[Foundation-l] Wikimedia France Wikimania Scholarships (was Re: Money, politics and corruption)

Tue Jul 20 23:57:18 UTC 2010

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.

------------

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.

-------------

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 at gmail.com>wrote:
>
>> 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_Criteria
>>>
>>> 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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