Grants:TPS/Saileshpat/Wikimania/2017/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2017!

Participant

Saileshpat

Odia Wikipedia

Outcome

This Wikimania was my second Wikimania and

Shared Experience:

I shared my experience with my colleagues from CIS-A2K, shared some new ideas and projects from other Wikimedians and interactions with other Wikimedians.
I have announced about hosting the WikiConference India in Odisha in the village pump, which was part of Wikimedia SAARC meetup.
I have shared my experience with my local community members in the Wikidata workshop, also shared some of the stickers and pins from Wikimania.

Learning Pattern:

After attending this year's Learning days, I learned about some tools to handle edit-a-thons, which I have shared with other community members as a learning pattern; How to prepare and plan for Online Edit-a-thons.

New Creation:

I have structured the distribution section of the Wikimedia Education Newsletter with Nichole, which will help Newsletter volunteers to distribute the newsletter easily.
I helped Alex to connect with Wikimedians in India, working on digitisation project to introduce them the new Case study tool.
Discussed Wiki Loves Food 2.0 with Ivan.

In brief

Wikimedia Learning Days

I attended the Wikimedia Learning Days as the Pre-Conference Sessions. As usual, learning days is the best part of Wikimania, where you get a chance to learn more about projects, tools, improve your existing works and interact with other Wikimedians. I also learned:

new techniques to evaluate the projects.
Design Wikimedia events.
Engage new editors.
Stories and learnings from the lightning talks.
Shared my projects with other Wikimedians.

I also presented a lightning talk on the second day of the Learning Days; spoke about WikiTungi and how WikiTungi has successfully localised some of the Global projects, and what is its impact on the entire Odia Community.

Sessions I attended

I attended around Seven sessions during the conference but sharing some of them, which has created an impact on me.

Siko and Anasuya's session in Centering Knowledge from the Margins, How Whose Knowledge is working across many projects, and why it is important to have a representation of marginalized communities in this Open Knowledge movement.
Asaf's session on Wikidata, and I learned basic Wikidata editing and uses of Wikidata.
Patterns and Anti-patterns in volunteer leaders, an open discussion, where everyone was open to talk about the problems they faced and what are the possible way to overcome those problems. Some case studies from the panel members were also discussed.

Wikimedia SAARC Meetup

This was my first SAARC meetup, we discussed a lot of the collaborations between the SAARC communities, as we all share the same problems, it is good to take SAARC communities more inclusively and make more programs to increase their participation. I introduced the SAARC community the Bhubaneswar Heritage Edit-a-thon and encouraged them to participate in the Edit-a-thon.

Wikimedia Asia Meetup

This was my second Asian meetup, though from the map it looked like very fewer Asian Wikipedians have participated in this Wikimania, by attending the meetup my views were changed. The members there discussed more inclusive events for Asia; Asian Conference, Wikipedia Asian Month, and also about the inactivity in the Asian mailing list.

Wikimedia Strategy Meeting

After co-organising a local strategy meeting this was my second strategy meeting. But here the situation was very different, the topics discussed during the meeting were more global and real blocks for the movement. I was in a group with Jack, Asen, and Moritz, and where I was the realist in the group. The group discussed; how technology could collaborate with the Wikipedians to enrich Wikipedia rather than to take over the volunteer's role.

Community Village

I also spent few hours in the community village while managing the Odia Wikimedia Usergroup's kiosk with Subhashish and Daniel.

Connections

This time a met a lot of people in Wikimania, discussed a lot of projects, exchanged ideas and also collaborations. ( A long list and I have made it shorter)

I met Nichole Saad for the first time, being a volunteer to Newsletter team, I used to help Nichole in delivering the Newsletters.
Alex, Jake and Ben from the Wikipedia library, I discussed how we can involve library science students in the #1lib1ref projects.
I met John from the Wikimedia Sweden, learning a lot from their Global Edit-a-thon and also asked some help from him for Bhubaneswar Heritage Edit-a-thon.
I met Winifred and Katy almost after two years.
I met Maria, attended her sessions on Program and Evaluation.
Liang from Wikimedia Taiwan.
Deryk Chan from HongKong.
Nahid from Wikimedia Bangladesh.
Farhad from Russia, Farhad was following my activities in the Facebook group and he was impressed by some of the work by Odia Community members.
Sherry and Kelly from AfroCrowd got to know about their project.
Mcknsie from the Art and Feminism, and I shared my bridging the gender gap initiatives with her.
I had a long conversation with Edward regarding WikiTungis and Surveys. How to make WikiTungi more inclusive and interactive for Wikimedians.
I met Butch for the first time, discussed some on-wiki and off-wiki topics with him.
I met Reema from Wikimedia Egypt.
Met Bence, Piere and some other friends during social night.
I also met Niharika and Shristhi from the Wikimedia Foundation.

Anything else

I lost my memory card during the conference and lost many pictures , Some of the pictures from learning days and Opening day are with me: