Grants:TPS/Athikhun.suw/Wikimania/2018/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2018!

Participant

Athikhun.suw

en.wikipedia.org

Outcome

First of all, I would like to thank the Wikimedia foundation for giving me the opportunity to attend such a wonderful conference. It was my first Wikimania so I was naturally excited. I had many chances to meet many people who I only interacted with online. There are many things that I learned. I also got the opportunity to share my thoughts with other Wikimedians who share the same passion, which at the end of the day was rewarding for both parties. This report will rather focus on what I learned as Wikimedian and what are future steps I will take after coming back from the conference.

One of the outcomes created as a result of my participation is the creation of the ESEAP Steering Committee. This committee works to facilitate the hosting of the ESEAP Conference, an event which is held on an annual basis, to ensure smooth transitioning between two hosting countries. The next conference will be held in Perth, Australia in 2019. The committee will have discussion on every aspect of the future event based on comments received from this year participants. As per our preliminary discussion, we concurred that the conference will continue to be small, with number of participants ranging somewhere from 50 to 100. This number allows for maximum interactions between attendees and allows the conference to flow more productively. Participation in this year's ESEAP conference was limited to only those who received scholarships. Next year those that are self funded will also be allowed to join.

I was also inspired so much by GLAM projects. As a result, our community is now partnering up with a library. We will be hosting a Wikimedia workshop on a monthly/bimonthly basis. I'm also proposing to display winning photographs from WLE and WLM. This partnership will be a channel for our community to better communicate with the general public and can be utilized as newcomers recruitment program. Even though we are still at the early stage of partnership, I could see the potential of the partnership and I'm excited to see how things go.

Last but not least, I would like to thank Wikimedia South Africa for hosting such amazing conference, and I look forward to visiting South Africa again in the future.

Connections

Fruitful discussion with user:B20180 regarding the formation of Wikimedia Thailand Chapter, and thank him for his companionship throughout the conference.
Thank you user:Bidgee for interesting talks both Wikimedia-related and not.
Many thanks to Liang (from WMTW) and Kang-Cheol from South Korea for inputs and ideas for the future of our ESEAP community

Anything else

Participated in Asian meetup
Participated in ESEAP meetup