My Wikimania 2021 contributions

Last Friday to Tuesday Wikimania 2021 took place and after being totally cancelled last year it was now virtual. I was a bit worried that the experience would not be anything that a real one, but I was positively surprised. Sure, it’s not the same feeling that got me to return to every one since I first tried it, but among virtual four day conferences, it was pretty good.

Despite the heavily critiqued use of proprietary software, where Linux users got a big red warning that their system was unsupported when they joined the conference or “changed buildings” in it, the platforms still provided a surprisingly nice user experience. It would be great if the Wikimedia Foundation would invest in putting the available open source solutions together to mimic that. The pieces exist, Wikimedia Foundation presumably have the resources to do it, but is there a will?

Unlike the last Wikimania in Stockholm, I had no official role in the organization of the conference in general, but instead helped provide some content, which I’ll list below in chronological order.

Getting started on Govdirectory

In the Hackathon, Albin Larsson and I presented our Govdirectory project. There were more people attending than expected and many good questions, although most of them with a viewpoint of the data rather than the tool.

Govdirectory user research

We also did some user research, where we tried to find out how we best can support the Wikidata community who are interested in curating data in our topic. It was enlightening to get the views from more power users of Wikidata.

Community Village – Wikimedians for Sustainable Development

The user group Wikimedians for Sustainable Development had a table in the community village. There we showed some basic information about us and listed related sessions. In the platform it was also a point where we in the group regularly connected, and we also got a few curious visitors to chat with.

Wikimedians for Sustainable Development social meetup

For the first time, we in the user group came together in a pure social meeting. In all our previous meetings since we formed, we have had an agenda. It was nice to just have a chat.

Wikimedians for Sustainable Development User Group: Looking at Sustainability Through Wikimedia Lenses

This was a session with short glimpses of what the people in the user group do on the wikis. I presented the Climate Lexeme Week I organized in the spring.

Video of Wikimedians for Sustainable Development User Group: Looking at Sustainability Through Wikimedia Lenses

Shortcutting the Identify topics for impact recommendation by reusing free content

This was a lightning talk by me where I argue that we should use the Sustainable Development Goals as the marker for what topics have impact on the world instead of trying to come up with our own idea of it.

The talk on Wikimedia Commons has subtitles in English in Swedish.

Wikimedia and Sustainability – Selecting topics for impact

This was a workshop organized by Daniel Mietchen and me. Despite the platform making it hard to communicate with the audience, we managed to get quite good engagement and many good ideas. You may need to skip a lot in the video since we’re working in silence in some parts.

Video of Wikimedia and Sustainability – Selecting topics for impact

Documenting

I also continuously planned and documented my attendance in detail on my user page, and I encourage anyone to do the same for all their Wikimedia conferences.

Veckans tävling: Wikimania

Wikimania är bara en dryg vecka borta och därför kör jag det temat på denna veckas tävling. Skriv på vilket språk du vill, så länge artiklarna på något sätt hör ihop med Wikimania. urvalet bedöms generöst, platser som kringaktiviteter är på ingår likväl som talare och ämnen. Häng på!

Ps. Du har dessutom en knapp vecka på dig att dra ditt strå till stacken i Wikidata Menu Challenge.

Tre blogginlägg hos Wikimedia Sverige

De senaste veckorna har jag skrivit tre blogginlägg för Wikimedia Sverige. Två handlar om olika verktyg som kan göra det roligare för en läsare och en om gemenskapen. Inläggen är:

Gillar du kartor och video och vill se mer av det på Wikipedia ska du definitivt ta dig en titt på de inläggen. Går du och funderar på om du vill åka på Wikimania i Kapstaden i sommar, eller om du ska börja engagera dig i arrangerandet av evenemanget i Sverige 2019 ska du läsa det. Slukar du allt som har med Wikimedia att göra? Läs alla tre!

Wikimania i Italien

I år är Wikimania i Italien, närmare bestämt i den lilla byn Esino Lario. Jag har lyckats få stipendium för att delta och ser verkligen fram emot det. Detta blir mitt nionde Wikimania och det är alltid en av sommarens höjdpunkter. Man kan följa det på håll på ett par olika sätt.

Själv ska jag försöka sända live en del. Håll då utkik efter hashtagg #wikimania.