Grants:TPS/Discott/Wikimania/2015/Report

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Welcome back from Wikimania 2015!

Participant[edit]

User:Discott, president of Wikimedia South Africa.

Outcome[edit]

Option 3: New Creation: What was one useful outcome that was created at the event for the Wikimedia movement?
A report on outcomes from the confrence can be found at the South Africa project portal on Wikipedia at the link here. Below is a copy of that account.

==Wikimania 2015 update==

Wikimania 2015 group photograph
Summary of the current (July 2015) status of Afrikaans Wikipedia.

Hello everyone. I have just arrived back in South Africa and want to give you all an update on how this year's Wikimania (15-19 July). Firstly I want to congratulate Ivan and the rest of the team in Mexico City for organising such a great event. It was smaller than previous Wikimania's but had a heavier Latin influence and was more intimate than the one in London last year. For the first time we had some one from Afrikaans Wikipedia there (User:Oesjaar) which was great! You can read his report on Afrikaans Wikipedia here. I hope we can always have some one from Afrikaans Wikipedia at future events and hopefully also other South African language Wikipedias as well (once they have an active community on their Wikis).

I also hope we can have a more representative group from South Africa attending future Wikimania which is why I want to strongly encourage people to submit scholorship applications to attend Wikimania. Even if you were unsuccessful in the past you are still strongly encouraged to apply. If you want to increase your chances of getting a scholarship then I would suggest getting involved in local chapter activities by volunteering for events or take the initiative by organising Wikipedia related events (meetups, upload marathons, competitions, etc.). Contact the South African chapter of Wikimedia for more information.

Key highlights:

  1. State of the Wiki by Jimmy Wales: focused on media freedom and the right of Wikipedia editors to contribute without the threat of intimidation by the state. Looked at the situation of a Wikipedia editor in Venezuela.
  2. We had a strongly positive response to the infographic (which can be seen above) summarising the results of our survey. We also displayed a graphic summarising the status of Afrikaans Wikipedia.
  3. Libraries: looks like we will be getting more involved with promoting Wikipedia amoungst librarians in the future on behalf of the foundation in South Africa.
  4. Wikipedia in education: learnt about some great projects being done by other chapters encouraging gifted school children to edit Wikipedia.
  5. Videos on Wikipedia: learnt about new and easier ways to upload videos for use on Wikipedia (some thing called "Schnitzel" - I am still learning about it) and got to talk about the Wiki From Above competition we recently did to get aerial shots for use on Wikipedia.--Discott (talk) 04:51, 26 July 2015 (UTC)

Connections[edit]

A number of connecting and reconnection where made.

  1. Connected with the public policy group at Wikimedia. As a Wikipedian with a masters degree and strong interest in public policy I am very happy to see and join the public policy group within the community.
  2. Reconnected with the Israeli chapter on increased learnings related to outreach activities such as teaching school kids to edit Wikipedia.
  3. See key highlights in the update to the South African chapter for more connections.

Anything else[edit]

Please see the report above addressed to the South African editors community for more information.