User:Pine/Wikimedia Conference 2015 travelogue

Wikimedia Conference 2015: Challenges and opportunities for WMF and affiliates By Pine 24 June 2015


 * Schedule:
 * May 13 (half a day):  Pre-conference introductory topics: data, tracking resources, tools and designing a SMART proposal.
 * May 14 (full day):  Pre-conference applied workshops: Reporting and Storytelling, Designing an Annual Plan, Wikimetrics, Survey Design, Program Toolkits
 * May 15-17: Main WMCON sessions


 * Location: offices of Wikimedia Deutschland and nearby venues in Berlin, Germany
 * Group meetings:
 * Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC)
 * Affiliations Committee (Affcom)
 * Grants Advisory Committee (GAC)
 * Regional, language and thematic meetups
 * Affiliate board chairpersons
 * Paid executive directors
 * User group affiliates
 * The Chapters Dialogue


 * Number of participants: 165 including WMF employees
 * (Click for list of participants)


 * Staff, contractors and volunteers from WMDE:
 * 3 event staff: Daniela, Alice, and Wenke
 * 2 program staff: Nicole (WMDE Advisor to the ED for International Relations) and Cornelius (WMCON Program and Engagement Coordinator)
 * 2 facilitators: Anna Lena and Andreas
 * 3 food service "special agents"
 * 3 volunteers who took notes in the conference sessions: Robin, Leon and Martin
 * 1 volunteer who led tours of Berlin and Potsdam: Martin


 * Number of countries represented: 53
 * Number of affiliates: 39 chapters, 1 thematic organization, and 17 user groups
 * Budget: $119,412 (actual cost to be published when the grant report is final)
 * Main themes: Organization and Structures; Communities and Programmatic Work

This year, the Wikimedia Conference was held in Berlin, Germany. We were hosted by Wikimedia Deutschland ("WMDE"), which is the national chapter for Germany and is the largest Wikimedia chapter in the world with approximately 20,000 members. "Pre-conference" days were May 13–14 and the primary conference days were May 15–17, 2015.

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My background


I attended the conference as the delegate for Cascadia Wikimedians User Group, which is the regional affiliate for Oregon State, Washington State, and (informally) the province of British Columbia in Canada. Our geography, economy and culture are interwoven with our seaports, our access to the Pacific Ocean, and our industries like information technology, aerospace, film, health care, and university education. Our arts cultures include a mix of grunge music, anime conventions, film festivals, and symphony orchestras. Students in our schools frequently speak English as a second language; common first languages other than English are Spanish, Russian, Vietnamese, Somali, Ukrainian, and Chinese. The name "Cascadia" is derived from the Cascade Range, a series of mountains that extend from British Columbia to northern California.

Cascadia Wikimedia User Group was formed in 2014 amidst much struggle with Wikimedia Foundation processes, and we're still struggling today. This left at least some of us feeling that WMF support for growth-oriented affiliates is guarded, reluctant, and a low priority for them. As I will explain later in this report, my perceptions changed during the course of the conference, especially when I heard Lila's presentation. I hope that the Wikimedia Foundation's thoughts about their support of affiliates are also evolving with the information and feedback that they heard at the conference.

The flights
The travel agency that booked my flights to the conference booked me to arrive a day further in advance than I was planning. I decided to use the extra day to recover from jet lag and go on a tour of the area offered by Wikimedia steward DerHexer. I paid from my personal finances for food, hotel and bus transportation for this additional day, along with paying for extra legroom on my long cross-ocean airplane flights and paying for an upgrade to a single room at the hotel.

My long-distance flights were less miserable than I had anticipated, thanks to frequent snacks and an in-flight entertainment system that let me watch movies including The King's Speech, Frozen, and How to Train Your Dragon.

I planned to work on a long-promised VisualEditor training video during the flight, but my laptop would have been awkward to use in the small space of the airplane seat. A small netbook or laplet would have worked well.

My cross-ocean flight from Seattle landed in Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, a huge facility that is the fifth-busiest in Europe. Schipol has few computer displays, but I was met at the gate by a KLM agent who spoke impeccable British English and was able to identify my connecting flight on a paper document that she carried with her. After a long walk through the airport and a quick stop at customs, I boarded my connecting KLM flight to Berlin Tegel Airport.

Accidental adventures in public transport between the airport and hotel
After landing in Berlin Tegel, I faced what turned out to be the most challenging part of the journey: getting to the hotel. I tried to follow the directions that had been provided by Wikimedia Deutschland in the conference packet. I purchased a ticket for public bus transport at a kiosk. (The kiosk attendant seemed to be prolifically multilingual.) After a little effort I was able to find the correct bus from the airport. The bus driver instructed me to validate my ticket; apparently most bus tickets in Berlin are valid for 2 hours after being punched. I found it slightly concerning to be on a bus in another country, where I didn't speak the language and where my GPS and phone didn't work. Thankfully the bus automatically displayed the location of its next stop on an inside display, and I was able to match one of the displayed names to the stop that was listed on the directions from Wikimedia Deutschland. I asked the bus driver where I could connect to bus 41, and he pointed across the street. So I got out of the bus with my two pieces of luggage and walked across the street. But across the street there was no listing for bus 41. So where could it be? I realized that I was on a huge plaza, and behind it was this massive building:



After taking a few photos and walking around the plaza which showed no signs for bus 41, I walked inside the building, hauling my luggage which felt increasingly heavy. Some store clerks and an information desk attendant who spoke limited English pointed me to the opposite side of the building. (I should say that I appreciate that people spoke English at all. A substantial minority of Americans speak at least one language other than English, but if I was a German speaker who came to the United States then probably I would need the help of a translation service to communicate with a public transport clerk.) After more walking around, and asking more people who didn't know exactly where bus 41 was, I found a stop for bus 41 on an access road that is perpendicular to the main road. Relieved, I boarded the bus.

When I arrived at the stop that was described on my directions from Wikimedia Deutschland, I had another problem. The hotel was nowhere in sight, and I had a difficult time following the directions on the map that WMDE provided. I asked a couple of people where I could find Motel One, and discovered that there were lots of hotels in the area and no one knew where the Motel One was. Eventually, feeling tired and looking for a place where I could connect my wifi, I found a McDonald's sign on the wall of a mall. I went inside, bought a much-needed drink, and activated my wifi. I learned that I was only a short distance from the hotel; apparently the hotel is a part of the same building as the mall. This was convenient, and after getting directions from the mall information desk attendant, I quickly arrived at Motel One. I learned later that this particular Motel One is new, which might be why so few people knew where to find it.

I later told Daniela Gentner of Wikimedia Deutschland that she should put a warning on WMDE's documentation that the directions from the airport to the hotel are intended as an intelligence test. ;)

Evening of Tuesday, May 12
After dropping off my luggage at the hotel, I went to visit the Wikimedia Deutschland office. I discovered accidentally that the FDC was already hard at work.

Later that night, I went to dinner with a couple of Wikimedians from India. On our way back, we encountered Risker and Matanya from the FDC, who were tired after reading through many pages of grant requests. The sky started to pour rain, and we made a dash to the hotel.

Breakfast
The day started with a breakfast in the hotel which I enjoyed and where I met other conference participants.

Pre-conference day 1
There was some confusion prior to the conference about who exactly was signed up for this pre-conference day, and attendance was limited to 30 participants. The sessions were led by WMF Learning and Evaluation as well as Christof Pins and Manuel Merz from WMDE's Partnerships and Development (ZEN) team. I was already familiar with much of the material, so I skipped this pre-conference day in favor of DerHexer's tour.



Here is the list of hopes and fears from the participants:

You can read more about the pre-conference workshop in the WMF Learning and Evaluation newsletter.

Potsdam tour
While many people were in the pre-conference or in meetings with the Funds Dissemination Committee (FDC), I enjoyed a day on a tour of Potsdam led by DerHexer with fellow conference participants Benoit Rochon of Wikimedia Canada, and the amazingly multilingual whiteghost.ink of Wikimedia Australia who learns languages for fun. The tour was a good way to experience German culture and a nice way to spend time while recovering from jet lag. Below are some photos of locations that we visited during the tour.

After a fun day, I went briefly to the Wikimedia Deutschland offices for a dinner snack, then went back to the hotel and spent several hours catching up on email before going to bed.

Thursday, May 14: Pre-conference day 2; Affcom meeting starts
After another breakfast at the hotel, the avalanche of workshops and meetings began for me. Here's the schedule for Pre-conference day 2:

In the morning I attended the session about designing SMART annual plans, and the session about Wikimetrics.

I chose to attend the Wikidata editathon for my first afternoon session, where I met Lydia in person for the first time; we had previously chatted on IRC a few times. I passed greetings to her from Mako. I was impressed by the complexity of Wikidata and the skill of the WMDE development team. I left the session early so that I could attend Maria Cruz's storytelling workshop.

Affiliations Committee (Affcom) meetings
I wasn't present, but here are two photos from Affcom's first day of meetings:

Friday, May 15: Conference day 1
Here's the schedule:

The first "real" day of the conference felt like a continuation of the day before, but with more options.

What could local organisations bring to the movement?
In the morning I attended "What could local organisations bring to the movement?" in which participants gathered in groups and brainstormed ideas about a series of topics: Community support, Diversification, Partnerships, Advocating, and Fundraising. This was fun and informative. I recommend reading the official notes from the session, which are here.

Regional cooperation
In the afternoon, I first attended "Regional cooperation". This session featured presentations from Iberocoop and Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). Official notes from the session are here.

See also the learning pattern "Regional action plan".

Independent Fundraising Experiences
Some participants attended the "Independent Fundraising Experiences" conference session. The fundraising presentation slides remind me of a Wikimedia Blog post called "Fundraising made in Germany: lessons learned by Wikimedia Deutschland". Also see the learning patterns "A successful crowdfunding operation" and "Donations segmentation". It appears from the official notes that this session mostly focused on approaching grantmakers instead of broad annual fundraiser campaigns like WMF runs. The official session notes are here.

Board Governance
Next, I attended the session on board governance. I heard some very interesting suggestions from well-established chapters about recruiting people who have the right mindset of public service to be on affiliate boards, and encouraging people who have incompatible objectives to go elsewhere. For example, Wikimedia France is willing to give impressive-sounding titles to people who lead volunteer projects, which can encourage some people to pursue prestige in ways other than being on the board. Wikimedia Nederland made great efforts to diversify its board, including seeking outside female candidates to run for election. I came away with the personal impression that people who are considerate, service-minded, and reliable are sometimes more desirable as board members than people who may have impressive resumes but big egos. It might be interesting to foster some discussion on Meta about the best qualities for board members and how to recruit diverse people with those qualities; I imagine that no one person will have every quality that makes him or her an ideal board member, so there might also be some discussion about good mixes of qualities among the board members.

See also the learning patterns "Board handbook − a shared vision of the board role in an evolving organisation" and "Governance Codex". On the Internet I found two resources that I think might interest Wikimedia affilates: "How to Be a Great Nonprofit Board Member" by the United States National Council of Nonprofits (PDF), and "Recruiting and Retaining Good Board Members" by the Minnesota Council of Nonprofits.

Official notes from the session are here.

Lightning talks
While I was unable to attend the lightning talks because I was in the board governance workshop, I heard that many of the lightning talks were good. Official session notes are here.

Here is the signup roster:
 * 1) Our Wikipedias need better photos: collaborations beyond Wiki Loves Monuments. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 13:22, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
 * WikiMedi a wikimedian (affiliates) collaboration around the Mediterranean Sea: Helping and sharing experiences. --Dyolf77 (talk) 15:00, 5 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 100wikidays or "how many hours of sleep does one really need?" --Lord Bumbury (talk) 18:57, 10 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Train the Trainer Train, Trainer and Drained 😁 Lahariyaniyathi (talk) 14:08, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Wikimedia Global Circle: Finding your chapter/group's global twin! (Also, planning global Latin American Art editathon(s) for October 2015!)--Pharos (talk) 14:14, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) Wikidata Challenges. The Menu Challenge (demo)and the Visualization Challenge. Jan Ainali (WMSE) (talk) 06:58, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 2) European Science Photo Competition 2015 --Kaarel Vaidla (WM EE) (talk) 07:19, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 3) Engaging locally with thematic organizations, e.g. Wiki Project Med, or WikiProjects. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 11:29, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 4) Wikipedia Education Program: Creating quality content and increasing diversity one learner at a time for almost a decade. <3 Anna Koval (WMF) (talk) 11:37, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 5) video campaigns for brand building and outreach - Ravi from Wikimedia India
 * 6) All are invited to participate in Wiki Loves Pride, an annual campaign to improve LGBT-related content at Wikipedia and across all Wikimedia projects. Take pictures at pride events, improve articles related to LGBT culture and history, LGBT Expedition at Wikivoyage, etc. Identifying as LGBT+ is NOT required, all are welcome! -Another Believer (talk) 12:58, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Also, check out Wikimedia genealogy project! -Another Believer (talk) 13:00, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 1) Wikisource. Aubrey (talk) 15:40, 14 May 2015 (UTC)
 * 2) #repte500mil: 500,000 articles Challenge in Catalan Wikipedia -- Davidpar (talk)  14:21, 15 May 2015 (UTC)
 * Project to create spherical panoramas of important monuments --User:Kadellar 14:44 15 May 2015

Other photos and presentations
Below are some photos and presentations from other sessions during the day:

Evening meetups
Finally, it was time for the evening events. There were regional and language meetups, and a "fail-fest" session where people could discuss their failures and what they learned in a safe space.



Saturday, May 16: Conference day 2
Here's the schedule:

Quality matters - How to support learning and improvement in Wikimedia organizations
I started my morning with attending the Quality Matters session. We talked about Quality management for Wikimedia affiliates.

Volunteer Supporters Network
I would have liked to attend the Volunteer Supporters Network session. Here are some Etherpad notes.

Official notes from the session are here.

Affiliations Committee (Affcom) public Q&A
I wasn't at this session. Official notes are here. It looks like there were several questions about the recognition process for user groups.



Reporting and Storytelling
I liked Maria's presentation in which we talked about how to blend quantitative data with explanations about the significance of the data. Official notes from the session are here.



Community Capacity Development Framework
Next, I attended a session with Asaf and Sati called "Community Capacity Development Framework". I liked this session as well. WMF is proactively reaching out to communities to ask what we have and what we need. Official notes from the session are here.



Organizational Effectiveness tool
Winifred presented a tool that helps affiliates to score themselves on various measures of organizational effectiveness. I was in other sessions while this presentation happened. The tool appears to be designed for affiliates that are relatively mature. I wish that a similar tool existed for newer affiliates that need help with growing our volunteer bases, growing our content contribution programs, obtaining appropriate legal protection and advice, and obtaining and managing financial resources for the first time.

Official notes from the session are here.



Wiki Loves Photo Contests, and Global Metrics Tutorial
I tried to attend the Wiki Loves Photo Contests session and the Global Metrics tutorial.



I arrived late to the "Wiki Loves Photo Contests" session which might explain why I had some difficulty following the presentation. I was aware that there was disagreement expressed on Wikimedia-l about WMF's evaluation of photo contests, which I was told by a couple of conference participants was done by WMF without a thorough understanding of the objectives of the contests, which meant that WMF evaluated the contests using incorrect or incomplete measures of effectiveness.

Wikimedia Ukraine posted in the Wikimedia Blog about their difficulties in obtaining government records about culturally significant sites. One state authority was so assertive about withholding the information that Wikimedia Ukraine filed a lawsuit against the authority, which was successful. The judge ordered the release of the records and voided a portion of a local statute that conflicted with Ukraine's Access to Public Information law. Creating lists of cultural heritage sites can be an important part of a Wiki Loves Monuments campaign because Wikimedians need to know which sites need documentation and photographs on Wikimedia Commons and Wikipedia.

Official notes from the "Wiki Loves" Photo Contests session are here.



Lila's talk
Following this session was Lila's talk. The room was packed, and it seemed like everyone wanted to get a photo of Lila. Lila spoke of WMF collaborating with affiliates through improved partnerships, practices, and tools. In previous years the relationship between WMF and affiliates has been strained by financial disputes (previous Signpost coverage), governance issues (previous Signpost coverage here and here), "concern by the Foundation about budget and staffing growth, lack of demonstrable impact on WMF sites, and governance among eligible affiliates" (previous Signpost coverage) and the drama around the Wikimedia Chapters Association (previous Signpost coverage). The positive tone of Lila's presentation was welcomed by many affiliate representatives who were present. Lila noted that "Organizations can do what individuals cannot do alone" and acknowledged that Wikimedia affiliates have important roles in building collaborations with institutions around the world.

Official notes from the session are here.



Leveraging volunteers through programs
Finally, I attended the "Leveraging volunteers through programs" session. Some of us agreed during the session that the current WMF global metrics could be expanded to include more measures of success, such as organizational partnerships or content that has passed quality reviews. Official notes from the session are here.



End of the day
After all that, it was time to either go to the dance party at HomeBase Lounge, or try to unwind. I chose the latter, partly because I had an early morning flight scheduled for Monday and I wanted to minimize my jetlag. So instead I went out to diner at the mall, where I met another Wikimedian and we talked over dinner.

It looks like those who went to the party had a good time.

After dinner and emails, I crashed into bed for the night.

Sunday, May 17: Conference day 3
Here's the schedule:

Morning roll call
I woke up accidentally at about 6:30 AM and couldn't get back to sleep, probably because the sun was illuminating my hotel room despite the closed curtains. I went to breakfast at 7:00 where I met Lila momentarily. After breakfast I eventually made my way to the conference venue. I was surprised that the WMDE staff was there already; they told me that they didn't get much sleep either.

WMF Grantmaking's Impact Focus
I attended "WMF Grantmaking’s Impact Focus". Siko promptly told us that the session would not involve WMF telling us a definition of "impact"; Luis said earlier in the conference that he had become aware that "impact" means different things to different people. I decided to start the conversation by proposing that we should banish "impact" from our collective vocabulary, which resulted in some mild laughter from the other participants. I highly recommend reading the official notes from the conference session, which are here.



Financial Management
In the meantime, other participants were in the "Financial Management" session that was led by the honorary treasurer of Wikimedia UK. The session looks like it was very informative.

Whiteghost.ink of Wikimedia Australia reported that "One view expressed (at the conference) was that payment should only be made for necessary tasks for which skills are unavailable among volunteers. There were other views. At the session for conference newcomers, affiliates were strongly advised to secure the skills of a professional accountant for their organisation."

See also the learning patterns "Making an annual financial report", Facilitate the preparation of an FDC report", "Using expense-tracking software" and "Using the general ledger and project codes to evaluate outcomes".

Official notes from the session are here.

Working on Public & Regulatory Policy
I couldn't attend this session. Some affiliates have previously expressed interest in regulatory policy, particularly concerning freedom of panorama and copyright reform.

Official documentation from the session is here.

Communications Best Practices
Next I attended the Communications Best Practices session. Katherine and Juliet asked affiliates what affiliates need in the way of communications support, and we provided a long list.

Also see the Communications learning patterns category on Meta.

Official notes from the session are here.

Our list of skills that we would like WMF Communications to help us with:

We also talked about ways that WMF and affiliates could collaborate our communications:

Chapters Dialogue
While I was in the Communications session, other participants attended the Chapters Dialogue session with Nicole from WMDE. Official session notes are here.

User Groups Meetup
After lunch I attended the user groups meetup. A common theme among user groups is that we get little support from the Wikimedia Foundation and could use more. Siko said earlier that WMF is considering providing more support, and I was told that the chapters are interested in helping user groups to become chapters or thematic organizations. I expressed some of my frustrations with WMF during this session and was grateful to have an understanding audience. In the same room, WikiSource user group participants held a meeting of their own. We joined together for a group photo:



End of the day, and a few more photos
After this, I went to the closing session.

Here are a few more photos from our last day.

After the conference
One of Wikimedia Deutschland's goals for the conference is that participants will continue forward with initiatives and projects that were discussed at the conference. Happily, that seems to be happening

Attendee responses
Responses of participants to the event were generally very positive. Participants expressed gratitude to WMDE.

The president of Wikimedia Italia, Andrea Zanni, said, “I learned a lot about the ongoing transformation of the Wikimedia Foundation: many things are changing, they are working a lot, and very often we as affiliates do not notice these things. I saw many changes towards a better, more open and more collaborative Foundation, and I don't know many times I heard WMF employees asking for feedback and help.”

New logo
After the conference, I (Pine) adapted this logo for optional use by Wikimedia Affiliates. I derived this from work by Sonia, who created the image as a Wikidata logo nominee.

Sonia's file description says, "Initial structure derived from a 2D projection of a 5-cube, specifically File:5-cube t2 B3.svg. The central red dots represent Wikidata's information, and the grey lines connecting them to other dots show how this data can be used and reused and shared among other projects, WMF-wide and beyond. Can be easily simplified for a favicon. (Oh, and I have read the submission guidelines.)"

The way that I conceive of this logo for the affiliates is that the red dots represent Wikimedia organizations who collaborate with the WMF (black center), each other, and external partners (blue and green dots).

While this isn't an official logo, my early impression is that at least a few people who were at the conference like it. Derek commented, "I do like the logo and the idea it reflects on the complex relationships between the WMF and the affiliates and also among the Affiliates; because a as a matter of fact in reality 'behind the logo' unseen from the viewpoint of the logo invisible lines of communication run across between affiliates that are geographically a globe apart."

Reports and reviews from attendees
Blog posts
 * Blog post for Amical Wikimedia (in Catalan)
 * Blog post by Bobby Shabangu about his experience at WMCON
 * Blog post for WMUK
 * Wikimedia Blog post by the WMF Learning and Evalation Team & WMDE Partnerships and Development Team: "Evaluation helps Wikimedia leaders learn together"

On-wiki reports
 * Berlin Report from Wikimedia Belgium
 * Report from Wiki Project Med
 * This Month in Education newsletter article from the WMF Education team

Etherpad
 * Notes from the WikiFranca meetup (Etherpad) (in French)

PDFs
 * Report for Wikimedia Australia (PDF)
 * Report for Wikimedia Taiwan (PDF) (in Chinese)
 * Report for Wikimedia Ghana User Group (PDF)

Google Docs
 * Report for Wikimedia New York City (Google Doc)
 * Report for Wikisource User Group (Google Doc)

Official initiatives
This section was written by Cornelius Kibelka (WMDE), who is the Program and Engagement Coordinator (PEC) for Wikimedia Conference 2015

One of WMDE’s main goals for the Wikimedia Conference is to make it more sustainable and productive. The Program and Engagement Coordinator will ensure and monitor that essential conference topics are constantly been worked on and further developed.

Disclaimer: the comments in the sections below reflect my personal analysis and opinions, and are not official positions of the Signpost or Cascadia Wikimedians.

Lila's speech

 * The tone of Lila's speech seemed remarkably different from the tone that I have previously sensed from WMF about affiliates. Previously I felt that WMF largely thought of affiliates, especially the largest affiliates, as being financially wasteful, public-relations liabilities, and of a far lower WMF institutional priority than the WMF technical investments that were supposed to result in editor growth (but have yet to do so after many years of investment). I speculate that the failure of the technical investments to improve editor growth, combined with improved evaluation tools that allow WMF to get a better grasp of their return on investment, may explain WMF's change in tone toward the affiliates. WMF might now think of affiliates as likely conduits to obtaining more volunteer contributors, better content, and (in the case of WMDE) important technical assets like Wikidata. I hope that WMF's tone of cooperation will continue.

Volunteer burnout and administrative workloads

 * Related to the discussions about volunteer burnout, I found two relevant web links. Web searches seem to suggest that volunteers who do administrative tasks, and/or (in the words of Mssemantics) "emotional labor", are at highest risk. Those categories apply to many Wikimedians. I get the impression that other affiliates are also concerned about volunteer burnout, particularly if they lack paid administrative staff to do their finance, accounting, and evaluation work.
 * http://money.howstuffworks.com/economics/volunteer/information/volunteer-burnout2.htm
 * http://www.fundsraiser.com/oct08/5-steps-for-preventing-volunteer-burnout.html


 * A frequent subject of discussion and sarcasm at the conference among some American and Canadian participants was the amount of WMF bureaucracy regarding grant applications and grant reports. We vented our frustrations by poking fun at the same processes that some of us are involved in administering. James from WMDC jokingly advocated for "lean agility" (whatever that means!) in grantmaking processes; I suggested to Varnent that the Affiliations Committee should become Six Sigma compliant, and he responded by threatening to require all new user groups to achieve ISO 9001 certification; and my suggestion to Risker and Luis that the FDC should be ISO 9001 certified was immediately followed by Risker threatening to stab me with a fork. While this joking allowed us to blow off steam and create friendly relationships with our fellow sufferers, it did suggest to me that there is a feeling that many people and committees have piles of demanding administrative work that require considerable time and effort from the volunteers.
 * More seriously, I commented on Wikimedia-l that requiring volunteers to do significant amounts of administrative work may have negative effects on contributor motivation, which is a WMF Global metric. I hope that one outcome of the Wikimedia Conference is that WMF will rethink the amount of administrative work that it expects of volunteers and people who are involved in small grants, and becomes more willing to provide funding for administrative support so that volunteers can focus on activities that they enjoy and find motivational.
 * I suggested the creation of a learning pattern about how to increase affiliates' human resources capacity.


 * I think that those are good points about volunteer happiness needing to be balanced with other project goals. Projects which make volunteers unhappy are likely to be unsustainable and need rethinking; at their worst, they can demotivate volunteers from ever again contributing to Wikimedia and create negative word-of-mouth among potential contributors. On the other hand, there is a need to be clear with volunteers that they should have at least some self-motivation to contribute to public service, and volunteering often involves some responsibility and activities which are more like work than play. For example, photography events which look like they might be as simple as touring cultural events with a camera and friends, actually require some planning and evaluation if they're done at large scale and involve competitions. So, program leaders need to find the right balance between recruiting volunteers, motivating volunteers, retaining volunteers, and achieving program goals.


 * Related to the comments above, program leaders need to know their own personal limits about their personal skills and capacities, so that they avoid over-committing themselves and then creating risks to their programs, their health, or their other commitments because they are overworked. Some examples:
 * One Wikimedian told me that they have gone to professional counseling because of their wiki-stress.
 * I'm personally very familiar with being overworked and under-slept from the months that I was trying to meet the needs of both my regular job and my WMF contract.
 * Michal Lester from Wikimedia Israel said that she has sometimes phoned volunteers to suggest to them that they are volunteering too much and should to commit to a more sustainable level of activity.
 * Affiliates that have paid staff might be in a better position to help keep volunteers from burning out, and to help keep programs moving forward at a sustainable pace. I think it's great that Michal proactively does this and I hope that other affiliates will too.
 * I hope that the sustainability and motivation of program leaders will be given more regular consideration by the Wikimedia Foundation in all that they do.


 * Some of us suggested to WMF that follow-on reports to the Chapter-wide Financial Trends Report 2013 should take into account, and report separately, the staff and volunteer hours involved in applying for and reporting about WMF grants. I hope that this would correlate with a WMF initiative to decrease the amount of volunteer time spent on this kind of grant-writing, reporting, evaluation, and administrative burden. Perhaps WMF will consider these issues when it launches its planned community consultation about grantmaking in Q3 of its 2015 fiscal year.

Providing more support for volunteers

 * A number of participants discussed how to provide positive motivation and support to the volunteers of affiliates. Hopefully, discussions about providing encouragement and support to volunteers will continue, and both the WMF and affiliates will provide more resources for the support of volunteers.
 * The "Building a "we" in the Wikimedia movement" discussion Wikimedia-l was started by Micru. Among other points that were discussed were the need for friendlier atmosphere on our online projects, the need for more and friendlier personal connections among Wikimedians, the need to think of Wikimedia as a social organization instead of just a technological or knowledge movement, that most discussions should be open to the public by default, and the need for more concentrated support for user groups so that they can grow and flourish.
 * We learned at the Wikimedia Conference that one affiliate mails real-life bottles of milk to good new Wikipedia contributors to thank them and engage with them.
 * Historically, WMF has addressed technological but not social issues in Wikimedia communities. In some ways this makes sense; WMF is ill-suited to investigate thousands of complaints or to evaluate compliance with community policies. However, I feel that it can and should do more to foster a civil atmosphere on Wikimedia projects. An article that is somewhat related is this interview of a former Microsoft researcher who talks about technology's limitations in attempting to create social change. Some Wikimedia Conference participants and presentations talked about the importance of offline, personal interactions with other Wikimedians in order to foster understanding and empathy. Some ideas that I proposed to the WMF Community Advocacy director (Philippe) for his consideration are:
 * Develop a standardized way of offering emotional support to volunteers of all kinds, particularly dispute resolution volunteers and victims of harassment.
 * Make Wikipedia's user interface friendlier (and, I hope, more easily customizable on both desktop and mobile interfaces).
 * Reward productive contributors as they reach milestones like anniversaries. Set up social events online and in person to thank them, connect with them, and help them to network and support each other.
 * Significantly increase the number of travel scholarships for Wikimania and national conferences.

Providing more support for user groups

 * User groups expressed the hope at WMCON for more support from WMF. Siko said that this is under consideration. I hope that, after this conference and possibly aligned with the other notes about volunteer burnout, WMF will take a more supportive approach to small orgs, and eliminate blanket prohibitions on modest shared office expenses and part-time labor expenses for small groups. Large labor expenses (theoretically up to $30,000) are already allowed for IEG grants, so I feel strongly that at least some modest labor expenses should also be allowed for PEG grants. Currently, PEG theoretically will fund part-time and/or term-limited staff, and I hope that WMF will take a more supportive approach in allowing user groups and other affiliates to receive PEG funding for part-time and/or term-limited administrative and programmatic support staff.
 * Also, user groups expressed a wish to be allowed to send two representatives to WMCON instead of the one that we were each allowed this year, so that user groups could send representatives to multiple concurrent sessions at the conference.

Diversity among board members

 * Related to the discussions about recruiting more diverse board members who have good qualities for Board work, this discussion thread took place on the Gendergap mailing list.

Expansion of metrics, and improving tools for evaluation

 * At WMCON, we discussed how measures of success other than global metrics are important, such as content that has passed quality reviews, partnerships with reputable organizations, or content that has special relevance for certain groups of people like citizens of a particular country. I hope that there will be more discussions about how to expand the diversity of measures that everyone can use to evaluate the success of programs.
 * We discussed the need for better and easier tools to evaluate the outcomes of programs.

Upcoming community consultation about WMF grantmaking
I'm thinking about advocating for four changes: Also:
 * 1) In light of concerns that the FDC is nearly at its capacity to evaluate proposals, yet more organizations may submit proposals to the FDC in coming years, I am thinking that replacing or supplementing the FDC with a peer review process for affiliate annual plans could be valuable.
 * 2) This peer review process could also be applied to annual plans that are submitted to the GAC.
 * 3) I'm considering suggesting a reversal of grant committee staff and volunteer roles. In this reversed structure, grantmaking staff would support and advise committees and grantees, and would perform administrative functions like background checks, disbursements, and compliance analysis. The committees would become fully empowered decision-makers in a manner appropriate to a peer production community that is supposed to be led by volunteers, instead of continuing in their current status as merely advisory to WMF. I generally believe that the committees do good work when evaluating grant proposals, and are experienced and credible when evaluating many kinds of proposals. If a WMF employee or a grant applicant felt that a committee had made an error, then that person could appeal the committee's decision to the WMF Board. This is an approach that I think would better serve and empower our volunteers and affiliates.
 * 4) Abandonment of the use of "APG" to refer exclusively to grants funded by the FDC, because GAC also funds annual plans. Perhaps a replacement term would be "Funds Dissemination Committee Grants" (FDCG), in which case "APG" can refer broadly to all annual plan grants including GAC-funded plans.
 * I heard that Community Resources is considering establishing an additional grants track for annual plans that are relatively complex for GAC but don't require an application to the FDC.

Learning from failure; failing in good and bad ways

 * We talked about how projects can fail in good and not-so-good ways. Learning from failure is good; doing pilot projects with managed risk is good. Failing at large scale is bad. Here are a few theoretical and one actual example:
 * Example of a good failure: a pilot project has limited success and needs rethinking before being scaled up.
 * Example of a good failure: edit-a-thon results in few new participants but extensive feedback on how to make future edit-a-thons better.
 * Example of a bad failure: the IEP fostered large-scale copyright violations and sockpuppetry. The independent consultant's report about the disaster noted the demotivating effect on well-intentioned participants and the heavy workload imposed on Wikipedia volunteers to clean up the mess. "One global administrator estimated that the total impact on the community was between 2,000 and 3,000 (volunteer) hours. The Foundation hasn't yet found a good way of systematically measuring the impact, but it acknowledges that the impact was enormous."

In general I believe that we affiliates and the Wikimedia Foundation should have the courage to fund modest experiments and be willing to fail on occasion in order to learn and improve our ability to succeed. For awhile I was a member of the Individual Engagement Grants Committee which was intended from the beginning to be a bit adventurous in funding projects; one of our big successes has been the Wikipedia Library.

Contributor recruiting and retention
We learned that for editor retention, the projects with the highest rate of 3-month retention appear to be writing contests. Photo events like Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth engage many more people, but the activity of those users appears to be low outside of photo events; it may be possible to engage such high numbers of photo event participants that a reasonable number, even if a small percentage, of contributors would remain active throughout the year.

Communications with the press
WMF Communications is developing resources for affiliates to assist with this.

Affiliates mailing list
There is an initiative to expand the reach of the existing Chapters email list so that it is open to board members of thematic organizations and user groups. This initiative appears to be waiting for a decision to be made by the email list administrators.

National and regional initiatives
Some affiliates, like the United States affiliates and the Iberocoop chapters, collaborate with each other across geographic boundaries. There may be more of this kind of cooperation after the conference.



Suggestions for potential conference participants next year
Wikimedia Conference 2015 was not a vacation. I was exhausted every night. As I said above, I paid from my personal funds to have a single hotel room instead of a double, and for me the cost was worthwhile and probably necessary for me to be rested enough to keep up with the pace of the conference, and to have some quiet space to gather my thoughts at the end of each day. I will do this again if I attend next year, and I suggest that other participants might want to do the same if you like to have some quiet space to yourself. However, if a friend or someone else from your affiliate is attending the conference, then you might enjoy being roommates with them.
 * Hotel room

If you travel a long distance to get to the conference, I recommend that you arrive a day early so that you can shake off much of the jetlag during the "free day". My "free day" on Wednesday was paid at my own expense. DerHexer's tour of Potsdam on Wednesday was enjoyable and if you come to WMCON next year then I recommend that you attend one of his tours.
 * Jet lag

Derek from Wikimedia Belguim commented to me, "I have seen a lot of WMF staff and some attendees coming in very late for the conference and some from long haul flights were still shivering with jet lag. I think that your travel advice should be taken very seriously by WMF for their staff especially because they have to be at their best for the conference. Conference attendees prefer well rested staff members and cost is a relative concept."

My cell phone service didn't work in Germany, and neither did my phone's built-in GPS software because it depends on having access to a data service. I later discovered that there are some GPS apps that I can use on my phone even when the phone data is offline. If you have a cell phone with GPS and your phone data service doesn't work in Germany, then I recommend that you install an offline GPS app.
 * GPS and cell phone service

Cell phones work on different frequencies and cell service providers cover different geographies. My American cell service wouldn't work in Germany. I tried to get a German SIM card to work on my phone, but my phone told me that the SIM card would work for emergency calls only. Perhaps next year I will try a different cell provider.

Overall I felt that the conference this year was well organized and informative. The events at the conference changed my perspective, and I hope that they changed WMF's perspective as well. I would highly recommend attendance to any affiliate board member or employee if he or she is able to come next year, and is interested improving his or her affiliate's effectiveness or is interested in having face-to-face meetings with other affiliate and WMF representatives.
 * Who should come to WMCON?

Summary of the most significant developments and topics at the conference
From my perspective, the most significant developments and topics of discussion at the conference were:
 * Lila's supportive approach to affiliates
 * Strong interest in getting more support from WMF for user groups
 * Concern about volunteer burnout
 * Concern about online civility
 * Interest in developing more and improved tools for program evaluation
 * Frustration with administrative workloads for volunteers
 * Interest among affiliates about networking with each other to achieve common goals

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the following people and organizations for their contributions to this report:
 * Antanana and Ilya from Wikimedia Ukraine
 * Daniel from the Wiki Project Med Foundation
 * Daniela, Nicole and Cornelius from Wikimedia Deutschland (Germany)
 * Derek from Wikimedia Belgium
 * Maria from WMF Learning and Evaluation
 * Peaceray from Cascadia Wikimedians User Group
 * Siska from Wikimedia Indonesia
 * Whiteghost.ink from Wikimedia Australia