[WMCEE-l] What the meeting is good for?

Mon Nov 17 16:57:06 CET 2014

Mykola,

As I wrote before, we have sufficient funds to attend. We even have
some to support the event itself if needed.

As Samat said, we will not spend a single penny just because the
financial year end approaches fast, only if we see it worth it.

Did I miss it or there is still no decision on the actual dates?

Anyhow, a ticket for a plane in December costs 2x-3x or maybe even 4x
more than a ticket to a plane in February to put it simple. That is
the difference.

Balazs

2014-11-16 23:46 GMT+00:00 Mykola Kozlenko <mycola-k at ukr.net>:

> Concerning budgets, it depends from case to case - for example, for those
> having APG grants or planning to switch to APG unused funds may be badly
> viewed by the WMF. I did not have time to check what all chapters have put
> in their budgets and whether they can easily reallocate these funds to the
> next year, and you definitely know the WMHU budget better.
>
> However, I don't see how it can be done significantly better in February
> 2015 than in December 2014. There were many concerns about the programme -
> now almost all chapters have contributed to the programme, except exactly
> WMHU - thus I would be happy if you could fill in the form at
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Meeting_2014/Questions%26Needs
> , and after WMHU is ready we will have feedback from all chapters. We are
> working on this from August, thus there should be no problem with
> conference programme - we are ready to publish our suggestion in a day or
> two (but we would be glad to get a feedback from WMHU first).
>
> What may be better in February is the availability of participants. There
> is no magic solution however, and I don't think we will find a date that
> arranges exactly everyone, as even for Wikimanias (planned a year in
> advance) we have people who are unable to participate. If there is a real
> problem that will prevent a lot of people from participate (religious or
> national holiday, important local events etc.) we may consider switching to
> a different date. However, if the issue is that some country would be badly
> presented in December, very likely another country will be badly presented
> in February, thus this is not the reason in itself for changing the date.
>
> If WMHU has significant problems with attending the CEE Meeting in
> December, please explain us your issues (you can write me privately if you
> don't want to publicly announce it here). If you have no problems wit h
> coming in December, we would be happy to see your suggestions and ideas,
> most notably via the page
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_CEE_Meeting_2014/Questions%26Needs
>
> Best regards,
> Mykola
> WMUA/ CEEM 2014 team
>
> --- Оригінальне повідомлення ---
> Від кого: "Samat" <samat78 at gmail.com>
> Дата: 17 листопада 2014, 00:21:31
>
> I am not comfortable with the way of thinking, that if we have a budget we
> have to spend it even if is not worth to do.
> If there is allocated money for the CEE Meeting this year and we can use
> the same amount of money much more effective next year, I am quite sure
> that WMF would prefer to support the meeting next year, not this year.
> Don't forget: our money comes from individual donations and institutional
> funds, and donors expect that we use it the best way.
>
> Samat
>
>
> On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 11:53 PM, Mykola Kozlenko <mycola-k at ukr.net>
> wrote:
>
> Hi Balázs,
>
>  What I mean under "allocated" is that you might have a sum of money in
> the 2014 budget booked for the CEE meetup. This really differs from chapter
> to chapter, as some chapters in the region are under PEG grants, some
> already have APG grants, while others have 1% of tax for charities in their
> countries. In all these cases budgeting rules and reallocation from one
> year to another are extremely different - thus I can't generalise without
> looking into budget of each organisation
>
>  In your case, I would like to know if you have a Jan-Dec financial year
> or a Jul-Jun financial year, because if your financial year ends in
> December, you will be unable to use your 2014 budget to support CEE meeting
> if it takes place in 2015. If you are ready to support the 2014 CEE
> meeting, please confirm what kind of support we can expect (or, for
> example, if you will be ready to cover travel costs from Hungary to Kyiv)
>
>  Best regards,
> Mykola
> WMUA
>
> 17 листопада 2014, 00:46:15, від Balázs Viczián <
> balazs.viczian at wikimedia.hu>:
>
> What do you mean by "allocated"?
>
> WMHU has no money allocated to support the event explicitly, but we do
> have a budget to support events in general.
>
> This means that we can offer our financial aid if we see you're in need of
> that and we see that the event worth funding. WMHU supported an earlier CEE
> meetup with 1000 EUR for example.
>
> We do not have money explicitly allocated to travel to the CEE meetup(s),
> however when we set up the budget for (general) travelling we did count
> with attending all the events, including the CEE meetup.
>
> Balázs
> 2014.11.16. 17:32, "Mykola Kozlenko" <mycola-k at ukr.net> ezt írta:
>
> Hi Vojtěch,
>
> I don't really like the word "donors" - that is not exactly correct.
> Basically we need to find which of the following is more important:
> * chapters that are already preparing for CEEM in December, or who have
> already money allocated for 2014
> * chapters who cannot attend CEEM in December or cannot be adequately
> represented in December but will be able to attend in February
>
> It's not up to us to decide this - it's up to participants to decide.
> However, so far most of chapters have confirmed that their representatives
> will be able to attend - which we considered as fine. On the other hand, so
> far only WMHU has raised concerns - thus we would like to know if
> Hungarians have any particular problems or if they would still be able to
> attend. If yes, we do hope that this meeting will work well for everyone.
>
> Just to remind, the link for preliminary registration is here :
> http://goo.gl/forms/ZozAWFrMXl
>
> Best regards,
> Mykola
> WMUA
>
> 16 листопада 2014, 17:57:59, від Vojtěch Dostál <
> vojtech.dostal at wikimedia.cz>:
>
>  Hi Mykola
>
> I, or anyone else, certainly do not want to put you in a difficult
> situation. In the end, it is the organizer who is responsible for the
> conference, not the participants. If you think that organizing it in
> December is the best idea from your and your donors' perspective, then do
> it - of course we will try hard to send our members to attend it, if
> possible.
>
> best wishes
>
> Vojtěch Dostál
>
> místopředseda
> Wikimedia Česká republika
> Konopišťská 790/3, Praha 10
> http://www.wikimedia.cz
>
> 2014-11-16 14:42 GMT+00:00 Mykola Kozlenko <mycola-k at ukr.net>:
>
> Hi,
>
> One particular problem is that we wanted to organise a CEE meeting _2014_.
> As far as I can see, at least one chapter (WM Serbia) has allocated funds
> for CEEM in their 2014 grant (
> https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:APG/Proposals/2013-2014_round1/Wikimedia_Serbia/Proposal_form#Supporting_Regional_Cooperation
> ), and I guess this may also be the case of other chapters with Jan-Dec
> financial year. It would be very dissappointing for these chapters not to
> use the funds they have already allocated, thus we would like to know:
>
> *Are there any chapters who have already allocated funds for CEE Meeting
> 2014 on their budget?*
>
> The more they are and the more important sums they have allocated, the
> less probable it is to move this meeting to 2015.
>
> For us (Wikimedia Ukraine) it is manageable to move it to February
> (probably not to January as Orthodox Christmas holidays may last until
> mid-January, and people are unlikely to work before 12 January or even
> later), although we will need to renegotiate quite a lot of things. At the
> same time, we should also bear in mind that we have Wikimedia Conference
> (April 2015?) and putting CEEM 2014 just before it will reduce its impact.
>
> We already have a draft programme and draft schedule, we are making final
> corrections and expect to publish them today or tomorrow.
>
> And while I understand that again we are making late start for CEEM 2014,
> this year we actually started in August by thinking on what we expect from
> this meeting, although I agree that it was once again a bit short notice. I
> do hope CEEM 2015 will be prepared better in advance, provided that we
> already have one bidding country at the moment (Estonia).
>
> Mykola
> Wikimedia Ukraine
>
> --- Оригінальне повідомлення ---
> Від кого: "Vojtěch Dostál" <vojtech.dostal at wikimedia.cz>
> Дата: 16 листопада 2014, 14:41:01
>
>  Hi all
>
> I generally think that a CEE meeting, if carefully organized, can be a
> valuable conference where a lot of work can be done and new bonds
> established. International cooperation in eg. content creation or
> organizing competitions is very popular with our communities and as such
> should be encouraged. It is also a great opportunity to exchange ideas
> within a culturally relatively homogeneous region - for example, Czech
> projects are somewhat more likely to succeed in CEE countries than eg. in
> South America or Eastern Asia which are culturally very different in terms
> of academic relationships etc.
>
> At the same time, organizing a conference on such short notice is, to say
> the least, unfortunate. Apart from high travel costs, there is also not
> enough time to carefully plan the agenda. I know Ukrainians are very good
> in organizing conferences and *I trust them that the conference would be
> a great one* - but would it be worse in January or February next year?
>
> We could finally prove that CEE countries are able to organize conference
> well in advance. Actually, that would be a very big achievement for the
> conference organizers as it would also make the CEE countries better (more
> trustworthy) partners for international cooperation or funding within the
> Wikimedia movement.
>
>   Vojtěch Dostál
>
> vice-chairman
> Wikimedia Česká republika
>  Konopišťská 790/3, Praha 10
> http://www.wikimedia.cz
>
>
> 2014-11-16 13:11 GMT+00:00 Marcin Cieslak <marcin at cieslak.name>:
>
> On Sun, Nov 16, 2014 at 10:45 AM, Tomasz Ganicz <polimerek at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > Yes.. and the pardox of the situation is that the only "lingua franca"
> > for the teritory is actually English :-)
>
> That's unfortunately true. For some older generation, it was Russian
> to some extent...
>
> > + some countries are at the
> > war at the moment or they have been quite recently.
>
> That's actually a very good reason to keep our cooperation working
> despite this.
>
>
> Having said that I'd love to come to the next CEE meeting, but I am
> not sure I can get off work
> (I do work weekends too) and it will be very difficult to get
> reasonable travel costs
> due to Christmas season starting with most airlines mid-December.
>
> //Marcin
>
> //Marcin
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