Grants:TPS/Varnent/CreatingChange2012

User name

Varnent

User location (country)

United States

Event name

24th National Conference on LGBT Equality: Creating Change

Event Web site

CreatingChange.org

Event date(s)

January 25 - 29

Event location (city)

Baltimore, Maryland

Amount requested

US$1323

Endorsements

Budget breakdown

If I am able to attend Creating Change, some of my costs will be covered by my already existing relationships with organizations involved. Essentially my housing, food and any WMF representation related costs are all that exist. Travel, local and registration would be provided by others.

• Accommodation: USD 140 per night (129 conference rate plus estimated taxes) x 4 nights = USD 560
• Per diem: USD 71 per day x .75 x 4 days (excluding 1 for combined travel days) = USD 213
• Conference booth: USD 350
• Conference meet-up: Estimated USD 200
• Travel: Not needed for grant
• Conference registration: Not needed for grant

Requested materials

Will work with User:sumanah on appropriate WMF materials to make available at booth, meet-up and event.

Proposed Participation

About me

I've been an active wiki editor and sysadmin for several years. More recently I've been doing consulting work for primarily nonprofit organizations on a variety of services - including MediaWiki deployment and support. I'm also the founder and lead administrator of WikiQueer and the lead at the nonprofit incubator developing the project. I've recently been getting more involved with MediaWiki development community. Specifically developing social media extensions - such as AddThis, TweetANew and WikiShare - and enhancing documentation and support for extension developers (see mw:Project:WikiProject Extensions) and third-party wiki sysadmins (see mw:Project:WikiProject SysAdmins).

About me at the conference

My personal website expands on a number of my roles within the LGBT communities. I've served as the executive director of a national LGBT youth advocacy organization based out of Washington, DC and primarily funded by the US CDC and worked on staff at or as a consultant for a number of other local, state, national and most recently international LGBT organizations and projects. The organization I currently worked for acts as an incubator for a number of LGBT projects and my private consulting firm has mostly LGBT organizations as clients. I feel that I could be a good representative of the wiki community at this event.

Full Disclosure

By the nature of my work in real life, I wind up being seen as a representative for a number of projects at an event like this. While I will not be paid or compensated for my attendance in any way, I will inevitably be representing a number of different interests and projects at various times. However, the primary focus of my attendance at this year's event is increased LGBT participation in and support of wiki projects. That will at most include information on three wikis (Wikipedia and related, WikiQueer and OutHistory) and LGBT organization's wikis (I believe there are 2-3 currently). Each of these projects run on MediaWiki software and each integrate with - and promote support of - WMF projects in various ways. Right now my primary interest in getting people to understand how projects like Wikipedia benefit the LGBT organizations, movement, communities and funders. My feeling is this will inevitably be mutually beneficial for all wiki projects with an interest in LGBT outreach or content. However, I wanted to be transparent it's not possible for me be there exclusively in a WMF capacity.

Planned Activities

• LGBT wiki meet-up / reception
  • Opportunity for outreach to broader LGBT community about importance of wiki projects - highlighting Wikipedia as a primary example
  • Open to most WMF/WP inclusive/representative name
  • Joint ask for donations for wiki projects present (most likely just WMF, WikiQueer and OutHistory) - at least 50% going to WMF
• Vendor booth staffed primarily by WMF and enWP volunteers
  • Majority of table space dedicated to WMF project material
  • Other space made available for third-party LGBT related wikis
• Representation at workshops, meet-ups and discussions related to use of technology - especially digital information and collaborative projects
• Report back to WMF and specifically DC/NYC chapters on other possible LGBT outreach efforts in the near future
• Outreach on possible WMF joint wiki fundraisers in NYC and DC per discussions already taking place with those chapters

Planned Collaborations

I have already spoken with representatives from the Wikimedia DC Chapter and they've agreed to help recruit volunteers. I will also do more continued outreach to English Wikipedia's WikiProject LGBT Studies for possible volunteers. Beyond that I will recruit volunteers from WikiQueer and other LGBT wiki projects interested in Wikimedia collaboration and support.

There will also be collaborations with third-party MediaWiki based wikis.