Plans for a Wikimedia LGBT+ conference and workshops in 2020 are moving forward. We would very much like to learn and borrow successful experiences from other conferences. This conference is expected to be relatively modest in size, around 50 attendees, and is to be hosted in Linz, Austria.
We are planning on opening up applications for scholarships very soon, to allow several months for early booking of travel tickets and visa applications where needed. Naturally this means we have to create a process for assessing applications to a hopefully short and non-subjective checklist (we are all volunteers after all!).
Can anyone recommend documented good practices for assessing applications for travel grants and expenses for similar sized events? Some issues we have discussed that need to be addressed before finalizing our policies are: * Creating a fair assessment process that balances the diversity of attendees against other metrics like on-project experience, for example ensuring that we have a healthy gender balance and a wide geographic representation * Whether it may be better to prefer the simplicity of assessing for full scholarships, or whether partial payments are a good way of ensuring wider access * How to draw up rules for travel and partial scholarships for folks planning on making this part of a holiday, as often happens for those travelling long distances * When to recommend that specific Wikimedia Affiliates should provide grants and expenses, which may have additional requirements for applications and reporting * How to build in incentives for greener travel options, even where this may not be the cheapest option
You can read the conference proposal at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/Kawayashu/Queering_Wikiped... and everyone is welcome to provide suggestions and feedback on the discussion page there, if on-wiki editing works better for you than email. :-)
Thanks Fae