Grants talk:TPS/Varnent/CreatingChange2012

Questions

Hello and thank you for your application! I think, it would be very good if you could explicitly respond to the following two questions in the application template:

1. How would your participation at this event further the Wikimedia Mission?
2. What will be accomplished if your participation is successful?

--Johannes Rohr (WMDE) 10:33, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for the quick response and follow-up questions. I've offered some answers on my submission's page. --Varnent 20:33, 3 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your response. We had an initial talk in the participation grants committee yesterday and we agreed that your request is very interesting. Regarding the outcomes, my feeling is, that the emphasis should be on aspects which clearly benefit WMF projects, i.e. I feel that indeed, recruiting new potential contributors should be the top priority, whereas promoting the increased use of wikis outside WMF project might be a nice side effect; but I would not regard this a priority issue for the participation grants programme. I have noted that you are a member of the LGBT studies WikiProject. If you manage to recruit new contributors to this project, I feel this would be a very positive result, as it would both contribute to improving quality and increasing diversity within the Wikimedia communities. I suppose that recruitment is also the top priority for you, do you agree? --Johannes Rohr (WMDE) 17:03, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes - I do agree and am pleased to hear that you indeed find my proposal interesting and recognize the value of increasing diversity within WMF.  :) My hope is to recruit individuals for LGBT studies WikiProject and the US based Wikimedia chapters. Ideally I'd also like to convince some organizations with large and active volunteer bases to consider taking on the same activity themselves. Hopefully a number of LGBT organizations will walk away with an interest in taking the recruiting efforts on themselves and then recruit new members for LGBT studies and WMF chapters (again - for non-COI work). An advantage of a conference like Creating Change, where the focus is on leaders setting community/organization agendas, is recruiting them often means access to a larger array of volunteers who mimic their activities. I recognize that non-WMF wiki community building is a nice bonus, but not a primary goal for WMF. In this case - also feeds into the success of the primary goal as collaborative projects are generally preferred by this audience. One question I would have is if sharing contact info for potential volunteers with chapters or wikiproject coordinators would be helpful or just a hassle. --Varnent 20:34, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

I suppose, when it comes to potential Wikipedia contributors, they should be primarily brought into contact with the active contributors of the respective WikiProjects. It might be that some local chapter would be interested in organising target-group oriented trainings if there was sufficient demand. For us (the German chapter), this would clearly be interesting, but I really cannot speak for US local chapters. You might want to get in touch and find out with them... --Johannes Rohr (WMDE) 11:10, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Will chat with Wikimedia DC and Wikimedia NYC about it more beforehand. Depending on whose info I'm able to collect - will also reach out to the appropriate chapter afterwards as well. Given its proximity to DC this year, would be nice if enough DC area folks show an interest to host a local follow-up of some type. --Varnent 11:56, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Support

Wikimedia DC is supportive of this grant request. Varnent would be an excellent representative at Creating Change. The benefits of raising awareness of Wikipedia and Wikimedia + chapters is great, as is potentially recruiting new editors, and this is also a good Wikimania sponsor outreach opportunity.

We are willing to help recruit additional volunteers to help out, through our mailing list, though no promises. Time permitting, I'd like to be there at least one of the days... for the meetup and to help with the booth. Cheers. Aude 22:40, 5 January 2012 (UTC)

Budget modification

Please note that based on feedback to initial booth volunteer recruiting efforts, the idea of including travel stipends for volunteers "staffing" the booth. Given the costs of local travel in Baltimore/DC area, it seemed like a reasonable addition. I do not anticipate all the funds for this or the meet-up will be used, but wanted to give what I believe to be a "at most" scenario. --Varnent 16:27, 11 January 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia LGBT category?

Varnent, would you like to have this page included within Category:Wikimedia LGBT, or do you prefer to keep this separated from Wikimedia LGBT activity? --Another Believer (talk) 22:51, 7 November 2013 (UTC)