Wikimedia Blog/Drafts/Wikimania 2016 sights and sounds

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On the ground, Wikimania comes to life

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On the final day of Wikimania, the annual conference of the Wikimedia movement, Nigerian and Pakistani refugees lodged in Esino Lario, Italy, joined with Wikipedia editors from around the world for an edit-a-thon.

Wikimedians aimed to show them how to edit Wikipedia in their native tongue. Wikimedian Felix Nartey, from Ghana, told us that he hoped editing Wikipedia would give these refugees a positive way to pass the time during the long days of waiting for their asylum applications to be processed by the European Union. "Editing could allow them to contribute back to their native countries while waiting for their applications to go through," Nartey said. To the assembled refugees, he said "these skills are going to improve your lives. You're going to help others find stuff that that need about your countries on Wikipedia, and it's a great resource to inform the world what is in your country and what you're doing to affect the lives of others."

The edit-a-thon was just one of many events taking place during Wikimania, which was held this year in the small alpine village of Esino Lario. A fire barrel with Wikipedia logos cut out of the metal was set alight, sending sparks flying into the air. Liquid nitrogen cocktails were poured. Loud bands climbed atop a roof to belt out tunes to waiting crowds below. Chocolate samples and pizzas were distributed. People cheered when the first rainstorm passed through quickly, although others were not so lucky when they were caught outside during the second without their "emergency ponchos."

The residents of Esino Lario and nearby areas were also a bright spot in the conference. When one conference-goer was locked out one night, the mayor found them a place to stay. A policeman asked for assistance in installing MediaWiki at his work. A 25 year old with a middle-school education bought a book for the first time in their life, saying "now that I've met all these people, and all they do is read and write, I need to catch up." And an entire cohort of them showed up for Texas line dancing.

Jimmy Wales' opening speech at Wikimania 2016

At the conference itself, Katherine Maher was named as the Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director, dropping an interim label. She later gave us the gift of the turtle of inclusivity, whose meaning is still not fully known. Jimmy Wales got choked up when mentioning his recently murdered friend Jo Cox, but later named two people as his Wikipedians of the Year.

Meanwhile, smaller sessions were being held quite literally all over the town. In one hackathon, the participants' peak internet flow was 68 mb/s. The first 360 video on Commons was recorded and uploaded. One related a story from a wikidojo: "we were halfway through creating our article together, when the guy who was "piloting", i. e. actually typing/working, just mumbled " by the way, I've never edited Wikipedia before." The room fell silent for a second. Then all the Wikipedians in the room started cheering him and applauding."

More people learned how Wikidata, the collaboratively edited knowledge base, works and operates. Community members and Wikimedia Foundation staffers led discussions and workshops dedicated to taking on harassment on Wikimedia projects (and the related Inspire Campaign) and were extremely well-received, according to anecdotal evidence. Editor meetups of every kind were held all over the village. Many flooded into sessions about Wikimedia collaborations with GLAM (galleries, archives, libraries, and museums) institutions and laughed at the toilet paper references.

If you have more memories to share, add them in the comments below!