Grants:TPS/Spiritia/Wikimania/2018/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2018!

Participant

• Spiritia
• Bulgarian Wikipedia (bg.wikipedia.org)

Attended sessions

18 July. Preconference - Learning Days

• Experienced Organizers - Opening Workshop
• GLAM Programs & Partnerships: Partnership with the Bulgarian Archives State Agency
• Demystifying Grants
• Lightning Talks (Round 1): Bulgarian Wikipedians Teaching Librarians in Media Literacy and Wikipedia
• Social Media One-Night Stand

19 July. Preconference - Learning Days

• Experienced Organizers - Morning Workshop
• Volunteer Recruitment and Engagement
• Program Planning & Making Metrics Count
• Experienced Organizers - Closing Workshop

20 July. Conference - Day 1

• Wikimedia Commons and GLAM needs around the world
• Gaps in Global GLAM capacity: A Discussion - invited panelist (in the place of Emna Mizouni)
• Structured Data on Wikimedia Commons and knowledge equity
• Copyright – what could possibly go wrong? Copyfights as a global challenge
• Using artificial intelligence to keep Wikipedia open
• Centering Knowledge from the Margins: A Whose Knowledge? discussion with communities from around the world
• CEE Meetup

21 July. Conference - Day 2

• Centering Knowledge from the Margins: A Whose Knowledge? discussion with communities from around the world
• What everyone can learn from Wiki Loves Monuments in the European Year of Cultural Heritage
• Wiki Loves Monuments, Hands-on
• Wikimedia vs. Disinformation
• How can "open" also be safe and welcoming? Perspectives from around the world

22 July. Conference - Day 3

• Which parts of an article are actually being read?
• Introducing Wikipedia to New Readers
• Beyond the meat grinder: building better new editor experiences through research and dialogue
• User Experience in Wikipedia: How Can We Improve It?
• How to kick-start communities or How to boldly go where no editor has gone before
• Lessons from creating a diversity toolkit
• Lightning talks

Outcome

Option 1: Shared Experience

The lightning talk

During the preconference and the conference, I had several participations, in the frames of the lightning talks, as a co-presenter and panelist. I was invited by Alex Stinson to present the GLAM experience in Bulgaria, both the collaboration with the Bulgarian State Archives, and the recent trainings of librarians in Wikipedia, and in the broader topic of Media literacy.

Sharing our local experience in the frames of the discussion "Gaps in Global GLAM capacity", moderated by Alex Stinson, seems to have been quite relevant to many people in the audience who were from the Global South, since despite a EU member, we face a lot of challenges that are familiar to them, as well. In Bulgarian archives digitization started much later than in many other Global North countries, and the bureaucratic, logistic, copyright and human resource issues we suffer are often similar to theirs, hence the solutions we have invented to work well for us could resonate with them, and hopefully be useful. During the discussion, an idea which I proposed to the rest three fellow panelists, about how to make the GLAM authorities they work with be more accountable about the promises for collaboration they give, was cheerfully accepted.

On 9 August in Sofia, Spasimir, Vodnokon4e and I organized a face-to-face meeting with real time Hangouts connection (announced on the Village Pump), at which we wanted to share more about Wikimania, and decide about future steps for the development of our community. Beside us, two more people attended: Iliev and ISla.

Connections

I had some useful discussions with Asaf Bartov, Nat Tymkiv, Mykola Kozlenko, Alex Stinson, Christel Steigenberger, Andrei Cipu, Armine Aghayan, Susanna Mkchtryan, Bodhisattwa Mandal, Fabian von Bubnoff, Adriano Iglesias, Niccolo Caranti, Siko Bourtese, Tsipi Erann, Richard Knippel, Rohini Lakshane, Woubzena Jifar, Jackie Koerner, Vahid Masrour, Winifred Oliff.

During Wikimania, I got an invitation to take part in the Programme Committee of the CEE Meeting 2018. Immediately after the Organizing Committee's announcement of the criteria related to conference participants and talk submissions, during the CEE Meeting on 20 July, I made the respective translations in Bulgarian, and made them public to my community on Meta (proof), BG WP village pump (proof) and the mailing list (proof).

I also had a discussion about implementing the OCR feature in the Bulgarian Wikisource. This is a work in progress, which we have to complete with the local user with administrator rights.

With the two other Bulgarian scholars, Spasimir Pilev and Asen Stefanov, we had very long discussions about the future of our user group, what actions need to be done in order to revive and develop it.