Grants:TPS/Pigsonthewing/Wikimania/2017/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2017!

Participant

Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing)

Most active on Wikidata; en.Wikipedia; Wikimedia Commons and Wikispecies

Outcome

Option 3: New Creation: As part of my ongoing "Voice Intro Project", recording the spoken voices of people with Wikipedia biographies, I made these recordings:

Other attendees have promised to make recordings and upload them directly.

While in Montreal I also recorded, and filmed, the clock in the old port's tower:

Connections

I facilitated a "round table" discussion on the often difficult relationship between the Wikispecies and Wikidata communities. As expected, none of the issues were solved, but I think we shared a good understanding of them, and some ideas on possible ways forward. I was subsequently introduced to several interested parties, of whom I was not previously aware.

What makes Wikimania worthwhile for me is these unplanned conversations - I must have solved about twenty issues, some large and some small, some mine, some other people's, just because someone introduced me to someone they knew, and I didn't, but who could help, or who they thought I could help - or by introducing myself to a speaker at the end of their session. I delivered impromptu Wikidata training to several people, showing them a solution to an issue they had, or a quicker way of working, using tools such as Zotero.

During the pre-event, part of the North America conference, I was instrumental in persuading the University's medical library to digitise a rare Japanese scroll, by explaining to the head of the library how we would make use of it in our various projects.

Anything else

I took about 3000 pictures during my stay in Montreal (including some leisure days after the event). These will be sifted and the best uploaded to Commons, later.