Grants:TPS/VIGNERON/Wikimania/2014/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2014!

Participant

VIGNERON

frwiki / Commons / frws

Outcome

I speak at two talks:

Lives and deaths of Wikimedia projects in a minority language, with Pymouss,
Cabal for dummies, with la NCO.

(details and slides can be found by following the links)

With Pymouss, we have been interviewed about the minority languages on Wikimedia projects by Gareth Mitchell and Bill Thompson for Click on BBC World Service radio (you can listen to it here : Breton and Wikipedia : A report on how Wikipedia aims to help preserve minority languages).

I attended three meetups : the French meetup, the Smaller Languages meetup and the Wiki Loves meetup (I’m so sad I’ve missed the Wikisource meetup but I was caught in garden room talking to other interesting people).

I help at the Wikimédia France stand in the community village too.

Connections

It was my first Wikimania so I didn’t know exactly what to expect. I previously meet a lot of wikimedians but mostly french speakers (PB) so it was my first international experience. I’ve heard of Wikimania and I saw a lot of video about it but actually being there and taking part of it is totally different. If I hadn’t the scholarship I would have probably came to Wikimania because Rennes (where I live) is not far from London but the scholarship make it 100 % sure.

The talks, the meetups and the social times in between allows me to talk to wonderful people, to share ideas and to think and talks about new and old projects. It seems to me that the most important is not what is done (or not) at the end of the day but to connect with other people. This connections are really important to ease projects afterward. I really enjoy the diversity of attendees and talking to folks I've never even heard about before. The most random encounters are the most interesting.

Wikimedians are just drops and events like Wikimania is what make us the ocean.

Anything else

I just would like to thank everybody the Wikimania team for all its work, the Wikimania Scholarship Committee for giving me a scholarship and everybody for being at Wikimania !