ESEAP Conference 2024/Report/Chipmunkdavis

I was very grateful to attend the ESEAP Conference 2024 in Kota Kinabalu from 10–12 May 2024, after receiving a scholarship to do so. I attended as a member of the ESEAP Regional Funds Committee (or Regional Grants Committee), arriving shortly after midnight on 10 May, and departing shortly after midnight on 14 May.

Learnings

My time during the conference hours was perhaps very roughly split in half between discussions directly related to the work of the Grants Committee, and half spent attending various sessions (including the tough choice of picking which room to attend). Throughout both of these streams, plus smaller interactions with others in attendance during all four days, I gained a better appreciation for the work being done by the various ESEAP individuals and communities, and in turn the wider regional and global communities.

Discussions carried out with other Grants Committee members and with past and current applicants provided helpful insight towards better understanding how they work, how the grants are used, and what their views on the grants process are. Grants travel through a few layers in the process, and the work is generally carried out remotely, so these rare in-person opportunities really help to gain greater insight into the user group activities going on in the region.

When free to attend sessions, I tried to pick those that sounded useful for me, or exposed me to novel projects or programs I was unfamiliar with. There is much to appreciate from the broad discussions about the plans for ESEAP and the high-level activities of different bodies or communities, but also from the individual stories that came out in the more personal presentations about smaller projects and events. I was struck (despite having already experienced this in previous Wikimedia events and work) by the diversity of activities, symbolised in a very clear way by the number of different language projects that were discussed.

Contributions

I provided some support to the work of fellow Grants Committee member Ghoze Septiandri in the presentation of the Regional Grants Committee summary session, although all credit for the preparation goes to Ghozi. While there were no questions at the end of that session, there were a few questions received in meetings and ad-hoc discussions with leaders and members of national affiliates, members of other user groups in the region, and a couple of unaffiliated individual editors over the course of the conference. I hope I was able to helpfully answer the questions I was asked!

But what about contributions to the projects? While not directly a Wikimedia Project, one of the sessions I attended was the Open Street Map session, my first contribution to that forum. Through this I edited on Open Street Map item on a local monument and created one new Open Street Map item on another nearby landmark. Fear not, I was able to link both to Wikimedia Commons and to Wikidata, for the second creating a new Wikidata item (and in the process making my 100th Wikidata edit, so the software informed me). From the photowalk and later trips I took a few photos, and so far I have found 3 to be both useful and of decent enough quality to upload. They are below, and have been added to en:North Borneo War Monument. The event will yield more direct contributions to come, I hope!

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Plans

In the immediate aftermath, the conference provided further background and understanding to evaluate proposals that were part of the mid-year funding cycle. Going forward, this experience should also allow me to continue engagement regarding grants with more knowledge than I had previously. Given the number of sessions I missed, I plan to work through them as their recordings become available. As mentioned above, I also gained a few ideas for contributions to the projects. Lastly, as less of a plan than an ambition, I hope to continue to deepen my engagement in off-wiki community activities. If you have any thoughts on this do please let me know!

Comments and suggestions

Overall I thought it was a well-organised and well-run conference, and commend the organising committee. Since we are required here to provide comments and suggestions, please consider these nitpicks. There was apparently some confusion about my arrival, with it being scheduled that I was arriving the day before I did. I assume this was somehow a mix-up by my flight taking off and landing on different dates, but it was odd because others on the same flight were scheduled for arrival on the correct date. Happily, the hotel pickup car was there for someone on the same flight and was able to take me. That driver informed me they had looked for me the day before, so I was mildly surprised I was not contacted then. And happily, my roommate kindly left lights on for me and did not seem to bear me any ill-will for the potential interruption to their sleep.

The conference planner could have used a more cohesive room layout map, although it was easy to figure out on the day. What was missing was a large print-out or digital display of the program in the common area between all the rooms. The schedule table on meta is not the most mobile friendly, and I had multiple people ask to see my printed copy of the program throughout the conference which felt an indicator that there was an unmet need there. Lastly, perhaps it could have been a bit clearer that there were events the day before the official start of the conference.

The value of conferences

This was the first large ESEAP event I attended in person, although I virtually followed some of ESEAP Conference 2022 in Sydney. The only former large events I have been able to attend were the Wikimedia Summit 2022, and Wikimania 2023 in Singapore. This contrasts to a much longer period of working on the projects online. While it is hard to quantify, I have found these large events to be highly beneficial, exposing me to ongoing ideas and projects and seeing the work others are doing. There are agglomeration benefits to unlock. As with meetups of various scaled, there is also of course the element of reducing the isolation on what can be a very unsocial hobby.

Despite initial hesitation borne from caution and a long history of participating without attending a these large-scale and focused offline events, participation has won me over on the potential benefits of these meetings, and therefore very supportive of the ongoing integration and hubbing process. While the ESEAP version is diverse and geographically disparate compared to some other regions, there is no reason such cooperation could not succeed as it has elsewhere. I'm glad others came to this conclusion before I did.