Jan Ainali

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Tag: Open by default

My Wikimania 2024

Posted on by Jan Ainali

The week before last I was in Katowice in Poland for the annual conference Wikimania. Overall, it was well-organized, but as in any big conference, there are always things to improve. Unfortunately, there always seem to be some things that have been done better in the past that are regressing (for example, not using multilingual menus). I wonder how we can not only capture the learnings from every year, but also successfully transfer them over to the next.

Overview

As usual, I used the learning pattern Documenting your event experience, continuously documenting what I was doing, watching and participating in, along with notes of thoughts that I got. In total, I partook in 24 sessions and as organizer/speaker of another 3 myself during the conference. I have later watched another 6 sessions and have 7 still on my backlog, so the conference will stay in my mind for quite some time. I will delve deeper into the different aspects of my Wikimania experience below.

Podcast

This year I tried to get people together, but it was difficult to get hold of people as they were so busy with all the sessions. I did record one session, but it has not been edited yet. Per Wikipediapodden tradition, we did record one episode leading up to Wikimania and one episode summarizing it. These two are, alas, only available in Swedish.

My sessions

Open as a Prerequisite for Solving the Climate Crisis

I participated in this panel as part of my work in the Open Climate Data project for Creative Commons that I do in Open By Default now. The session was overflowing with people, apparently a huge interest. Many of the questions were specifically about the intersection with Wikidata, and I think there are some things Wikimedia needs to do to really enable this. First, create a connection from the Wikidata Query Service to the Data namespace on Wikimedia Commons. Second, enabling Structured data in the Data namespace on Wikimedia Commons so that provenance and attribution can be solved.

My slides.

Add your country to the Wikidata Govdirectory

While I had a workshop session with this title last year, this year it was a poster session. I think at least a few people got inspired to take a closer look at their countries when back home, and I got some good sources immediately when standing there.

Full size version.

Climate policy in Wikidata

This poster really sparked many interesting conversations. It was inspiring that so many attendees were so knowledgeable about Wikidata and also found it important.

Full size version.

Wikimedians for Sustainable Development

While the user group Wikimedians for Sustainable Development didn’t have any particular sessions by themselves, many members were organizing sessions and even more people in the community had sessions related to the sustainable development goals. They were so many that I just to get an overview for myself, I created a subpage where I roughly categorized them by SDG goal and type of session.

What’s next?

As usual, a Wikimania leaves you with loads of inspiration and ideas. So what will I try to do next?

  • As mentioned before, follow the discussions about Data on Commons and provide feedback where I can. I already started with some input on Phabricator.
  • Help design a more welcoming Video landing page on Wikimedia Commons.
  • Investigate if there is a bug with Related Changes on Wikidata.
  • I emailed the organizer of next year’s Wikimania that I would like to volunteer on making it a good hybrid conference.
  • Start a discussion on Swedish Wikipedia to turn on some of the new event tools.
  • Continue watching the talks on my backlog.

Re-launching Open By Default

Posted on by Jan Ainali

In 2016, I started a sole proprietorship in Sweden that I called Open By Default. It was a lot of fun, but when I got full-time employment in the European Parliament and moved to Brussels, I closed it down.

But recently, on 15 May, I started it up again, now as an “eenmanszaak” in the Netherlands. So if you need any help with anything related to openness, you can hire me.

I Almedalen 2016

Posted on by Jan Ainali

Även i år ska jag till Almedalen, efter att ha gjort mitt första besök förra året. Då via Wikimedia Sverige i kombination med semester. Nu med Open by default där vi ska presentera Y2S-projektet och givetvis ska jag försöka göra mig lite synlig så att folk vet om att jag finns på marknaden. Men jag ska också fotografera lite för Wikipedia och har lånat en fin kamera från Wikimedia Sveriges teknikpool eftersom att jag fick pressackreditering.

Jag är i Visby från lördag 2 juli till måndag 11 juli så om du är på plats och vill mötas, hör av dig!

Startar Open by default

Posted on by Jan Ainali

Oj vad länge sedan jag uppdaterade bloggen. 2015 har varit ett hektiskt och roligt år på Wikimedia Sverige. Men efter nästan tre år där kändes det som att det var dags att gå vidare. Den här veckan har jag börjat med ett eget företag, Open by default, där jag som konsult vill hjälpa myndigheter, organisationer, företag och privatpersoner att bli mer öppna. Med öppen i detta sammanhang menas främst saker som går under en fri licens, till exempel öppna data, open access, bilder och texter som man vill ska spridas och så vidare. Det här är ju något som jag har hållt på med i Wikimedia Sverige och något som jag tror att jag är bra på och där det finns ett utrymme att agera parallellt med den ideella föreningen utan att vi behöver bedriva konkurrerande verksamhet.

openbydefault

Mitt första uppdrag blir i projektet Hållbar vandring med Globala Målen och öppna data från Ystad till Stockholm (eller med ett kortare namn #y2s) som är finansierat av Vinnova. Det kommer dock inte att ta upp hela min tid, så om du behöver någon som hjälper dig med rådgivning, tveka inte på att höra av dig så kan vi se om jag kan hjälpa till.