ESEAP Conference 2022/Report/Ichsan.mochtar

ESEAP Conference 2022 Report from Ichsan.mochtar

Things learned at the conference

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the presentation from Netha Hussain's session at WOW2022: Documenting the gender gap in Indian Wikipedia communities: Findings from a qualitative pilot study. Coincidentally, my colleague Rachmat and I also just conducted a survey in the Indonesian community, although our angle is more on the contributing reasons of our old (>4 yrs) contributors. Netha et al study results provide good input for us, because we have very few female contributors as well and some challenges are somewhat similar.
Unconference talk at WOW2022 with Jack Nunn from Science for All. I listened to his explanation about his project STARDIT. In the past, he was involved with local people in Kalimantan, Indonesia, and the project can potentially be used to empower and defend civil society, by using open access data-sharing system. I'm interested to learn more about STARDIT, and see whether the Indonesian community would be interested in this kind of project or not.
The presentation of tjaiwan giling & gesi giling's session: Development of our Paiwan Wikimedians user group in the future, which was accompanied by an interpreter, was something I saw for the first time, and it was encouraging. I imagine this will open up new opportunities, as many Indonesian community members who do not speak English well may be able to present their own works at ESEAP regional conference, with the same kind of assistance.
Kerry Raymond's session: Web2Cit - How to Train Your Dragon. I've never used this tool, and it looks interesting to try. I will learn more about it.
The situation of other ESEAP user groups, particularly in Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Vietnam, and New Zealand; which has very diverse challenges and provides a lot of inspirations for the development of various regions in Indonesia that do not yet have local communities.

Things the participant contributed or participated in or since the conference

Session A2 - Plenary 1: Key issues for ESEAP. I joined the table-based discussion and gave my opinions on Language, Human rights, policy issues, education, legal, technical, Hub development that were discussed.
Session B1 - Panel: Community Engagement. I participated by presenting a survey for active volunteers in the Wikipedia/Wikimedia communities in Indonesia, regarding why they continue to support their communities.

My slide presentation for Session B1: Community Engagement Panel

Plans after the conference (from what was learned or contributed in the conference)

As a member of the Board of Trustee, I brought the learnings to WMID strategic 5-year-plan meeting, on 10-11 December 2022. The input from Indonesian ESEAP participants in Sydney has a positive impact on the plan we are currently working on.
I will also share the learnings with the communities that I join (Jakarta & Minangkabau communities) in Indonesia.
Rachmat and I also plan to write an article about the survey results that we conducted, for the benefit of the wider community.

Comments/ suggestions about the conference

The event venue and environment were fantastic, I have nothing to complain about
I want to appreciate the programming of this conference, because the arranged sessions were varied but still provide me enough flexibility to mingle with my fellow participants. This made the learning atmosphere conducive and relaxed, which is very important for me when attending a conference
The lightning talks were interesting too, so if possible next time please increase the time from 5 to 10 minutes
Dinner cruise at King Street Wharf, Darling Harbour was just awesome!