Hello! Here’s Léa with my WMF hat, in charge of coordinating the Wikimedia Hackathon in 2023 :)

As you may know, we are bringing the Wikimedia Hackathon back onsite, it will take place on May 19-21 in Athens, Greece. The Wikimedia Hackathon aims to bring Wikimedia's active technical contributors together, to build community, connections and software.

On December 7, we’re opening the registration form that will also include a scholarship application form.

I’m reaching out to you today to ask if your chapter would be interested and able to support volunteers from your local community to travel to the event. If so, I would love to discuss with you about how we could connect the international scholarship process to your selection - similar as done for the onsite Hackathons until 2019, or in scholarship processes for Wikimania.

WMF’s scholarship application process will run from December 7 to January 10, after which we will have a review period until January 31. Our goal is to have scholars selected and their travel booked at the beginning of February, so people who need to request a visa can proceed. 

If you would like to join the effort on supporting participants to attend, we could work together and support you in running your own, independent process. Ideally, it would start at the same time or shorter after the global one, so your community gets clear communication about which process to follow. However, it could close later than January 10, to allow more flexibility to you and your community.

Our collaboration could look like this:

• In December, you announce your scholarship process to your community and give them guidance on how to apply (independently from the hackathon registration form)

• On January 10, when we start reviewing the global applications, we will inform you in case people from your country applied

• On January 31, we finalize the selection of the global scholars, without including applicants that you decide to support through your own process

• In January or later on, you can conclude your own process and select your scholars

• While you are running your selection process, it would be useful to have check-ins to align on selection criteria and make sure that the key technical contributors from your community can be supported

• Your organization is in charge of reaching out to them, asking for their wishes and requirements regarding travel and accommodation, booking and managing the rest of the process. The hotel, for example, would be booked by you and not by WMF.

Although we would run processes independently, it would be good to align on the selection criteria.

This year’s Wikimedia hackathon is focusing on bringing people together who are already active technical contributors, therefore we want to apply a criteria of at least one year of activity on technical projects. It would be great if you could also include such a criteria in your own process, so we are aligned with the audience of the event. If needed, we could also help you assess who are the key technical contributors in your community.

What do you think? Would this process work for you?

Do you have an estimate of how many people you could support to travel to Athens and stay for 3 or 4 nights?

If you have any questions or would like to discuss the process further, feel free to reach out to me, I’d be happy to schedule a call with you or your colleagues. Feel free to transfer this email to anyone else in your organization who would like to be involved.

I’m looking forward to working with you on supporting the tech contributors to attend the hackathon!

Best,