Wikimedia Community User Group Uganda/Events & Projects/Wikimania 2021/BalukuBrian/Report

Event Name

Wikimania 2021

My Experiences

Wikimania 2021 was my first Wikimania to attend and I had a wonderful experience that I loved. I attend it after receiving a scholarship through the Wikipedia Community User group Uganda which enabled me to have internet connectivity.

Wikimania was a success. One of the reasons, I loved about it was, it had a flexible session that enabled me to do other activities and still be able to attend the event.

Using the Remo platform Using the platform was somehow more challenging since it was my first time using it. I found difficulty in finding tables, buildings, chatting with people.

Some of the sessions I attended included:

• Welcome session: - I got to know that Wikimedia had turned 21 years since 2001, I learned more about friendly policy.

• Drunken Noodles, which talked about Foods being used as medicine for example holy bezzo, Drunken Noodles

• A variety of approaches to teaching students in Wikimedia projects (Wikipedia, Wikiversity, Wikidata, Wikivoyage, Wiki camp and beyond), where I learned that some approaches that were being included boot camps and also that the Online Platforms were used to keep events going.

• The Afrocine project. I got to know about Edit-a-thons for writing Articles about African movies, Offline Nollywood: which involves creating content offline (how), and that over 10 countries impacted

• Building a successful Wikimedia Community of African students. I learned some tips such as: Ensuring that the interested Student leaders have Wikimedia Knowledge that is editing, facilitating, contributing; Targeting the new intakes, what the group is about, what is in to take; Do not recruit many people as management will become hard; The success of the Wikimedia projects depends on retaining editors within the Wikimedia community.

• Quiz. I learned more facts about Wikimedia through this quiz such as; the First three Wikimedia languages were: German, Catalan, French; December 2003 is when the templates came; over 2.4 m photo competition Wiki Loves Monuments; WikiVoyage has 24 languages and started in Wikimedia services 2012; First Wikimania was held in Youth Hostel In Frankfurt, Taipei Wikimania 2007 had a physically editable main schedule, The first wiki software in 1995 was developed by ward Cunningham.

• The Wikimedia Foundation in conversation with community members|The Wikimedia Foundation in conversation with community members. I got to know about the ways Wikimedia raises funds and these included; Donations from the readers (from about 8 million in 30 countries around the world); feeding back in the organizations (Wikimedia enterprise); Wikimedia enterprise: is used in knowledge, search engines, app, etc, gives Wikipedia a revenue stream; Grants Approach: it is better to Partner with the organizations that understand those locale areas.

• Creating a tool that lets people listen to Wikipedia. I got to know that a tool that reads wiki pages, selects and plays, skip words and sentences was being created; Extension for MediaWiki; TTS Service (speechoid) and that the tool is not available in all languages

• How to innovate in free knowledge, New pathways to promote new projects and attract innovators for free knowledge from across the world. I learned about UNLOCK that had tools such as Audiopedia that provides day-to-day articles; GovDirectory lists publically official governmental sites and that 10 projects so far were still being worked on; and that many projects came from people who were active in the previous opensource projects

• Editing with machine learning: a case study on link recommendations. The session was about how machine learning helps newcomers to be successful in accomplishing their first edits; Automatic Insertion of the links automatically using suggestions, and that machine learning has led to an increased number of edits.

• Attracting experts to contribute to Wikimedia movement. I got to know that few experts especially from the medical field are contributing to Wikimedia; experts have a different mindset; experts want credit for the things they have done

other sessions:

• Can we rid Wikipedia of its content gender gap, Views from Women in Red
• Copyright Trolling and the Commons
• banner campaigns can be requested to reach marginalized groups or contents
• Introducing Curated Commons: A social curation platform for freely licensed_images
• Wikidata: What happened, Where are we going
• Hack4OpenGLAM 2021-Co-creation event for learning, problem-solving and aligning action
• Inuka projects: designing products for users in growing Wikimedia communities
• GLAMWiki Tour (Western Australia)
• Reflecting on the Past, Present and the Future
• Integrating Wikidatainto the Wikimedia projects
• Future of Wikimania
• top 9 things to know about safety and inclusion at Wikimedia online events
• Partnerships for content, on a global level
• A future Wikimedia Language Diversity hub
• Section Translation-New Ways to Contribute on Mobile_Devices

Connections

I managed to connect more with Wikimedians within the Wikimedia Community User group in Uganda and these included Geoffrey Kateregga, Alice Kibombo, Sandra Acheng

Outcomes

• learned how to use the Remo platform
• learned more about the Wikimedia projects for software developers for example the tools for reading wiki pages, audiopedia and also how to contribute to them
• Felt more connected to Wikimedia and I want to contribute more
• More knowledge and facts about the Wikimedia movement
• More knowledge on how to use WikiData, Wikimedia Commons, Wiki Voyage