Grants talk:Conference/WMID/ESEAP Conference 2018/Report

Hi Wirjadisastra and Biyanto Rebin. Apologies for the delay in reviewing your report! Thank you and the team for such a detailed and thoughtful report, as well as organizing a successful first ESEAP Conference! We have a few comments/questions below.

1. It is helpful for us to understand the full scope of the organizing team. It really takes a lot of people to put on a good conference!
2. It is great to see you reached your gender diversity goals. Subsequent conferences should aim even higher!
3. The increased connection and communications support through the ESEAP Hub, Facebook group and Whatsapp group is very encouraging. Have you seen a lot of activity on these channels? What are they mostly used for?
4. We appreciate the effort you put into reaching active Wikimedians in areas that don't have strong offline communities. Bringing these people together and introducing them to the broader community is a great outcome of the conference. Have they continued to engage with the community?
5. Do you have examples of concrete collaborations or projects that developed as a result of the conference?
6. Did participants face any language barriers in their ability to network, participate in sessions, etc.? If yes, how can this be addressed at future conferences?
7. Thank you for providing concrete examples of knowledge sharing. For example, your story about the Tetun Wikipedia Group is helpful for us to understand the impact of these types of events.
8. We really appreciate the detailed reflections on the challenges. There is a lot to learn from and share with other groups organizing big regional events!

Thank you again for all your efforts! Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 02:15, 22 November 2018 (UTC)

Dear Alex Wang (WMF), I'm so much sorry for this very late response.

• It is helpful for us to understand the full scope of the organizing team. It really takes a lot of people to put on a good conference!

Indeed. Thank you!

• It is great to see you reached your gender diversity goals. Subsequent conferences should aim even higher!

Hopefully, it will remain so or be better in the future.

• The increased connection and communications support through the ESEAP Hub, Facebook group and Whatsapp group is very encouraging. Have you seen a lot of activity on these channels? What are they mostly used for?

About communication supports, the committee made the ESEAP Hub on Meta as the base for every information around ESEAP shared through Facebook and Whatsapp. Every information initially shared on the platforms should at the end of the day be provided on the ESEAP Hub. So far, some Wikimedians have helped keeping the Hub updated.

The ESEAP Messenger on Facebook was created long before the first conference was held in Bali on May 5-6, 2018. Many discussions have happened on the chatroom including proposals for the ESEAP conference 2018 and 2019. The ESEAP WhatsApp Group was created on Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town to include everyone interested on the regional community. Nevertheless, we have a separate ESEAP WhatsApp Group for participants of the ESEAP Conference 2018 only, created a week before the conference was held, yet it is now barely active. Most of discussion are now channeled to the more general ESEAP WhatsApp Group.

These groups are in fact helpful for those in need of helps or answers around the movement. For example, someone asking about the rules of Wikipedia Asian Month 2018 got the answers quickly. I once needed a help about a meta page that I was working on and I told the WhatsApp group. I got help immediately by a meta administrator who is there in the group. Members of the groups also often shared their photos of activities there.

• We appreciate the effort you put into reaching active Wikimedians in areas that don't have strong offline communities. Bringing these people together and introducing them to the broader community is a great outcome of the conference. Have they continued to engage with the community?

I base this answer on the documentations that they shared on the Hub, WhatsApp and Messenger Groups. As far as I concerned, most of them still engage with their communities. The activities vary from meetups to edit-a-thons. There were also photo contests hold by Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippine, Australia, South Korea, and Indonesian communities. Especially the communities in Indonesia, where I belong to, reaching out more new contributors through WikiTraining (a program of training new contributors on how to contribute to Wikipedia) is one of the main activities supported by Wikimedia Indonesia this year.

• Do you have examples of concrete collaborations or projects that developed as a result of the conference?

Wikimedia Indonesia plans to collaborate with a university in Taiwan on GLAM. The plan was introduced by Wikimedia Taiwan and we are looking forward to collaborate with them.

A Malaysian Wikipedian in Sabah, East Malaysia will also collaborate with a Brunei Wikipedan to hold a small editathon, hoping that it will help building a Brunei Wikimedia community in there. Both Wikipedians are of ESEAP participants. Wikimedia Indonesia is helping them by designing a poster for their event.

• Did participants face any language barriers in their ability to network, participate in sessions, etc.? If yes, how can this be addressed at future conferences?

Some participants did have problems articulating their ideas because the conference was in English. Even though there was no rule stating that the conference will be conducted in English, the conference was conducted in English, considering there was no any universal language understood by all ESEAP participants, yet most participants understand English.

It is so much fine for us, the committee, to have participants speaking broken English, than not speaking at all. We addressed this issue during an ESEAP meetup in Wikimania Cape Town and proposed a solution. In the next ESEAP conferences, interpreters are better considered by the committee. The number of interpreters may vary depending on the languages spoken by all participants, but not necessarily all participants to have interpreters. The provision of interpreters depends on the volunteers willing to help with interpreting.

• Thank you for providing concrete examples of knowledge sharing. For example, your story about the Tetun Wikipedia Group is helpful for us to understand the impact of these types of events.

This is what a regional conference should be. Apart from Tetun Wikipedia Group, this ESEAP conference also got a representative from Brunei and Myanmar. We are so happy to have them in our conference.

• We really appreciate the detailed reflections on the challenges. There is a lot to learn from and share with other groups organizing big regional events!

Thank you so much for WMF support for this conference!

Wirjadisastra (talk) 04:54, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Hi Wirjadisastra. Thanks so much for all of the additional information. It's really helpful in understanding the impact of the conference and the continued engagement throughout the region. Cheers, Alex Wang (WMF) (talk) 05:54, 12 January 2019 (UTC)