ESEAP Strategy Summit 2025/Report/Bahnfrend

About the participant

I have been attending ESEAP conferences and summits since the first conference was held in Denpasar, Bali, Indonesia, in 2018. Now that I am one of the relatively few Wikimedians to have been continuously involved in ESEAP events throughout that period, I am able, and also very pleased, to offer ESEAP the benefit of that continuous involvement.

In my reports on ESEAP Conference 2022, held in Sydney, Australia, in November 2022, and ESEAP Conference 2024, held in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, I provided some background information about myself.

Since writing the latter report, I have attended Wikimania in Katowice, Poland, in August 2024, Australian WikiCon in Adelaide in November 2024, and the Wikisource Conference in Bali, Indonesia, in February 2025. My attendance at the Australian WikiCon was sponsored by Wikimedia Australia, of which I am still a Board member. I self-funded my attendances at the other two conferences.

I have also continued to add content to Wikimedia projects, mainly English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons.

Things learned at the strategy summit

Friday

The strategy summit began with a presentation and discussion about governance of the forthcoming ESEAP Hub. Most of the first day of the strategy summit was devoted to that presentation and discussion.

Prior to the strategy summit, the ESEAP Preparatory Council had given an online presentation of two alternative governance proposals, and had invited online comments on them. The Preparatory Council had then prepared a third proposal, which was presented and discussed at the strategy summit.

I think the third proposal is better than the two earlier proposals. At the conclusion of the strategy summit discussion, I understood that that proposal would be implemented, and that the ESEAP Hub will start up very soon.

The strategy summit also divided into five groups to discuss the following:

Translation and interpretation
Newbie (affiliate) handbook
Support for emerging communities
Training
Advocacy/public policy

Saturday

The morning sessions on the Saturday were devoted to connecting and collaborating between affiliates and countries, and also with external organisations. Several speakers shared information about connections and collaborations in which they have been involved.

I am a big supporter of such activities, and also such presentations. One of the main reasons I became involved in Wikimedia in 2009 was that I believe there is much to be gained from sharing information across language and cultural borders. ESEAP is an excellent way to engage in such sharing.

The next session was an interesting and inspiring presentation by Barbara Klen about the CEE Hub, which has already been in operation for a couple of years. That Hub is a very useful precedent for the ESEAP Hub to follow, and Barbara indicated that it is happy to assist the ESEAP Hub by sharing information about how it operates.

Sunday

The main Sunday presentations were about resource distribution to affiliates, and next year's ESEAP Conference and its venue, Kaohsiung, Taiwan. The former is a delicate and important balancing act, and the latter demonstrates ESEAP's commitment to holding events in regional as well as capital cities. Kaohsiung looks like an excellent venue for a conference.

The afternoon guided tours of the National Museum taught me quite a lot about Filipino culture and natural history. Although I have now visited the Philippines on three separate occasions, I am still yet to venture beyond Metro Manila. For me, the guided tours were therefore a very useful and enjoyable introduction to the rest of the Philippines.

Things I contributed to or participated in or since the strategy summit

General

One thing I always do when travelling to and from, and attending, Wiki events is take encyclopedic photographs to upload to Commons. After attending Wikisource Conference 2025, I stayed in Indonesia for an extra week to take such photographs, mainly of aircraft and heritage buildings in Java. In connection with this strategy summit, I took photographs at Perth Airport as well as in Manila.

Since attending ESEAP Conference 2018, I have taken photographs for Commons in 10 different ESEAP countries/territories, most of which I either had not visited since the 1990s, or had never previously visited.

Friday

I was one of the few participants who had commented online on the Preparatory Council's first two proposals for governance of the ESEAP Hub. The Preparatory Council had done a good job in developing and presenting those two proposals.

However, based on my experience in the governance of volunteer organisations, and my prior involvement in ESEAP, I indicated online that I preferred a governance model closely based on the governance structure already in place for the CEE Hub.

The Preparatory Council's third proposal, prepared partly in response to my comments, was not quite the same as the CEE Hub governance structure, but as indicated above I consider it to be an improvement on the first two proposals.

I was actively involved in the discussion of the five topics listed above, and especially the first three.

In particular, I made the initial suggestions as to which languages other than English should be given priority for translation and interpretation. I based those suggestions on a number of criteria, including which language speakers were generally least proficient in English at ESEAP events, which languages are culturally most influential, and which are spoken by the largest number of people in the ESEAP region.

I also suggested that the 'Newbie handbook' be referred to instead as the 'Affiliate handbook' so as to emphasise that it is intended to benefit more than just newbies. I understand that that suggestion was taken up.

Saturday

Based on my experience photographing heritage buildings in Indonesia in February 2025, I came to the strategy summit with some specific ideas for a collaboration between the Wikimedia affiliates in Australia and Indonesia with a view to increasing Wikimedia content about those buildings.

Wikimedia Commons presently does not have much content about Indonesian buildings. I suspect that that is in large part because Indonesia has no freedom of panorama. However, the country has a huge number of heritage buildings, many of them designed by Dutch architects who died more than 70 years ago, and whose designs are therefore now out of copyright.

Until recently, few people in either Indonesia or the Netherlands took much interest in these buildings or their designers, but in the last couple of decades much work has been done in both countries to document their history, and also to restore, admire, and look after them, especially as they are now very appealing as tourist attractions. Thus, not only are many of the buildings now in excellent condition to photograph; they also frequently now have good reliable source information available about them.

Having photographed quite a few of these buildings in Surabaya and Semarang, and then created corresponding content about them in Commons, Wikipedia and Wikidata, I felt that a collaboration aimed at expanding and improving that content would be a worthy ESEAP collaborative project. I therefore discussed my ideas with a number of Indonesian participants in the strategy summit, including Jeromi Mikhael, who had given a presentation about cross-affiliate collaboration, and my roommate Biyanto R.

All of the Indonesians with whom I discussed my ideas were enthusiastic about using them as a basis for a collaboration, and we agreed to discuss the ideas further.

Sunday

I have now attended a number of ESEAP events without having been closely involved in their organisation. I therefore felt I should volunteer to take a formal role in the running of next year's conference in Kaosiung.

When the presentation about that conference was given, the presenter observed that the organising committee for that event will be communicating mainly in Mandarin for a (pleasant) change. As I can't speak Mandarin but would really like to help out, I volunteered to serve on one of the sub-committees.

Also, Butch Bustria (Exec8) had a brief discussion with me about where the next strategy summit might be held. I have since conveyed his views about a preferred venue country (and I agree with those views) to a representative of the affiliate based in that country.

Plans after the strategy summit (from what I learned or contributed in the strategy summit)

Since the strategy summit, I have uploaded to Commons all of the suitably encyclopedic photographs I took in connection with the event.

More importantly, I have been in further contact with Jeromi Mikhael about my proposal for collaboration in relation to heritage buildings in Indonesia. The next task in that regard is to write a detailed proposal for Wikimedia Indonesia to consider. I will also take that proposal to Wikimania Nairobi, where I hope to discuss the proposal with any representatives of Wikimedia Netherlands who might be present there. Wikimedia Indonesia and Wikimedia Netherlands already have a history of collaborative activities.

Another plan I have for Nairobi is to discuss with at least one affiliate in Africa the feasibility of a collaborative activity between that affiliate and Wikimedia Australia. Such an activity would be another example of the sort of collaboration extending beyond the bounds of ESEAP that has already been initiated by a number of other ESEAP region affiliates.

Comments/ suggestions about the strategy summit

Congratulations to all the Wikimedians who were involved in organising and running the strategy summit.

I was particularly grateful that the event was organised so well that someone was waiting to meet me at Manila Airport at 11 pm when my flight arrived some six hours late, due to a technical problem with the aircraft originally assigned to that flight. Thank you so much!

I thought that all the various service providers did an excellent job. The daily hotel breakfast buffet was a particular highlight - it was probably the best such buffet I have ever experienced at any Wikimedia event. The two external dinner venues were also excellent.

Last but not least, thank you to the scholarship committee for awarding me a scholarship to attend the strategy summit.