Grants:TPS/Sky Harbor/Wikimania/2018/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2018!

Participant

Josh Lim (Sky Harbor)

English, Tagalog and Spanish Wikipedias

Outcome

Option 1: Shared Experience: What is one way you shared something from your experience with your community (either locally or globally), after the event?

Add a link here to a blog post or newsletter you wrote about your participation afterwards, or to a meet-up you organized to share your experience with your local community.

I shared lessons from Wikimania with the current group of people that I'm working with on combatting disinformation and fake news in the Philippines (mostly Seav, Object404 and Alternativity, plus a few other people). We hold regular calls (every 2-4 weeks owing to the dispersed nature of the group), and I'm working on getting minutes of our meetings where Wikimania was discussed.

I also plan to share my Wikimania experiences at the next Los Angeles meetup, currently scheduled for September 30.

Option 3: New Creation: What was one useful outcome that was created at the event for the Wikimedia movement?

Add a link to something new that was created as a result of your participation in this event (for example, you might link to a new tool that you and your co-participants worked on at the Hackathon, or to pages created in a workshop you participated in).

One outcome of Wikimania which we hope to share with the movement at large is the upcoming Non-US Panel at WikiConference North America 2018, where Americans primarily active in the global Wikimedia movement (and thus primarily working outside the United States) will be presenting.

Connections

During Wikimania 2018, I had made several connections and restored a few ones, plus made many more. Due to the sheer number of people I've met at Wikimania, I won't list everyone here, but I will summarize them into broad groups:

Wikimedians in Asia

As the organizer of this year's Asian Wikimedia meetup, I met almost all of the Asian Wikimedians present at Wikimania this year. During this year's meeting, we've committed to continuing improving on future iterations of the Wikipedia Asian Month and the ESEAP Conference, as well as furthering cooperation on other projects throughout Asia.

Shangkuanlc introduced me and the Indonesian Wikipedians in attendance at Wikimania (Notanotheramy and Wirjadisastra) to a group of Taiwanese academics who were attending Wikimania and who happened to have an interest in supporting the projects in Austronesian languages, to which we hope to work on with together in the future.

Wikimedians in the United States

Having moved to Los Angeles, Fuzheado and Rosiestep were instrumental in providing me advice and support for better integrating with the Wikimedia community in Los Angeles and in the United States in general. Pharos helped set up a meeting with Siarus1074, who was the only other LA-based Wikipedian to attend Wikimania, SuperHamster have set up a panel for this year's WikiConference North America (as mentioned above, and aside from discussing matters relevant to the Wikipedia Asian Month), and I was able to meet with several other Wikimedians based in the United States.

Wikimedia Foundation staff

I've met a number of Wikimedia Foundation staff members and other figures in the movement's leadership, with some taking an interest in activities in the Philippines in light of the de-recognition of Wikimedia Philippines in 2017. One notable interaction I had was with Toby Negrin, where we discussed current activities in the Philippines revolving around how we're combatting disinformation and fake news.

Wikimedia Foundation staff and Wikimania organizers have also been very helpful in the five days my suitcase was stranded in Paris, including helping me purchase clothes for the time I didn't have my own. For that, I remain eternally grateful.

"Technical people" (developers, coders, etc.)

I joined the Hackathon portion of the pre-conference while at Wikimania, and while I interacted with several people, I particularly worked with Amire80 to help me finish translating the Universal Language Selector and other MediaWiki extensions into Tagalog.

Others

During the conference, I also had the chance to meet many other people who were non-Wikipedians, including educators and other people interested in open source. Some of these interactions happened outside of formal sessions, but I was also able to interact with people during my lightning talk.

Anything else

During Wikimania 2018, I gave a lightning talk on the currently-ongoing Wikipedian in Residence program at the Bantayog ng mga Bayani in the Philippines. This presentation, prepared in only fifteen minutes, is a condensed version of a presentation we will be presenting at the 2018 GLAMWiki Conference in Tel Aviv.