WMF scholarship), which was to serve as a logical continuation of this presentation: I wanted to present these outcomes to the wider community so that somehow, we can start having this conversation, and though I understand that it may take a while, at least we're called out to take stock of what we done and, in the process, come up with ways to deal with it. This does not happen in an Asia-specific (or even Philippines-specific) environment given the composition of our movement, which I believe the Committee is very knowledgeable about.

I seriously hope that I have answered your last set of questions this time around, and look forward to addressing these issues to your and the Committee's satisfaction. Thank you. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 01:12, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for the detailed reply, Josh, and for sharing your point of view. While we appreciate the long-term work you are doing to move important conversations forward in mission-aligned spaces, we believe the costs of your participation in this event are not well-balanced with respect to potential immediate outcomes of your participation and direct impact on Wikimedia work.

A small number of attendees may seriously limit the potential for a talk to have significant enough impact to justify an investment. We have weighed this concern against the size of your request, which at US$2,000 is significant for a travel grant. In doing so we have considered the results of your previously funded participation in last year's event (with only two or three attendees) as further context.

Your request has been carefully considered along with the additional context you offered after the initial funding decision. We understand that receiving a negative funding decision is disappointing. At the same time, we apply the decision-making criteria outlined on the Participation Support page to each funding request we receive and, in this case, your request does not match these criteria.

Once again, we do encourage you to request funding for future events that may have a greater potential for impact with respect to cost. -- Sincerely, Jtud (WMF) (talk) 23:55, 23 May 2014 (UTC)

Janice, I am at a loss here. The Committee's own guidelines as it is written on the relevant page make no indication that impact is to be measured primarily by using short-term indicators of success, nor does it give any such indication that they are to take precedence over all others. I'm sorry, but I'm becoming increasingly concerned that the Committee is shifting the goalposts, if only to stick to its decision with complete disregard for the precedent that this decision sets, not only for me but for others as well.

We may fundamentally disagree as to how "success" ought to be measured, but I strongly object to the Committee effectively trivializing the issue of improving our collaborative environment, only because it cannot be assured of securing meaningful gains in the short term. Community-building and the discussion of values that are inherent to it naturally are long-term projects because we need to be able to chart the course of where we are, what we were, where we can be and how we get there. So far, we have a lot of data on where we are and where we were, but not necessarily on the latter two, and this is where I want this conversation to come in. However, this is something that we cannot build overnight, and I find it extremely unreasonable and unfair that, in effect, we have to have ready-made solutions in order to pass the Committee's muster. At the same time, I've already given a concrete plan to shore up attendance - as that was the initial primary concern the Committee raised - and now in reinforcing its initial decision the Committee decides to shift the discussion from whether I could get an audience to whether any audience that I muster (no matter how big or small) is enough to generate short-term success? I can't even describe in words the incredulity of this.

The emphasis of the Committee on short-term success at the expense of long-term sustainability is disappointing. Getting a conversation rolling on redefining Wikimedia's value system and social relations will not - and probably never will - generate the short-term impact technical solutions to the software or outreach on what Wikipedia is will, but I strongly believe in the movement needing to invest in the long-term health of its community. Unfortunately, as this conversation is increasingly proving itself to be, the Committee seems more than content with the impact of sharing technical fixes or doing simple outreach than the need to discuss values and value systems, where discussion is more salient and its impact more likely to manifest itself later after the fact. That, if you ask me, is the greatest tragedy of all. --Sky Harbor ^(talk) 16:53, 24 May 2014 (UTC)