Wikimedia Summit 2019/Thematic, regional, language-specific meetups/Asia-Oceania Wikimedia meeting

Meetup picture with WMF ED Katherine Maher in WMDE Synkope Room

The 2019 Asia-Oceania Wikimedia meeting is one of the regular meetups that brings together Wikimedians from all over the globe that have specific interest in collaboration programmes and/or development of the movement in the Asia and Oceania region.

Date, Time, Venue

• Date: 29 March 2019 (Friday)
• Time: 19:00 - 21:00 (7:00 pm to 9:00 pm) CET
• Venue: Synkope Room, Wikimedia Deutschland Office, Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24, 10963 Berlin, Germany

Draft Agenda

• Recent outreach and online engagements of each participant
• Wikipedia Asia Month
  • Report on the outcome
  • Thoughts and suggestions to improve this programme
• Wikimania is coming to Asia on 2020
  • Role of the Asia & Oceania community in this event
  • Thoughts and suggestions for this event
• Short Term Plan for the community
• May split into sub-regional meetings (ESEAP, SAARC, etc. for their specific agenda)

Contact Person

• Butch Bustria (ESEAP & Wikimedia Asia-Oceania Forum)

Participants

1. Exec8
2. Mehman97 (UG-GE)
3. Sailesh Patnaik
4. --Info-farmer (talk)
5. Athikhun.suw (talk)
6. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)^talk
7. SNN1395 as SNN95 (lost authenticated tokens code after reformat my laptop)
8. U.B. Pavanaja
9. -Afifa Afrin (talk)
10. Mardetanha ^talk 16:50, 26 March 2019 (UTC)
11. 06Ivonne

Results

Place: Synkope on WMDE office

Date: 2019-03-29 (Friday)

Time Started: 19:40 CEST

Time Concluded: 20:15 CEST

Actual Participants

1. Afifa Afrin (Wikimedia Bangladesh)
2. Ajit Kumar Tiwari (Hindi Wikimedians User Group)
3. Athikhun Suwannakhan (Wikimedians of Thailand User Group)
4. Butch Bustria (ESEAP Regional Cooperation), Meeting Chairman
5. Erick Guan (Mainland China User Group)
6. Gurlal Maan (Wikisource Community User Group)
7. Irvin Sto. Tomas (PhilWiki Community)
8. Ivonne Kristiani (Wikimedia Indonesia)
9. Liang-chih ShangKuan (Wikimedia Taiwan)
10. Mohsen Salik (Iranian Wikimedians User Group)
11. Nitesh Gill (Punjabi Wikimedians User Group)
12. Pavan Santhosh Surampudi (Centre for Internet & Society - Access to Knowledge Program)
13. Pavanaja Bellippady (Karavali Wikimedians User Group)
14. Pru Mitchell (Wikimedia Australia)
15. Rehman Abubakr (Wikimedia Community User Group Sri Lanka)
16. Sailesh Patnaik (Odia Wikimedians User Group)
17. SNN95 (Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia)
18. Sethi (Technical Engagement, Wikimedia Foundation)
19. Pritiranjan Tripathy (Odia Wikimedians User Group)

On Wikipedia Asian Month

Sailesh narrated a successful Wikipedia Asian Month 2018, where more than 55 community participated. 6700 articles on 56 languages of Wikipedia. Many small Wikipedias also joined. WAM made assistance to small to emerging communities to join the movement. WAM asks participants to write articles about Asia from other countries. If the participants wrote 4 more articles, they can get a postcard from either India, Hong Kong or Japan. WAM was organized and recognized as a Wikimedia User Group. For 2019 edition, WAM needs to organize the event for 4 to 5 months. WAM needs more people to join the affiliate. It’s welcoming feedbacks and more participants applying for board members from various countries.

Q1: Which country can participate?

A1: Any participants can join. But the participants need to write articles for different Asian countries. Germany was the largest participating country.

Q2: Who can operate Fountain tool?

A2: Lee Loy is the one who maintain the fountain tool which is an editathon software for tracking progress.

150 years of Mahatma Gandhi

Pavan Santhosh suggested an worldwide translate-athon or editathon in the 3rd quarter of 2019, in celebration of the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. Participants of the meeting open the idea and might be included in the Wikipedia Asia Month planning.

Plans for the Asian community

Mohsen of Iran requested that ESEAP (East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific) needs to be more inclusive and requested to expand to other Asian countries.

Butch acknowledged that there are requests coming from non-ESEAP countries that is within geographical Asia (including Siberia, Russia). He told Mohsen that it will make coordination and governance hard as it focused on a broad audience. ESEAP conference was even never held for 2019 due to budget restrictions.

Mohsen stated that Kazakhstan and Central Asia doesn’t have representative and countries that are not in WikiArabia don’t have a regional block.

Butch responded that Asian geographic area is also large that non-Eseap countries can form its own regional cooperation bloc.

Liang echoed the statement and prefer ESEAP to start small and grow. In strategy track, there are already many regional zones focusing on Asia. If combining different regional zones, it will be hard. He further added that there was even are already regional groups focusing on specific (thematic) things. So it’s better not to include too many countries for building the community.

Sailesh in his part that combining India and countries west of it such as Pakistan pose cultural challenge and political challenge and different countries has different challenges.

Liang stressed that chapters Wikimedia Taiwan (2007) and Wikimedia Hong Kong (2013) experienced burn out after Wikimania. Wikimedia Taiwan recovered but Hong Kong was de-recognized. He wish all communities to have a steady growing slope. Wikimedia Foundation is already including different communities in a country to join as User Groups this time.

Sailesh hinted that India initiated expanding relationships with its neighbors in the South Asia Regional Cooperation (SAARC). There was even an early proposal for CASA (Central Asia South Asia) Conference.

Butch added that since Asia is already diverse and if it don’t improve the capacity on the current regional block, ESEAP can’t grow as a community. ESEAP will support initatives for creation of a new regional bloc that includes all Asian countries that is neither ESEAP nor WikiArabia.

Conclusion

Meeting suspended to allow picture taking with Katherine Maher, Executive of Wikimedia Foundation. After the traditional picture taking, Katherine left and non-ESEAP members were asked to leave the conference room for the ESEAP meeting. The ESEAP meeting finished at 21:15 CEST

Addendum - July 2, 2019:

Wikimania 2020

During the ESEAP meeting, Butch invited Andrew Lih of Wikimania Steering Committee for an important announcement. Biyanto, Chair of Wikimedia Indonesia joined the meeting. Butch also said that the ESEAP Strategy Proposition Paper had been tabled until the next meeting.

Andrew formally announced that Wikimania Steering Committee considers the Bali, Perth as locations for Wikimania 2020 and has also put forward the city of Bangkok. In that meeting, Bangkok was considered as a leading choice as host location for Wikimania 2020.

Butch had requested that the Thailand application to upgrade as a chapter has to be prioritized as the host affiliate may enter into signing contracts. Athikhun of Wikimedians of Thailand stressed that Thailand cant do it alone. Andrew had proposed that the hosting will be a collaboration between Wikimedians of Thailand, ESEAP and Wikimedia Foundation through their new staff, Joel Letang (Events Management) and Isabel Cueva (WMF's Wikimania coordinator). ESEAP members present agreed to the proposal. Butch also requested that ESEAP key members must meet right after the formal announcement.