Report of ESEAP 2022 by Gnangarra

This space is for me to unpack the ESEAP 2022 Conference, WoW22, Wikimania 2023 meeting reporting which I and help organised.

COT event organisation

As one of the original COT members and ESEAP organisor I support WMAU hosting the ESEAP event in conjunction with Worlds of Wikimedia 2022. Wikimedia Australia was already considering an Australian meetup following WoW as had occurred previously in 2019, I had suggested they expand it to allow for an all of ESEAP conference. The funding application was process was very short and put together over about a week the speed of this process would later contribute to some issues around costs and attendance. Conference wise the COT accepted my optimism and we planned for 100 attendees, with 60 scholarship places being funded via the WMF Conference grant with the balance being made up of WMF staff and people being funded through other means. While I'm happy my optimism was followed I do acknowledge that these numbers did place a heavier burden on the whole organising team and highlighted real concerns about our capacity to handle those numbers.

One of the first areas of concern was the COT capacity to organise travel, support visa applications, and accommodation for this WMAU engaged Maxims to do this work. That wasnt well planned for in our original budget it was not an oversight but rather not having the experience to consider all the implications with this process. I have some reservations about how that worked with Maxims but I was outside that process so cant really comment with any depth or insight beyond anecdotal discussions with attendees.

I participated in the programming discussions we had many good ideas put forward and those that we accepted were well received. One area of concern was the pressure from the WMF and various strategy working groups to try to accommodate all of their wants. This pressure raised some issues, first was from my perspective that it was ESEAP's conference and our choices on what mattered for ESEAP wasnt always being accepted. The lack of a single communication point for the demands of every group was another issue that could be explored. The communication and consultation from the team when initial plans were made the teams clutched to initial email response with plans not accept that the programming team had to make compromises in the dynamics schedule as it was being put together. This caused friction around the amount of time for presentations, what ESEAP wanted from the sessions compared to what the WMF teams wanted.

Scholarship lead

The scholarship was a complex process the Grant application was for 60 scholars. This was to be divided into multiple sectors the first portion of scholars was each recognised affiliate to invite two person to be in the room. The reasoning was that two people;

• created a redundancy information getting back to their communities,
• it meant that every attendee had someone they knew and could turn for support,
• trying to avoid creating just one conduit to any affiliate.

The second part of the scholarship process was to support any members of the organising team, guest speakers, and other people necessary to support the logistics of the event. The remainder would allocated to an open call process.

Open Call process

We created a google form for applicants to fill this didnt include any sensitive data which would be requested through the ticketing process where necessary. The form asked;

• Email address
• Before filling out the application please check you meet travel requirements both to enter Australia, and to return to your home country.
• In which country do you live
• What is the closest International Airport from where you can depart?
• Do you choose to identify with a language or cultural group, and if so which group?
• What is your gender identity (this information is for diversity reporting only and will have no bearing on your application).
• How old are you
• What is your level of understanding of English (0 is no understanding; 5 is native speaker)
  • If you require translation support, in which language?
• If would you like to give a presentation during the conference please include a brief description. A separate submission process will be completed after scholarships have closed.
• Username
• First edit date
• Main project to which you contribute, example id.wikipedia Other projects you contribute to (1)
  • Other project (2)
  • Other project (3)
• What is the most important Wikimedia activity in which you have personally been involved? Please give details.
• If you participate in global activities, which groups are you involved in?
  • (1) Can you speak about that group's activities
  • If you are involved in a second group, please add this also.
  • (2) Can you speak about that group's activities?
• Which affiliate/s are you a member of?
  • If you have held any leadership roles, please specify.
• Is there any other significant activity you would like to tell us about
• What was the last activity in which you were involved? Please provide a link to any reporting or the landing page of the event What was the date of the last outreach event in which you were involved?
• What was your involvement?
• Have you been involved in any other activities you would like to highlight?

Many of these questions were help establish a diverse selection of voice to compliment those who would be there. I put together a team of seven trusted people myself, 2 from WMAU, 4 from across ESEAP to assess the applications, the selection criteria was to find people who could both add value to the conference and then take back learnings to their communities. Some of the questions were more about a person knowledge of the projects, ie when was your first edit date, Username, and what project(s) do you contribute to. Others were primarily just for statistics around diversity and to help ensure we had broad collective voices at the event. We also had a couple of questions around affiliates to ensure that independent voices outside the leaderships groups were also able to attend.

We had 59 applications from within ESEAP, plus 6 who identified as not having passport or didnt agree to the UCoC and 13 from outside ESEAP, we discussed the outside ESEAP application and chose as a group to focus on those from ESEAP as the conferences focus was on Reconnecting ESEAPs communities post covid isolation. Each scholarship team member was asked to chose 20 people from the 59 who fit the selection criteria, from those choices I scaled the result based on those with the most support. The scholarship again met to discuss the outcome of those recommendations, in our selection we had identified 5 people who were already assigned through their affiliate. We identified none in the Pacific/Oceania region outside of NZ or Australia and one applicant Timor Leste community. There were applications from 11 countries of which people from were selected in the first round of offers. Trom there the list of recommendations were handed across to WMAU and the their travel agent to make offers to next person on the list should someone decline or they fail to obtain a visa and to extend as many invites as possible based on the available funding.

Affiliate Selection

We chose to give every recognise affiliate in the ESEAP region the opportunity for 2 voices at the conference. The organising team placed trust in the affiliates as to how they selected their representatives for the most part this worked very well. There was one exception where there was a complex on Wikipedia language protect disagreement over the final selection. The User group was relatively new, and there were people editing that language who are vocal opponents of any user group in their country. The apparent concerns are that the UG would take control of the online language Wikipedia where these people have built their own power base, IMHO from I can understand based on using various online translation services the incident should be referred to the WMF T&S. From an ESEAP perspective I dont see a failing in the selection process as many options were exhausted during the process but rather an incident of opportunism that has cemented a person(s) in a position power outside the values of the movement. The Usergroup involved has made some structural, procedural, and documentational changes though it is just more of an acceleration of growth that all affiliates have normally made over longer time periods. To my observations this is perhaps a growth that Affcom could have supported or even laid down as part of the approval process as a UG is created, yet it will be something an ESEAP hub will be able to support for all new affiliates in the future.