Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia/Reports/ESEAP 2019

The ESEAP Strategy Summit 2019 was a regional conference of Wikimedia Foundation held in Bangkok, Thailand on 29–30 June 2019.

Representatives

The Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia was represented by:

Dody Ismoyo, President
SNN95, Vice President I
Jayraj15, Committee - Legal

ESEAP 2019 was the first time for all of these three representatives to participate, in which last year ESEAP 2018 was attended by other different two editors from the Malaysia user group. Our aim is to always equally share and distribute the experience and knowledge among all of our core active members.

Discussion results

Generally we all agreed that Wikimedia Foundation projects shall not be limited to only Wikipedia, but also with other projects, thus maintaining the Wikimedia name usage is important. It can be seen that Wikivoyage is the other Wikimedia project that was kept being talked again and again to maintain the equality between all Wikimedia projects.
Wikimedia conference should focus not only on Wikimedia online editors, but also Wikimedia editors who do more on the offline world (e.g. doing more outreach projects), because sometimes it is hard to have an editor to be excel in both online editing and offline outreach events.

Improvements

Already Good

Each participant got their own room, and upgrade from the previous twin-sharing room itinerary.

Need Improvement

The information that each participant needs to have his/her own credit card during hotel check-in for room deposit purpose needed to be further emphasize before the conference. SNN95 did not have his credit card upon check in and neither enough cash in hand, thus he required to be assisted by other participant.
Suggestion that organizer to cover the hotel deposit after confirming the participant present at the hotel.
Tickets for public transport were provided by organizer via the travel agent. Even though there claiming process done which is already good, but the process could be easier for organizer if they already provided all the necessary tickets to travel between station and hotel.

Recommendation for future participants

If a train is taken directly from airport to Pullman Hotel, the fare will be way cheaper than that of a taxi by few hundreds of Bahts. However, more walking is needed to be done by attendees when taking a train.
Visa is not required by Malaysian during trip to Thailand.
Hotel deposit is to be covered from the delegates own pockets. Always bring extra money for foreign trips, however the deposit is refundable on your last day of stay.