WTS2022

Draft Proposal for Wikimedia Technology Summit 2022

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Wikimedia Technology Summit 2022

December 02–03, 2022 | Hyderabad, India

Event overview

Purpose and vision

Please give a brief description of the event you are planning. What do you hope to accomplish during the event? Why is this event important for your community?

‘Our world has changed’ is a statement that we hear quite often. Our lives through Covid-19 pandemic has made us repeat and reflect this particular statement in a more intentional manner. While we are aware of the things that have changed, are we also aware of the impact that these changes have brought and continue to bring on our lives? Efforts that have been made towards ensuring access to accurate, credible information during the pandemic have received accolades and are being heralded as the virtue of an interconnected network (read internet). How did these interconnected network/s (online and offline) come to be developed? Has it always been developed and shaped by large multinational companies? The Internet that was seen and marketed as a place for entertainment, profit making initiatives and contentious debates is also being acknowledged for its fight against mis-information, ensuring last mile access, providing platform/s for underrepresented voices. These virtues are either of minimal impact or in their nascent stage of evolution. What is the role of a society that is invested in the internet to develop these capabilities further? What critical questions do we ask of our individual efforts and of collective organisations in shaping an equitable, safe and rewarding internet. How can our good intentions and actions of providing educational resources, building idealistic ventures and constructive partnerships navigate the questions of bias, harassment and nefarious dealings by the powerful? Wikimedia Technology Summit 2022 aims to bring these questions, have discussions that will build long lasting partnerships, provide necessary support for emerging ideas and engage in honest conversations about our limits and possible superpowers that can be used for greater good.

After the Wikimedia Technology Summit 2022, we will again take the time to improve our concept of post-conference engagement and follow-up work.

Important details

Please add key information to the table below. The dates, location and number of participants can be estimates and do not need to be finalized at this time.

Proposed date(s)	December 02–03, 2022
Proposed location	The International Institute of Information Technology - Hyderabad,India
Number of participants	~200
Event page	Wikimedia Technology Summit 2022
Primary contact person	Kasyap & XYZ

Plan

Friendly space policy

Please link to the friendly space policy that your community will be using for this event.

We use the Friendly Space Policy by the Wikimedia Foundation (cf. [space policy])

Participation

It is crucial that most participants have a minimum level of Wikimedia experience so that they can engage actively in workshops and discussions. Please answer all applicable questions below.
We expect diverse range of participants from at Wikimedia community]]

1. Please describe the target audience for this conference or event.

The main audience of this conference are board members, volunteers of the Wikimedia Movement affiliate, Open-source developers. We are also planning to invite a small number of community leaders and external partners.

2. If your conference has an outreach component, how will you ensure engagement with these participants after the conference, and what impact do you see them having on the projects?

This conference does not have an outreach component.

3. Are you thinking about inviting WMF staff to attend or participate in the event? If yes, please list individuals or teams who you may want to invite, or describe how you would like WMF staff to be involved in the event.

This conference is one of the major platforms for TBA

Scholarships

1. How many scholarships would you like to offer?

60 scholarships

2. What expenses will the scholarship cover?

Travel and accommodation.

3. How will scholarship recipients be selected?

Each affiliate chooses its own delegates, according to the previously published Eligibility Criteria.

Measures of success

We plan to use similar measures of success as for the previous conferences, as these have proven useful.

The aim is to measure the level of satisfaction among participants in terms of content, program, networking possibilities and organization of the conference.

Resources and risks

Describe the resource potential for successfully executing this project and the key risks/threats.

Organizing team

Team	User Names
TBA User ID	IIIT Hyd
Logistics	TBA User ID2
Conference Program	TBA User ID3
Scholarships	n/a (we don’t give out ‘traditional’ scholarships. Everything around participant management is handled by Daniela Gentner)
Communications	TBA User ID4
Volunteer Coordinators	TBA User ID4	Other team members	two to be hired team members (1 Logistics Assistant, 1 Visiting Wikimedian)

Risks

After Wikimedia Technology Summit 2021 organizing with the same core team, we have a good estimate of the range of risks in organizing this event. Based on our experiences and lessons learned from the last year, the following themes are related to potential risks:

Intra-organisational communication

The Wikimedia Technology Summit only works when planned and implemented in close collaboration with other teams, especially from the Wikimedia Foundation. We rely on people’s deeper thematic experience and knowledge of the status of the Movement discourse and current research to enrich conversations. Also, in terms of logistics, e.g. travel booking process, we rely on IIIT-H’s expertise.

To avoid any misunderstandings and miscommunication, we aim to work more closely, more openly with all teams involved and plan processes ahead. Especially, having regular – weekly or bi-weekly – check-ins could minimize the risk of misunderstandings.

Participation and engagement within and beyond the conference

we noticed that the level of participation and engagement during the event had decreased. Also, the engagement in the follow-up process was quite limited; our guess is that this is mainly due to the resource and energy consuming Movement Strategy Process.

For the next Wikimedia Technology Summit, we aim to further reduce the number of frontal presentations and create more interactive sessions and so-called “Moments of Sharing” within and beyond the conference program. That means, that we would like to facilitate more social interaction between individual participants.

For the follow-up process we will to consult with Movement entities and external experts how to increase the level of engagement.

Budget

Please provide a detailed breakdown of project expenses according to the instructions here. See Budget Guidelines.

Event budget table

Category	Amount (INR)	Amount (USD)
Travel	1140000	$14,337.00
Accommodation & Food	358000	$4,502.32
Event Logistics	230000	$2,892.55
Event Management	215000	$2,703.91
Merchandise	70000	$880.34
Mini Hackathon Expenses	290000	$3,647.13
Unforeseen Expenses	100650	$1,265.81
Total	2403650	$30,229.07

Total cost of event around

INR 2400000

Total amount requested from the Conference and Event Grants program is around

30,000 USD

Additional sources of revenue that may fund part of this event, and amounts funded

We have asked for further sponcers and are to be notified until October TBA, 2022.

Please confirm that you are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% in any category must be approved in advance.

YES (We herewith confirm that we are aware that changes to the approved budget beyond 10% must be approved in advance.).

Discussion

Endorsements

Do you think this project should be selected for a Conference Grant? Please add your name and rationale for endorsing this project in the list below. Other feedback, questions or concerns from community members are also highly valued, but please post them on the talk page of this proposal.