CEE/Newsletter/October 2017/Contents/Albania report

Albania report: Impressions from the Wikimedia CEE Meeting in Warsaw

By Margott

Last week of September in Warsaw was organized the 6th meeting of Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe. This year, representatives from Albania were three: Jona, the winner of CEE Spring, Redoni as part of the Open Labs community, and me. In general, this year there were many participants from countries not part of South East Europe. The thing I think took a bi the attention to the small communities. I also noticed that this event was more conference oriented, rather than a big Wikimedia meeting. In Kiev, which was the first time when I got involved with CEE meeting, it was more oriented towards open discussions and the community. This year the conference was a bit more technical, the presentations were mostly technical. According to my perception, a very good job has been done with the coordination part of the Wikimedia Media Strategy Plan, and it was one of the most informative sessions in this event.

I think that this kind of meeting should have more orientation for what is expected by international representatives. For example, a good orientation from the organizers of each year was that from 2 representatives one should definitely have been someone who knew the community and a contributor for some time, because the nature of the event was such, seeking feedback on it what is happening in the local community. Also, maybe it would be better if communities would collaborate more to present their work. Common events with same results and challenges can do a mutual presentation.

I liked this year's way of choosing the representatives, the fact that there was no scholarship commission and every community elected the representative they would send was far more practical and easy. I think that this should be practiced at much more events. The overall, it was very good organized, I learned a lot, and the quality of presentations was good.

That being said, I wanted to underline some of the presentations I attended and which I think are very good to share with others.

• "Facilitation Skills for Humans" by Asaf Bartov
• "The Wikimedia Movement's strategic direction and what it means for CEE" by Nicole and Kaarel
• "Public domain, Freedom of Panorama and Upload Filtering - What is happening in EU copyright?" by Dimi
• "A Gentle Introduction to Wikidata for Complete Beginners" by Asaf Bartov
• "All your monuments list are belong to Wikidata" by Paweł Marynowski