Wikimedia Conference/2015 report

EVENT : WMCON 2015 ext.link to Metapage

Location: Berlin
Organiser: WM Deutschland and Program comittee
Programme: Wmcon15-Programme ext.link to Metapage; Pictures and doumentation : pictures and presentations ext link to Commons page

Attendees: Maarten, Derek for the Wikimedia Belgium board, and Dimi for the Free Knowledge Advocacy Group EU

Report Intro

Derek attended the pre-conference which was useful to get aquainted with WMF programs such as the Education program, Global Metrics, Evaluation (both for our own events/activities and for reporting Chapter/projects to WMF)

Maarten and Derek attended the 3 day conference.

To prepare the conference we had 3 things prepared:

the future of chapters : we wnated to stress that chapters had an important role to play in teh movement and were generally helpful to organise locally activities and and to run things on behalf of the WMF. Collaboration with the chapters around us and a collaborative structure to interact with the level of the European institution was generally evaluated as a key success factor for the future
we went to the conference with an initiative to be planned and worked out about m:Wiki_Remembers_Flanders_Fields_(WW1_1914-18)

Maarten's Conclusions

Goal of the chapter: Service provider, Minimal bureaucracy, Flexibility, Linkers, Trust

Talk 21: Financial Management showed a list of potential pitfalls for organisations. Take these into account when we grow our organisation. Both small and big chapters have high "overhead" costs (up to 50% excluding staff costs).

My own list of goals after this conference:

Wikimedia Belgium
- Set up a montly "Saturday meeting"
- Work harder on membership, membership, membership and off-wiki volunteers
- More intense communications with our members (eg. board meeting results). Use special software for this (eg. Mailchimp)
- Work on our board: better prepared and organised , with a more diverse board
- Do not focus just on our members, work on all possibly interested stakeholders, including people not active on Wikimedia projects

Dimi's conclusions

Derek's conclusions

my personal metrics : I will need metrics, for my GAC work and for my grant reporting I will need metrics(reports), for that I will need a volunteer with the skils to learn and do the metrics work and produce the reports.
My own metrics of this conference :

Each day has allowed me to have at least one AHA-moment, I had many learning moments and each day I found a key thing that unlocked some of the things we had to do in Belgium and with our chapter.

My own goals after this conference

the WLA sideproject known as the "Educational road show" will be renamed to Wikimedia Belgium Education Initiative, and it wil start with a 1st pilot phase , a 2nd pilot phase and then some repeats of the roll-out phase, not only will this be supported by WMF but also it entails a deeper collaboration wih WMNL.
for our future "off-wiki volunteers" (note: all too often the word volunteer is vague and imprecise and covers different loads like wiki-contributor, off-wiki volunteer etc... so from now on I will use the terminology "contributor" for wikinauts that edit/contribute to any wiki porject, and off-wiki volunteers for people when they operate in the real/physical world as voluntueers that partake in edit-a-thons, hackatons, get-togeters, photocontestst, wett-shirt or cake-throwing competitions and what not might be organsied for interested wkiknauts and other members of the general public.) the Volunteer Personal Development Initiative(VPDI) will be developped _in collaboration with WMNL including an ambassador program, a train the trainer program and a train the teacher program
I do support Maartenś conclusion about membership and volunteer recruitment
I do support Dimiś idea's about developping a european coordination
last but not leastI will submit my candidacy for the Conference program commitee, and argue for a "development" path that newcomer delegates can help to develop the necessary skills an competences to run a WMchapter/WMUG, grantrequests reporting, evaluataion, metrics etc ... and to effectively interact with other chapters and the foundation

Derek's report

Conference Schedule ext.link to schedule

Pre conference Wednesday : My flight arrived at 13:15 so I got to the conference by 14:00.
- Pre-Conference_Workshop-programme - ext.link to programme
- preconference output - ext.link to preconference output

from the list produced : identification with MY Goals

At the beginning of the conference, participants shared the goals each of them had for the session that day. This is the captured list:

How to structure projects along a spectrum and keep people interested.
Bring back hope and learning from this session.
Learn how to have more impact and quality (be more daring)
How to expand education to a whole country.
Learn frustrations and difficulties of evaluation.
Talk, share and learn together.
Learn how not to burn out
How to document for evaluation
Learning tools!
More structured programs - Logic Models.
How to get things done.
New ideas.
Improve evaluation + share.
Feel positive about evaluation + next steps
Meet everyone and learn success and challenges and get to know how to support with grants.
How to grow education initiatives.

identification with MY Hopes and Fears

Hopes

Improve the process of the chapter through the tools.
Clear route to professionalization.
Evaluation provides us with information to improve our activities.
Become wiser and more confident about evaluation and learning topics as to be more able to incite passion in others.
Understand others in doing their projects and programs more and more.
We are doing workshops and online publicity to create awareness so that we can engage more people in our movement.
How to have structured activities and easy way to follow up.

Fears

Not many people want to do volunteers work, so we have a lack of volunteers.
Missing the diversity of Wikimedia Universe
Reports and evaluation could take much time and effort. Volunteers want to avoid them.
Evaluation seen as “the bad and the ugly”, pointing out what doesn’t work.

- I missed the Hopes and Fears- workshop by Jaime Anstee(WMF) and the Logic Models presented by : Christof Pins and Manuel Merz(WMDE); but the Logic models presenation slides ext.link to logic model presenation of the latter are on commons
- I didn get a lot from the Data Sources, Tracking & Reporting by presenters: Jaime Anstee, Edward Galvez(Evaluation Associate) the presentation by Jaime: Data Sources - Gathering Evidence of your Program Story ext.link to data sources is on commons but what I need to remember is this itś important for us as a chapter for 2 reasons a) reporting on our grants, be evaluating the programs/events we do. my conclusion to that effect we need a volunteer to run our metrics programs urgently and there was a workshop thursday in the preconf-program [1] and Wikimetrics_Overview.pdf for any interested volunteers
- the Tools cafe presented by Edward Galvez (Wikimetrics); Anna Koval (Education Program Extension) and Jaime Anstee (Category Metrics) was very interesting because Anna Kovalś presentation education program extension ext.link was my first AHA-moment of the conference. The program is at outreach education. She presented the Education program extension which has already been implemented in the NL wikipedia, a platform very useful for teachers and professors and probably a door-opener for the educational roadshow. Our contact people are Floor Koudijs at WMF, FilipMaljkovic at WMSerbia, and Frank at WMNL.
- the daily wrap up allow participants to reflect on what they took away from that days presentations and how they intend to Moving Forward: review of the day and next steps, presenters: Jaime Anstee, Maria Cruz, Rosemary Rein Evaluation Community Coordinator (a very inspiring person for our education roadshow program).

Pre conference Thursday :
- Pre-Conference_Workshop-programme ext.link to metapage
- I did attend Designing WMF Proposals and Annual Plans presented by Alex Wang, who runs the PEG Grants and GAC (of which I'm a member. We don yet do APG's but nevertheless its very interesting to know what the foundation expects from us. this session actually took all morning.
- i couldn't attend the 10:45 Wikimetrics session presentede by Edward Galvez
- The session about Survey design presented by Jaime Anstee was another AHA moment and an important lesson learned on how to contact our "community" and find out what their needs and expectations are and find a way to answer them, Maarten I will brief you on the session and the things I learned, the presentation slides ext.link are on commons together with Sati Houstan and Asaf Bartov's Community capacity development presentationetx.link
- I found the Reporting and Storytelling toolkit presented by María Cruz slightly pre mature, Although Maria did her best presenting the toolkit i was disappointed, the storytelling team needs to tinker the toolkit some more - add some WAW-factor to it for people(like me) to connect with it ( because i think it's/'ll be very useful ) - to get the toolkit working and make it a useful asset I wish Maria and her team success and I'm eagerly awaiting the results of their good work.
- I attended the Program Toolkits presenters by Kacie Harold, Anna Koval which was 2nd AHA moment of the day and gave me the insight how to start my Education pilots
- the day was closed by a Key Take-aways and Next Steps session

Friday 15th first conference day
- On friday I attended session 36 What could local organisations bring to the movement? ext.link session 36; a world café session where we discussed subjects as Community support - Diversification - Partnerships - Advocating - Fundraising.
- After lunch I attended the interdependent sessions 37 and 22 about 37 about Collective Impact ext.link to session 37 and 22 about [[2]] ext.link to session 22 which learned us that because Wikimedia is not about little furry things or starving kids, we (meaning the mouvement and the chapters) have to rely on public funded programs and (many small) individual donations .
- After the afternoon break, I did have the opportunity to chat with some WMF-staff Like Rosemary Rein, Juan Luis and Floor Koudijs and Anna Koval about our projects
- the day was closed with a Key Take-aways and Next Steps session

Saturday 16th
- the morning i attended session 10 about Volunteer support network Ext/link to VSN this session had its session 10 etherpad notes and minutes of previous work minutes of Volunteer support network activity This is very useful information for all of us who are going to work with other volunteers. Maarten made a very pertinent remark (that will come back in de sunday session) we need some kind of "rewarding"system to show our appreciation, often attending events like wikimania are a subsitute for that but we shoudl offer our volunteer real training and persomal advancement through courses that allow them to acquire skill and competences they can exercise in Wikimedia but use on a personal level for their career advancement too.
- I also attended the Meet the WMF Board of Trusteessession ext.link to session 24, I met up with Patricio Lorente and I acted as secretary which allowed me to saty on a single subject. Fabricio tried to advance each group from the point where teh previous group had to stop the discussion. Our subject was about volunteers .. ( to be completed later)
- however as the above ran concurrently with Sati Houston(WMF) and Asaf Bartov's presentation nr 34 Community Capacity Development Framework to session 34] but we can read their slides at Community capacity development, unfortunately i could not attend that session.
- I attended Lila's talk the new CEO of the foundation. Key issues are that the Chapters and Usergroups remain important local partners for WMF. There shoudl be no fears that that strategy will be abandonned soon, but the whole of the organsaition might strive to a more professional and coherent appraoch. This is good for us it will allow us to run more programs, do it more professioanlly and (re-)gain the confidence of our community, most importantly we can expect more support from the foundation as more programs/ toolkits and platform evolve to support the chapters and usergroups in running community support initiatives.
- I intended to attend session 29: Leveraging volunteers through programs: Programs Evaluation but instead i had a private meeting on our education initiative with Floor and Filip
- The GAC members (Maarten and I are member) then went to a private meeting with Siko Bouterse and Alex Wang ( both WMF) who are in charge of the GAC, this was a very interesting meeting for our work in the GAC so there is little to report for the chapter, apart from the Grants system will continue and will be imporved.
- the day ended with the conference party hosted at a Berlin Disco

Sunday 17th
- Sunday first session was number 19 WMF Grantmaking’s Impact Focus ext.link to sesion 19 This panel discussion was very intersting for all chapters like oure relying on grants.
- then I attended session 11: Communications Best Practices: Telling Movement Stories ext.linlk to session 11 led by Communications manager Katherine Maher(WMF) and Juliet Barbara (WMF), I mentioned the Press and communications trainign that WMNL organsied and that Geert and I attended in Utrecht. This was een initiative welcome by the communications experts and they suggested they would consider doing something similar for the chapters and UGs.
- In the afternoon I did attend session 28 : Future of Wikimedia Conference from thsi session it was learned that WMDE will organise the next 2 conferences in Berlin and that Conelius Kebelka , the program manager will remain at his post. The session intended to know what participants expecte from the conference organsiers in term of program offer for different type of attendees, new volunteer , chapter boarmembers , UG leaders, etct etc.. It turned out that the conference is very useful for expereicne memeber to hand over "chapter managemnt tips and tricks/knowledge", program running to the newcomers, network with them but also that they coudl get up to speed on programs and resources WMF is developing for the chapters and UG , Nevertheless the most voiced demand is an educational leg for "newcomers" to get to know how the movement operates and what programs they can use in their country. As amatter of fact I have sumitte my candidacy for the program comittee.
Monday 18th
- Maarten Dimi and I got toether over breakfast and discussed the conference and what we got as insights and what we take home form it.

I hope this brief summary gave you some insight, but you will see the activity as we progress this year.