Wikimania 2023/Scholarship/Anthere Report

Wikimania is the annual conference celebrating all the free knowledge projects hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation – Commons, MediaWiki, Meta-Wiki, Wikibooks, Wikidata, Wikinews, Wikipedia, Wikiquote, Wikisource, Wikispecies, Wikiversity, Wikivoyage, Wiktionary – with three to five days of conferences, discussions, meetups, training, and workshops. Hundreds of volunteers and Free Knowledge leaders from around the world gather to discuss issues, report on new projects and approaches, and exchange ideas.

Wikimania 2023 was held at Suntec Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre, Singapore, from 14th to 20th August 2023. For Wikimania 2023, I was fully covered by a scholarship from the Wikimedia Foundation and I am very grateful for the support. Though not mandatory, it is my pleasure to provide this report.

About sessions I organized, facilitated or participated into

Learn and discuss with member of the Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network - I organized and facilitated that session, meant to learn about and discover the activities of Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network. Additionally, a member of the network (James Gaunt) collated and published a diff for the user group. Mike Dickison's closing thoughts were powerful, pointing to the need to fixing and supporting metrics or WiR will "disappear ». This discussion session was very lively and very well attended.
Offline Education Discussion - I facilitated this session, with two other members of the user group, Ruby and René, the three of us involved in the Wikimedians for offline wikis user group. This discussion session was well attended by a mix of old hands and newcomers.
Joining forces: Partnering with intergovernmental organizations creates new opportunities for the Wikimedia movement - I facilitated this panel conversation. It was a slightly challenging thing to do given that I was alone on stage ... and sound management on the big stage was not optimal. All other panelists, from WIPO, Unesco, OECD, FAO, and Wikimedia Sweden attended online... Also, the initial organizer of the session, Eric Luth, had to cancel his participation to Wikimania entirely and was replaced online on the fly by one of his colleague, Josephine. But ultimately, I believe this was a useful session for the audience as well as for the panelists themselves :)
Poster: 5 editions of the education offline initiative WikiChallenge Ecoles d'Afrique - I presented the 5 posters submitted by the association Wiki in Africa during the poster session with Isla and Ceslause ! The poster session was less attended than in previous Wikimanias, but the visitors were obviously highly interested which made the session a very pleasant one !

WikiChallenge Poster
WikiAfrica Hour Poster
Inspiring Open Podcast poster
Wiki Loves Africa poster
Wiki Loves Women poster

Another key moment I participated to is the WikiWomen Summit, organized by Rosie and Masana, during which I introduced the WikiWomen Lunch and talked about its history. I was unfortunately not able to attend the lunch itself two days later... due to an overlapping Wikimania committee meeting.

Finally, as member of the Wikimania Steering Committee, I gave my attention to a couple of key moments (public and private), in spite of overlapping schedules. During Wikimania, the committee decided of the organizing team for 2025, and met with current and future organizing teams.

About sessions I participated into, and particular enjoyed

The Afrika Baraza meeting (in spite of door message trying to restrict attendance to African only... I entered the room nevertheless, but stayed silent ;) I was told afterwards it was not deliberate). I am so glad to see this family expanding !!!
The WikiFranca meeting, which was infortunately a bit too short to really get into the topics.

For the other sessions I joined, I put most of my attention

on AI, a hot topic I am very interested in, well served this year with several sessions
on Legal considerations, rather well covered as well, for example the session related to the Legal and Human Rights Trends, which I never miss Wikimanias after Wikimanias,
and to a lesser extent to the Wikimedia Strategy Implementation. I loved the role-playing session (where I had the role of WMF Grant Officer ! Please call me Veronica !) ... we should do more of that to better establish those roles and responsibilities... this is eye opening
I also particularly enjoyed the Let’s Connect about Networking for introverts, which I found particularly well done and handled (and would recommend doing again in Wikimedia Krakow)
At the deeply practical level, I also enjoyed Lodewijk session related to Wiki loves in Numbers. Rooted in figures, I appreciated the time he spent gathering those figures for several Wiki loves content and analyzed them. Very useful and appreciated to see old hands operate across projects

There were other interesting sessions as well, my favs usually being more discussions or interactive sessions, but often action kept me in the corridors... (Cosplayers mingling with wikipedians was a special treat too...)

Other notes

It was interesting to network with many people and to plan to collaborate with them on upcoming projects.

I thank in particular Isla Haddow-Flood, Iolanda Pensa, Nicolas Vigneron, Leila Zia, Alice Kibombo, Hugo Lopez, James Heilman, Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight, Yamen and Nassima, Oby Ezeilo, Merhdad Pourzaki, Peter Gallert, Martin Rulsch, Beat Estermann, Lodewijk Gelauff, Andrew Lih, Phoebe Ayers, Ad Huikeshoven, Waltercolor, Andrew Leung, Jan-Bart de Vreede, Susanna Anas, Patricio Lorente, Antoni Mtavangu, Nada Alfarra, Abigaïl Agbenomba, Ata Franck Akouete, Venus Lui, Carol Mwaura, Domenika Bolls, Remy Gerbet, Jagseer S Sidhu, Valerio Bozzolan for the productive discussion or support or collaboration, or just for being special people during the event. I could further list MANY others, but one has to not list hundreds of people...

Providing impromptu translation support during pre-conference day - Learning Clinics
Posing with Antoni in front of our W
At the Gardens of the bay with Sadik
Collaboration around food...
Hunting Wikipedia references in Chinatown with Andrew and Isla
With Oby, one of my fav persons at Wikimania and winner of the WikiFashion Show
With lovely Carol in her traditional outfit
Bijay Chaurasia made awesome portraits of many wikipedians

I was happy to provide a last comment in memory of those who left us recently (especially beloved Deror).

The designs this year were REALLY powerful. Thanks Wasi'ah Naila Rahmah and Adien Gunarta.

I felt the Singapore Botanical Gardens visit, the social times, and entertainment times were well chosen and wonderfully lead by very skilled people (thanks to them). It was a great mix. I really hope we can continue the wikifashion show and the karaoke in the future (I have one year to identify a song and rehearse... because the French team... well... you know... it is like a stain... we gotta fix this). I can not wait for the next wiki-wedding too.

I also enjoyed a private discussion with Maryana Iskander, a friendly mid-day chat with Lisa Seitz-Gruwell, and a more « socially » engaged discussion with Selena Deckelmann/Amanda Bittaker (we are perhaps following different tactics...). That balanced the fact I miss both the fireside conversation with WMF exec AND the session with WMF and Endowment board :(

Last I enjoyed getting together with the all the member of the Wikimedia Foundation board dinosaurs (we now have a Signal group...next step a user group ?)

Several wikimedians for a group photo
With Maryana Iskander, CEO of WMF, at the poster session, pointing at her podcast record
Sweet times at the closing party
Impromptu post conference dinner with Mehrdad and WMF communication team members
View to my room in the capsule hotel
A... cruise river... in a shopping mall ? Really ?
A... bike lane... in a shopping mall ? Really ??
Garden in a city... or city in the garden ???

I made the decision to stay 4 additional days in Singapore after Wikimania itself was over. It was an excellent choice. First to take a bit of vacation to deal with the high pressure of the Wikimania days, visit the city-country, but also connect and talk to other wikimedians who similarly stayed longer in the country (hosting last minute meetings...). Singapore is an country where I was very highly impressed by the architecture and the intricate relationship with tropical nature. Food was excellent and super diverse. Still need to figure out how to do black carrot cake myself, hmmmm. People were very friendly. Streets were safe. Museums were high quality and I benefitted from religious ceremonies in temples. Body and foot massages were... revigorating ! (I highly suggest we introduce foot or back massage to every Wikimania attendee in the future). I had the interesting experience of staying in a capsule hotel, which was quite likable (even after the excellent experience of staying at the Royal Park in a SINGLE room !). I also spent an evening with a Singaporean person, who provided me with a better understanding of the culture and historical background of the country.

Here is a link to some of the images shot during my Singapore stay.

I have to thank Wikimania 2023 Core Organizing Team, especially Butch Bustria and Gisca Syalindri for their support. The whole ESEAP team provided huge efforts. Congratulations on this great Wikimania edition. Thanks as well to the notetakers :) And special thanks to Merhdad for the joy he brought around :)

Last, I felt honored for receiving many gifts from attendees :) Thank you also for all those who took images of me during Wikimania 2023 :) I was glad to be with my wikimedia family and this will give me energy for the year to ome.