On 7/15/10 6:23 PM, Oliver Keyes wrote:
Perhaps in future (for say, Haifa) it would be an idea if any chapter-based scholarships were put on hold until after the Foundation makes its choices? That way the systems could mesh, with people who don't quite meet the Foundation requirements/do but oh dear, we've already used up all our scholarships being forwarded to the chapter for its decision.
This year, Wikimedia France voted to approve scholarships to go to Wikimania for a total budget of 5000 euros.
This decision was approved on the 24th of may and was advertised in various (french speaking) venues. The scholarship only proposed two different types of packages: 250 euros or 500 euros. There was no requirement of nationality or location, though we would probably have focused on French participants. A commission was receiving the scholarship requests and approving them. Scholars had two main obligations : - actually being at the conference :) - report after the conference
In spite of sufficient time, not all scholarships were distributed, which is quite unfortunate. However, the number of French participants had never been as high in a Wikimania.
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One could certainly state that we are from a rich country and that our scholarships are further digging the divide between rich and poor countries. I would refute that argument.
On the 27th of april, Wikimedia France also approved financial participation to help several chapters participate to the chapter meeting in Berlin. The total amount approved was 10 000 euros. Original chapters chosen to be supported were
* Wikimedia Argentina * Wikimedia Australia * Wikimedia Hong Kong * Wikimedia Macedonia * Wikimedia UK * Wikimedia Serbia (yes dear)
These chapters were chosen in a list of chapters-to-be-supported, with the names of the people expected as well as the amount required for each to come. The choice was made taking into account: 1) the total budget 2) the price of each plane ticket (we picked up on purpose first of all the most expensive tickets) 3) pick up on every continent available 4) and last, when final choice had to be made, indeed, according to the person-to-come
(disclaimer: due to the ash mess and a flood mess, some travels were cancelled, so some of the support might have gone to a chapter different than the one originally planned).
But bottom line.... 1) whether people came from rich or poor countries was irrelevant. What was relevant was what they would bring to the table 2) our choice was made in a master table handled by Wikimedia Deutschland... and that made sense to do it this way.
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Lessons for next year Wikimania scholarship.
1) I think the French chapter was happy to have made that decision of offering scholarships for Wikimania this year. It came from the statement made at previous Wikimanias that hardly any French speaking person was attending. We meant to increase attendance and it was a success.
2) Whilst it was not discussed yet, postmortem should be made on that and we should check whether it will be relevant to do it again next year. Intuitively, I feel confortable saying that we will do it again.
3) I do not think being French should be a requirement. I however think being French speaking would please us (and the good news is that there are many French speaking countries)
4) We should however clarify our decision making process and include criteria, whatever those might be
5) And yes, though private data would be an issue to take into account, it would be nice to have a sort of "common" list of scholarship requests or at least one way to have those overlap so that the ones making request and being rejected are informed that other options might be feasible, or chapters are given the contact names of those rejected, and.... also to check that no one get dual funding (*)
I guess having Wikimania website listing all organizations providing scholarships would be a start :)
Ant
(*) jeee, finally found a way to get rich !
On Thu, Jul 15, 2010 at 4:50 PM, Federico Leva (Nemo)nemowiki@gmail.comwrote:
Sara Crouse, 15/07/2010 17:24:
For the moment, here are the selection criteria that were applied during the application review process:
http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/wiki/Scholarships#Applicant_Selection_Cri...
These were originally on the Wikimania team planning wiki, and not kept private for any specific reason other than that there was no better place to put them.
Thank you.
A full report documenting the program, processes, results, and lessons learned will be published on meta in September. The report will be open for anyone's critique and recommendations on how things may be improved going forward.
Great!
Nemo
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