Grants:TPS/Rodelar/Wikimania/2016/Report
Welcome back from Wikimania 2016!
Participant[edit]
Outcome[edit]
This was the first time I attended Wikimania. I applied for a scholarship several years but this time I was especially excited to attend the event. The idea of holding a big event like Wikimania in a small town like Esino Lario was fascinating and, at the same time, a great challenge organizationally. It seemed important, thanks to Esino Lario, showed that not only large cities, large populations, are the focus of knowledge, but rural areas also has a very important role in the preservation and dissemination of culture.
I was in Esino Lario between June 21 and 27, so I attended the pre-conference (June 22-23) and the main conference (June 24-26). I wrote a post on the Wikimedia Spain blog at the beginning of the event. The first two days I attended the Learning Day, where we learned about projects, use of tools, how to get an effective storytelling or design a program, to give some samples. The conference days I alternated training sessions (like photographic skills, Wikidata and GLAM, where I knew the parliament diagram tool, or SVG illustration), critical issues sessions (like Outreach and Projects), and meetups (like Iberocoop, GLAM coordinators and Wiktionary).
Thanks to thoses meetups, for example, we will probably start a new project focused on Wiktionary; after the presentation How the French Wiktionary became a grown-up project, we are interested in apply the same format to the Spanish Wiktionary. Also, the GLAM coordinators meetup was very useful for know the state of the GLAM movement, the posibilities of improvement, how to communicate better what we do...; Barbara Fischer, from WMDE, wrote a post about the meetup, for the WMF blog, and I translated it into Spanish.
Connections[edit]
- Education
I met Vahid Masrour, from the Wikipedia Education Program; me and other WMES members shared a good talk with him about Education, what Education projects is WMES involved, etc.
- GLAM
I met, among others, Alex Stinson (WMF) and Barbara Fischer (WMDE) at the GLAM coordinators meetup and after the event we have continued the contact; I translated into Spanish the post draft previously mentioned, by Barbara, exposing her conclusions about the meetup and GLAM. I also had a check in session, via Internet, with Alex, talking about GLAM in Spain and posibles initiatives in the future like the campaign 1lib1ref and organize a GLAM camp in Spain. Thanks to him, I also knew the Citation Hunt tool and I asked for the translation into Spanish.
- Community
I shared good times with people from different chapters and user groups. In the context of Iberocoop I met for the first time, for example, Dennis Tobar from Chile (also member of WMES), María Cristina Sánchez, from Ecuador, Oscar Costero from Venezuela or Esteban Zárate (also member of WMES), Andrea Kleiman (also member of WMES), Anna Torres, Luisina Ferrante and Giselle Bordoy, from Argentina. To give some examples, I talked with Giselle about a new plan of communication within Iberocoop and with Dennis about organizing Iberoconf.
I talked with Xabier Cañas, from Basque Wikimedians User Group; we shared experiences, ideas for new initiatives (for example the suggestion of Intercultur, an activity involving all languages spoken in Spain) and the importance and positive to work together and participate in common projects. For example, one idea is to hold an annual meeting of all Wikimedia local communities in Spain, involving all languages, to share experiences and learn from each other. I talked the representatives of Amical Wikimedia (Coentor, Lluís, Marc, Esther), sharing experiences, and Carlos Hernández-Lahoz, from Princess of Asturias Foundation, with whom I talked about new possibilities of cooperation and offered us assistance to drive the growth of WMES.
I met for the first time Ester Bonet, from Amical and Wikimujeres, and we talked about activities involving greater participation of women and a greater presence of women in Wikipedia content, such as the edit-a-thon that may take place in October, on the occasion of the day of the writers, in the National Library of Spain. I also highlight the moments shared with members of Wikimedia Italy, as Luca Martinelli, Ginevra Sanvitale or Cristian Consonni. I met Ilario Valdelli, from Switzerland, James Heilman, from Canadá, Cornelius Kibelka, from Germany, who offered us to help with the organization of the next Iberoconf, and Celio Costa, from Brasil, with whom I talked about experiences and possibilities for cooperation.
- Projects
Two interesting projects may go ahead after Wikimania; the first of them started in Wikimedia Conference 2016, in Berlin, where one of the representatives of WMES talked with WMIT about start a project together, focused on Roman Thermae. So we suggested it in Wikimania to many chapters and user groups of the Mediterranean area (Europe, Africa and Middle East), from UK to Israel, from Romania to Tunisia, and receiving the idea was very good in general.
The other project is the previously mentioned about Wiktionary. I liked the French proposal, so I talked with Noe Gasparini, Lucas Lévêque and Benoît Prieur, responsible of the project on French Wiktionary. We talked about the posibilities of start it on Spanish Wiktionary, the tools we could use... I also talked to other members of Iberocoop, like Oscar Costero, about the posibility of start it in the context of Iberocoop, as a common project, and we are discussing it.
I also met Armine Aghayan, from Wikimedia Armenia, and we talked about the first collaboration together WMAM-WMES, a writing contest about castles: the idea is quite advanced already and it is scheduled to take place in September 2016. We hope to be the first of many activities together.
Anything else[edit]
I twitted with the WMES account some highlights of the event and I took some pictures I uploaded to Commons, for example:
