Grants:Programs/Wikimedia Community Fund/Conference Fund/WCNA/WikiConference North America 2024/Final Report

Conference Fund Final Report

Report Status: Accepted

Due date: 09 May 2025

Funding program: Conference Fund

Report type: Final

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General information

Title of proposal: WCNA/WikiConference North America 2024
Username of applicant: econterms
Name of organization: N/A
Amount awarded: 130970
Amount spent: 129007.12 USD, 129007.12 USD

Part 1: Understanding your work

1. Did your event have any impact that you did not expect, positive or negative?

The annual WikiConference North America took place on October 3-6, 2024, at Indiana University Indianapolis campus. The event brought together over 260 in-person participants from across North America, including Wikimedia editors, open knowledge enthusiasts, and Wikimedia Foundation staff.

Over the three days of programming, we scheduled about 84 presentations across five conference rooms, all streamed via an interactive Zoom setup. Slides and/or videos from most presentations have been made freely available online. Presentations were translated into Spanish and French, either through AI or live translation.

Over 18 different cultural heritage institutions and organizations were interested in being a part of WCNA through swag sponsorship, free tours, attending the conference, and presenting. The Wikimedians of Indiana User Group (WIUG) were uncertain how potential cultural heritage partner s would respond to the conference coming to Indiana, and offered free attendance to them. The organizations reacted positively. WIUG used the opportunity to connect with institutions that we had not been able to access previously, including the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library, the Indianapolis Historical Society, Indiana Landmarks, and Lucas Oil. Another annual local conference was active at the same time, Hoosier Women At Work (HWW), and we specially coded the schedule to highlight presentations that would be of interest to attendees of HWW. Indiana State Library has been a long term supporter of Wikipedia and partner of the WIUG, and HWW attendees were encouraged to join WCNA.

We had a successful experiment with interpretation between languages. Increasing multilingual access to WCNA has been an important objective, and the technology for this has been improving. We were able to utilize either live or AI-generated translation for in sessions - this increased access, and we made sure that non-English presentations were highlighted in the auditorium, and we received positive feedback from the attendees about the ease of use of the translation app (Interprefy), as well as the accuracy of the translation. The Interprefy team was supportive and pleasant to work with, and their services and particularly customer service and support were excellent.

There was an issue of privacy, related to personal names being shared among the volunteers, and we were able to rectify the situation, and learned the importance of using usernames for identification as much as possible, and keeping personal names and information as protected information among the core-organizing team. We recognize the importance of anonymity, and learned that ensuring all organizers and contractors are aware of the need for anonymity and confidentiality for safety.

While it can sometimes feel daunting to have a conference in a smaller, less-ideally located city, the support of our partner organizations and the excitement and enthusiasm of the local organizers and community for WCNA left attendees with a positive impression of the city of Indianapolis, and we have continued to receive positive feedback and stories of experiences throughout the year.

An unexpected but delightful highlight was the mayor of Indianapolis officially proclaiming October 4, 2024 as "Wikipedia Day". The proclamation was elegantly presented in writing: https://wikiconference.org/wiki/File:Indianapolis,_October_5,_2024_-_05.jpg

2. What do you think will be the long term impact of this conference?

The WCNA conferences continue to be an important morale booster for the community, and always generate a lot of positive feedback. They are a vital part of community life, sustaining Wikimedia editing, collaborations, and other smaller events throughout the year in North America. They also strengthen and energize the WCNA User Group, which invests a lot of work and effort every year into organizing the conference.

The event fostered new connections among contributors from different regions across North America. The discussions and workshops enabled participants to develop new skills and strategies that they can implement in their local Wikimedia communities.

It had been six years since the conference was last held in the US Midwest: last time was in 2018 in Columbus, Ohio. Last year’s conference in Toronto was a real spark for the local WikiClub, which has since been revived and remains active. We hope that this year's conference will have a similar effect on Wikimedia-related activities in the US Midwest.

The conference also serves as a catalyst for user groups that span multiple geographies. For example, the WikiWomen Lunch and the Canadian Wikimedians Lunch are now annual traditions. It gives these communities a chance to meet in-person, fueling their actions for the rest of the year. We also see the lasting impact of informal meetings, such as conversations during coffee breaks, that often spark future collaborations as attendees reconnect later to work together on different projects.

Outside the conference itself, having the city “flooded” with wiki-enthusiasts sparks curiosity. Lots of people asked the participants what was happening, since most were wearing the conference nametags and lanyards. These very informal conversations were a great way to raise awareness about Wikipedia, who can edit it or even read it. One participant told us that they chatted with someone while waiting for their Uber, who thought they couldn’t access Wikipedia because they didn’t have a computer, just a phone. The wikipedian explained that Wikipedia was accessible on mobile and mobile editing was even possible!

One organizer reflected that this conference “showcased an active local Wikimedia community in a small city. In particular, I hope attendees got a good sense of what can be done when tapping into local allied communities and building social capital (such as all the partners in higher ed, GLAM, etc. that made it all possible). And I am proud of the fact that all of the community-building leading up to WCNA was self-sustaining, relying on partnerships, in-kind contributions, and non-WMF grants.”

3. Would you say that your work improved participants’ ability to apply new skills and knowledge?

Yes

3a. If yes, please describe how and why you think this was successful. Please describe why you think this is the case.

One of the key objectives of the WikiConference is to equip participants with practical skills and knowledge they can apply in their Wikimedia projects and local communities. This was achieved through a combination of interactive workshops and discussions led by experienced Wikimedians and panelists. We always aim to foster a collaborative learning environment where participants can exchange experiences and best practices. One training event was a session giving an overview of different sister projects (Wikisource, Wikivoyage, Wikispecies), followed by guided editing time for participants to transcribe Wikisource pages. Many participants stated that they had never contributed to Wikisource prior to this session. While the demonstration was done on English Wikisource, some new editors also contributed to other language versions like Spanish, Korean, and Japanese. This year, we took a big step forward in improving the multilingual aspect of the conference by introducing a new tool: Interprefy. This smartphone app provides AI-generated captions and oral interpretation to and from English, Spanish, and French. It allowed attendees to follow presentations in languages they did not necessarily know and to access knowledge that would have otherwise been blocked by language barriers. Overall costs for interpretation were much higher than planned, but the organizers and attendees were pleased with the outcome. We always aim for a good mix of lectures and hands-on workshops in our programming. Workshops are a great format for skill building. For example, during the session “Expanding book citations by using WorldCat and linking to archived online copies”, participants were able to get a live demo of the tools and received a clear roadmap for improving citations. They can now apply these skills well after the conference ends. Another workshop focused on the “On This Day” section of English Wikipedia, explaining the submission process and encouraging people to propose articles for inclusion. This year, we placed a strong focus on GLAM work, both during the Culture Crawl and in the regular conference programming. It was a great way for participants to expand their knowledge of GLAM initiatives such as WikiPortraits, and hopefully to get involved in them. We had a GLAM-focused keynote address and may make this a regular practice in the future. We were also lucky to have members of active GLAM user groups like the Digital Public Library of America Wikimedia Working Group (WWG) leading workshops for attendees to learn new skills through practical sessions. Focused on specific topics such as GLAM tools in Toolhub, and metrics & tracking tools across Wikimedia Platforms, these sessions were a great way for people to improve their practical skills that they can continue applying long after the conference. The conference allows experienced editors, technical contributors, and newcomers to interact in sessions and informal spaces. Several participants noted that connecting with peers during breaks, hallway conversations, small-circle discussions, and evening events helped them find collaborators and mentors for future projects. These are “peer spaces” as framed by Movement Strategy Initiative 14.

4. Please use this space to upload media and other files that help tell your story and impact. You can also provide links to them.

Field to type in URLs.

This wiki page has a more extensive description of the conference. There are notes in the Budget section that add to the numbers in the spreadsheet: https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2024/Final_report_on_the_conference

Presentations, videos, and photos from the conference are on Commons in this category: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiConference_North_America_2024

LinkedIn post for WMF staff: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/wikimediapolicy_what-is-it-like-to-spend-four-days-with-wikimedia-activity-7254750981039472644-iGoP

Blog/article about the conference: https://www.beutlerink.com/blog/wikiconference-2024

5. To what extent do you agree with the following statements regarding the work carried out with the support of this Fund? You can choose “not applicable” if your work does not relate to these goals.

Our efforts during the Fund period have helped to...
A. Bring in participants from underrepresented groups
B. Create a more inclusive and connected culture in our community	Agree
C. Develop content about underrepresented topics/groups
D. Develop content from underrepresented perspectives	Agree
E. Encourage the retention of editors	Agree
F. Encourage the retention of organizers	Agree

6. Please share resources that would be useful to share with other Wikimedia organizations so that they can learn from, adapt or build upon your work. For instance, guides, training material, presentations, work processes, or any other material the team has created to document and transfer knowledge about your work and can be useful for others. Please share any specific resources that you are creating, adapting/contextualizing in ways that are unique to your context (i.e. training material).

Upload Documents and Files

Here is an additional field to type in URLs.

Editing challenge activity. To encourage contributions related to both Indianapolis and the WCNA, a volunteer organized an Editing Challenge, with a list of tasks to do on Wikimedia that were related to the local area. Tasks aimed to improve Indiana-related content across different sister projects (Wikipedia, Commons, Wikidata, Wikisource, Wikivoyage, and Wikispecies). One such task was to improve Indiana-related content on two Wikipedia pages, and another was to add two new properties to a Wikidata item related to Indiana.

This challenge was a fun way to combine online engagement with local relevance. Thirteen attendees participated. One attendee even crocheted a small treasure chest during the conference to serve as the winner’s prize! This exciting initiative is easily replicable by other organizations. At Wikimania Nairobi in 2025, during the “Users with extended rights” meeting, an editor asked how to motivate existing Wikimedia editors to try out new projects to edit. We highlighted the Editing Challenge page which provides a template with a variety of tasks and challenges to fulfill. This enables other regional conferences to adapt this strategy.

Further description of the Editing Challenge is here: https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2024/Editing_Challenge

Brand identity. The conference has had a pretty consistent brand identity, with updated logos each year. A transparent logo can be put onto t-shirts and mugs through an online service, and our attendees can order such things (swag) online. We would recommend this approach to other conferences. Our logos are here: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiConference_North_America_2024_logos

Recognition of online functionaries. It’s essential to our wiki work that we have online specialists (functionaries and extended-rights users). These are volunteers, who need or deserve support, and recognition, and we must encourage new generations of editors to sign up for these roles. Conferences can help. In this conference, we had a session about the English Wikipedia Arbitration committee. https://wikiconference.org/wiki/Submissions:2024/English_Wikipedia_Arbitration_Committee:_What_is_happening,_where_it_is_going,_and_what_does_the_community_want_to_ask%3F An online role is a qualification that helps someone get a scholarship. There is more to do along this line. Conferences must support the online volunteers who make it possible to sustain readership and editorship.

7. Is there anything else you would like to share about how your efforts helped to bring in participants and/or build out content, particularly for underrepresented groups?

Scholarships were offered to participants who might not have been able to attend otherwise, ensuring more diverse representation. We aim to offer scholarships not only to long-time contributors but also to newcomers. It requires extra effort and organization from the committee to accomplish this, but we believe that it is important. Scholarship recipients always contribute a lot as presenters, volunteers, and experts.

To support language diversity, we experimented with captioning and oral interpretation by using the Interprefy service, offered by the company Interprenet. Their smartphone app enables attendees to see or hear AI-generated captions/interpretation. The most common use was for attendees to see captions on their own phone from the same room they were in, in their preferred language. It was quiet, quick, and fairly effective.

Overall, we were pleased with this service and got good feedback from the attendees. It does require that each room have an audio channel connected to the Interprenet servers, which then pipe back out audio and captions in other languages. This service was significantly more expensive than we had budgeted for, but we are committed to finding ways for interpretation to work for our diverse attendees.

In this year’s conference we significantly expanded our organized engagement with the Latino and Hispanic diaspora.

Growing out of Oscar Costero’s role as Wikimedian in Residence at Equis Research, the North American nature of the gathering was able to bring together Wikimedians of this heritage from throughout the United States and local cultural experts in the Latino history of Indiana, together in conversation with Wikimedians from Mexico and elsewhere. Oscar has subsequently put efforts toward a proposed WikiLatinos group, as well developing WikiProjects on both English and Spanish Wikipedias. For more see the organizing efforts at these links:

https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiLatinos https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Latino_and_Hispanic_heritage

Talking to Wikimedians at the conference, Pacita Rudder of Wikimedia NYC was struck by how many places lacked organized local affiliates with outreach capacity. As her chapter’s incoming Executive Director, she saw the potential of growing their Wikicurious program of outreach to new editors, and helping to seed stronger local communities in more cities and regions. With support from Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the program was then expanded in scope to less well-served parts of the United States, particularly in the South. Subsequent Wikicurious workshops and edit-a-thons have been planned and held in the past year in Texas, North Carolina, and Florida, the last a Latin Music edit-a-thon with WikiLatinos in Miami.

Organizer Jamie Flood created a new kind of event, the Indie Bookstore Crawl, which was a great occasion for celebrating underrepresented groups. It focused on pockets of subcultures that help shape communities. For example, participants went to Ujamaa Community Bookstore, a Black-owned community bookstore located in the Near Northwest neighborhood of Indianapolis. This place is more than “just” a bookstore. They aim to foster entrepreneurship opportunities in their community, by selling items made by Black business owners and artisans. Another bookstore that the group got to visit was Loudmouth Books, a Black, queer, woman-owned independent bookstore highlighting banned books and the work of marginalized authors. During the Thursday night reception at the Vonnegut Museum and Library, we were also able to organize a session on “Banned Books and Representation at the Crossroads”.

Part 2: Your main learning

8. Were there any major challenges or things you found difficult that you would like to share? What would you do differently next time?

Deciding who receives scholarships is challenging, and managing the travel and accommodation arrangements for scholarship recipients can also be complex. In this case, WMF handled a significant portion of the travel-related logistics, but there were still a number of issues. For example, the hotel in essence overcharged us, which led to a drawn-out negotiation. While the outcome was ultimately positive, it meant the payments for the conference were spread out and didn't finally conclude until five months after the event.

To reduce costs, scholarship recipients are asked to share double-occupancy rooms. We are still refining the roommate-matching process. We received a few comments and suggestions regarding this–whether the full names of people sharing a room should be shared, with the roommates or to whomever else; how the matching is done etc. Thanks to the feedback, we hope to improve the process in the upcoming year so everyone feels comfortable and safe.

Deciding on programming is a crucial but very delicate task. From the 2023 conference, we learned the importance of harmonizing the length of the presentations depending on their type (panel, workshop, etc.). This meant giving some presenters less time than requested. Most agreed to it, and this helped us fit in more high-quality presentations instead of declining them for lack of space in the program. The programming committee learns more each year about best practices, and it’s something we can keep improving in the future.

Since a different local group organizes the conference each year, we don’t always build effectively on previous editions. It would be good for us to keep templates, a list of best practices, evaluation spreadsheets etc. in one place, available to organizers year after year.

After worrying about whether we could accomplish our goals with volunteers alone, we hired a staffer for the conference to coordinate volunteers and to be at the registration table. This turned out to be important and a big success.

As in the past, the organizing team was not sharply bounded, and many, many people helped make things work.

9. Was there any non-financial support that the Wikimedia Foundation could have provided that would have better supported you in achieving your goals?

We were short of computers to handle registration. We cannot depend on volunteers being able to make one available. We asked the WMF staff who were meeting nearby if they could spare any, but they could not, or could not spare them to non-staff who were not certified to use them. It would help a bit if the WMF had spare computers for this temporary purpose. The WCNA user group does not want to buy them because its conference is only annual. However the costs are not great to buy or rent Chromebooks or suchlike.

It was very helpful to organizers that the WMF arranged flights for most scholarship recipients this year. There were some challenges responding quickly and flexibly, which are discussed elsewhere in this document.

10. What would you recommend on a local and/or regional level as the best next step to leverage your success and momentum?

A new user group, Wikimedians of Indiana, hosted this conference. It has a big success in its history already.
We are highly motivated to continue our annual conferences. The 2025 WikiConference North America will be in New York City, and planning has begun for the following one, the 2026 conference.

11. Please add any 3 operational recommendations for future events organizers.

Many suggestions were discussed in the final session of the conference. Any attendee could just speak out at the microphone. Much feedback was positive; we focus here on recommendations for change..

Prepare more when assigning roommates. It was suggested that we should check with both scholarship recipients when setting people up to be roommates, because we do not know what conflicts or past relations they may have had. We should not just assign them.
Assign and train volunteers for their roles earlier, e.g. to moderate a session, run a/v, or be a safe space monitor. Ideally they should feel ready, trained, and included in the process, but one commentator said there was a “scramble” to get people in the right place.
Find a way to coordinate or decentralize travel adjustments. We went through the WMF travel agency to book flights for the scholarship recipients. It was our first time doing this, so we could improve this in the future. It was nice because we didn’t have to book for the people or take care of the reimbursement. However, the communication with the agency when it came to atypical travel scenarios or delayed flights was less than ideal.
Build expertise on visa applications. Both the U.S. and Canada have substantial restrictions on attendees to conferences;. (Officially they are concerned that some applicants who attend a conference will not return to their home country although we are not aware that this has ever been a problem with WCNA attendees.) Also there were a few hiccups with visa processing, and extra expenses to get them. It is difficult to know what is the best scenario for visa applicants: wait till they have their visa to book the flight (which means higher fares), book a cancelable flight (higher fare but refunded if visa isn’t obtained), or having an early scholarship round for visa applicants. We did consult an attorney on this matter. In the future perhaps WCNA organizers can build up more of a base of information and support to give potential attendees from other countries; too much of the challenge is piled on the individual Wikimedian who wants to come.

Part 3: Metrics

12. Open Metrics reporting

In your application, you defined some open metrics and targets (goals). You will see a table like the one below with your metric in the title and the target you set in your proposal automatically filled in.

Open Metrics Summary
Open Metrics	Description	Target	Results	Comments	Methodology
Attendees	Last year we had over 240 attendees. This was at the outer edge of our capacity. We would like to reach that level again this year, where could handle even more. People enjoy this conference and return year after year. We will need to get our logistics in order to make sure it works for them and find local attendees.	240	260	Probably over 260.	We do not know exactly how many attended. Our registration platform, Pretix, shows 270 transactions including registrations without paying. In a few cases an attendees person didn't register until arriving at the conference, or withdrew, or never attended.
Safe event	There could be friendly/safe space problems. If so we would like to handle them well and report them properly, as we have done in the past. The number of cases handled poorly, or complaints to the WMF, would be a metric of whether we have met our goal.	0	0	We had some incidents, which we handled carefully, sometimes with input from WMF staff. Overall this went well. However we assigned volunteers and scholarship recipients to safe space roles very late in the process. There were enough of them, but most were not trained except for assigned reading and an assigned lanyard. We can improve here.	Records of emails and instant messages
Program coverage	The program will cover significant diversity, with more than two tracks of content, covering a wide range of topics, and sometimes more than two sessions, lightning talks, or birds-of-a-feather meeting at once. Last year we had over 60 conference presentations, and we can aim for that this year.	60	84	There were about 84 sessions shown on the online program: https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2024/Schedule	Counting on the online program. A few sessions were added or removed during the conference based on circumstances. Some presentations were in Spanish, and almost all were interpreted into Spanish and French for attendees who had smartphones. Most presentations were recorded and are easily available. Slides and some videos are on Commons: commons:Category:WikiConference_North_America_2024_presentations Most presentations are on youtube here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLdI-_pOf2Bz8buz7-3OsJy79gtoBzktTF
Local community partners	We would like to have culture crawl visits or events at at least 4 local GLAM institutions.	4	11	The local organizers found astonishingly good opportunities. At almost no cost, they arranged a dozen Culture Crawl destinations, some of which were with GLAM partners or notable institutions. The options were diverse and interesting, and are listed here: https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2024/Program/Crawl. At these events, attendees met one another in the unique local context of a memorable place, away from a conference center.	Count on the Culture Crawl program: https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2024/Program/Crawl
N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A

13. Were there any metrics in your proposal that you could not collect or that you had to change?

Yes

13a. If you have any difficulties collecting data to measure your results, please describe and add any recommendations on how to address them in the future. Also mention why you felt you had to change some metrics.

We did have a feedback session at the end of the conference; see 14a. We did not send a follow-up survey as planned. A pre-survey for WCNA 2025 was sent in August 2024 and the one for WCNA 2026 will be sent out in August 2025.

For the upcoming years, it would be good to prepare the survey before the conference and schedule it to be sent quickly after the conference. That way the participant feedback is “fresh” and can be collected without requiring new energy from the organizers, who may be busy or exhausted immediately after the conference.

14. Please indicate if you applied any of the following survey and registration tools. Please select all that apply.

5. I used other survey or registration tools, 2. Post-event participant survey

14a. Please share the result(s) with us, provide the link(s) or summarize the main result(s) and insight(s) from them.

We had a closing session with the full conference for an hour. Everyone had a chance to speak to everyone, through a microphone. We took notes on more than a dozen substantial comments, both positive and negative. We did not record these comments, so as to give freedom in making the contents, but can summarize a few:

The conference would be a good place to give more recognition, support, and training to administrators, functionaries of the wiki platforms.
The Editing Challenge would gather more participation if it were announced earlier, on-wiki, by messaging, and in opening announcements.
Post the schedule for each room outside its door to make it easier for attendees to check whether they are going in to the right place.

14b. If you used other forms, please share them with us, as these forms might be useful for others to use.

The Pretix platform records registration. We've been happy with it over the years.

Part 4: Financial reporting and compliance

15. & 16. Please state the total amount spent in your local currency.

129007.12 USD

17. Please state the total amount spent in USD.

129007.12 USD

18. Please report the funds received and spending in the currency of your fund.

Upload a financial report file.

Please provide a link to your financial reporting document.

https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2024/Final_report_on_the_conference -- this version has the same information and some additional notes. We will be updating it slightly, not to change the numbers but to add notes and context.

As required in the fund agreement, please report any deviations from your fund proposal here. Note that, among other things, any changes must be consistent with our WMF mission, must be for charitable purposes as defined in the grant agreement, and must otherwise comply with the grant agreement.

19. If you have not already done so in your budget report, please provide information on changes in the budget in relation to your original proposal.

The amounts changed a lot since the original budget of $130970. Columns in the table above show this. We can show the underlying 50 transactions

20. Do you have any unspent funds from the Fund?

Yes

20a. Please list the amount and currency you did not use and explain why.

There are several components. We spent $129,007.12, because of careful management and negotiation by the local organizers. The main hotel would have charged much more than it did but the local organizers held out for an accurate accounting in a drawn-out discussion.

(1) This means we have a literal underspent amount of $1962.88 IF one assumed that we were allowed to simply spend the contingency budget item.
(2) If we should return the contingency amount, most of this can be extracted from the fiscal sponsor fee (but we are assuming the WMF would not ask for this)
(3) We had not originally budgeted for any revenues, but in fact received $6650 in registration fees and $134 in merchandise sales. If the WMF wants us to substitute that revenue for the granted funds, we could.

20b. What are you planning to do with the underspent funds?

B. Propose to use them to partially or fully fund a new/future request with PO approval

20c. Please provide details of hope to spend these funds.

Our WCNA 2025 conference is coming up in New York City. Hotel costs there are extraordinarily high. Interest in scholarships has been high. There is tension about attending from foreign countries because of immigration tensions in US, so we want to get advice from an immigration attorney and offer some kind of visa support. We may conceivably need some help for an attendee to get into the US on the spot.

Therefore we request permission to use both the underspent amount ($1962.88) AND our revenues ($6650+$134) for the next conference for the conference in NYC. Wikimedia DC can transfer that to Wikimedia NY.

21. Are you in compliance with the terms outlined in the fund agreement?

Yes

22. Are you in compliance with all applicable laws and regulations as outlined in the grant agreement?

Yes

23. Are you in compliance with provisions of the United States Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), and with relevant tax laws and regulations restricting the use of the Funds as outlined in the grant agreement? In summary, this is to confirm that the funds were used in alignment with the WMF mission and for charitable/nonprofit/educational purposes.

Yes

24. If you have additional recommendations or reflections that don’t fit into the above sections, please write them here.

It would be helpful if the first question on these grant reports invited us to describe the event in a general way so that the later answers made sense and could refer back to it. A little background:

WikiConference North America (WCNA) is the annual conference for Wikimedians in North America, including Canada, the United States, Mexico and the Caribbean. WCNA 2024 was the 11th such conference. Attendees of WCNA include new and experienced Wikimedians editing all Wikimedia sister projects in several languages (especially English, Spanish and French) as well as GLAM and cultural institution professionals, educators, and technologists. The program for the conference was designed to share information, educate and inspire these varied attendees. For many participants, WCNA is the only large Wikimedia conference they attend.

One reason for our conference success is that the organizers have a shared long term vision for it. The organizing team for this annual conference has changed over time but has had a pretty consistent vision from year to year. The organizers are devoted Wikimedians who have attended this conference in previous years and had compatible visions and goals. WMF staff participated actively in the planning, which was a big plus. The many volunteers and other participants for this year's conference are listed here. (https://wikiconference.org/wiki/2024/More/Team) In previous years, the conference organizers wrote up goals for the event, and general shared these slightly updated objectives for the conference:

(a) to welcome attendees from the U.S. Midwest, who do not often have a nearby Wikimedia conference, and specifically to Indianapolis
(b) to try to more fully include Spanish and French speakers to a mainly English-speaking conference
(c) to sponsor attendees with scholarships and travel aid, and to find ways to make the overall experience affordable
(d) to offer interactive workshops and training for both new and experienced editors, not just one-to-many broadcasts of presentations
(e) to continue our the "Culture Crawl", a WikiConference North America tradition, held on the day before the conference sessions begin. This year was especially busy with many options of destinations and time slots, apparently more so than any of our previous conferences. We expect to continue this tradition in WCNA, and it is good to see other wiki conferences allocating time to see local sights.