Grants:TPS/Mervat Salman/Wikimania/2017/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2017!

Participant

Mervat Salman

'Arabic Wikipedia, English Wikipedia, Commons, WikiData, Commons

Outcome

I am proud that I was selected to participate in the banner discussion of the Wikimedia 2030 Strategy. It was a great chance to share ideas with such a great group.

I am also proud that I was a member of the theme team of Wikimania 2018, I was happy to be on stage again in the closure ceremony with the South African team.

Connections

I met a lot of Wikimedians, some were old friends, I met many for the first time as I knew many of them through social media in groups related to wikipedia. Being one of three people who represented the Wikimedians of the Levant user group in the village, I talked to many people about different things, agreed with some people on some common work. Among the great people I consider myself a friend of, who I met for the first time in Wikimania, I can mention: Ivan Martinez, Vassia Atanassova, Patricio Lorente, La Kritzolina, Alaa, Armine, Anasuya, Santiago, and others.

Meetups

MENA-Latin America Meeting

Participants from Jordan, Chile, Turkey, Argentina, Iran, and Mexico. Objective was to establish a partnership between Middle-eastern and Latin American countries. Initial idea was initiated by representatives of Jordan and Chili in Wikimedia conference held in Berlin in 2017. Agreed on starting an editing contest MENA Latin Contest about the culture of the related countries in Arabic, Spanish, Portuguese, Turkish and Persian languages.

Levant Wikimedia & Washington DC meeting

That was a small meeting with Rosie, Karen, and Peter to discuss the intended partnership, which aims to get editors from WDC to edit in Arabic or edit articles related to the Arab culture.

Wikimania 2018 Theme Team Meetup.

Held over breakfast. Agreed on the key theme of the next wikimania, discussed different ideas and thoughts, agreed on how the team will be presented in the close ceremony.

100WikiDays Team Meetup

It was such a nice friendly gathering for the editors how participate in this challenge. Talked about my participation, cooperation, the great spirit of the team. The challenge continues, so as one of our friends (Armine from Arminia) decided to start her 5th round to write 100 articles about Canada, I decided to write whatever she writes about if not available in Arabic. This ended up to be a new round for me.

Grants Committee meetup

Met with Kacie and the team to discuss the process we went through in the past year, the work we did recently. And discussed new ideas and how we'll proceed next year.