ESEAP Conference 2024/Report/Diahasy

The ESEAP Conference is a biannual event to bring together Wikimedian in the ESEAP (East and Southeast Asia and the Pacific) region. This year, Wikimedia Malaysia and Wikimedia ESEAP Regional Cooperation were the ones who hosted the ESEAP Conference. The ESEAP Conference 2024 was held on 10-12 May 2024 in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah. ESEAP Conference 2024 was the second conference (after Wikimania Singapore in 2023) that I attended with a full scholarship. I am very grateful to the organizers for allowing me to experience gathering and learning directly with Wikimedians from the ESEAP region. The experience of attending this conference was one of the best experiences of my life.

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  Indonesian Wikimedians on the second day of the conference
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  ESEAP group photo
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  Indonesian Wikimedians at the dinner table
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  Me and Yuriko from Japan
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  Me as one of the speakers for WikiTutur workshop at Mahua room
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  Bus 2 on the way to Mari-mari Cultural Village

I have two roles in this conference, as a presenter and as a participant. Both are fun. But, it seems like being part of the organizing team is no less exciting. I will try to register next time!

Things learned

From ESEAP Conference 2024, I learned that:

• all countries have their own challenges for developing communities or finding contributors to Wikimedia projects. We have to find out what is "simple" and interesting to become a starting point for newbie Wikimedian in contributing to Wiki projects
• being old is not a barrier to contributing to Wiki projects as long as we still have the spirit of "willing to continue learning" and want to "share the knowledge to the world"

Things contributed or participated in

As a speaker

I was a speaker at Harmonizing Voices with WikiTutur: Wiktionary and Lingua Libre Collaboration for Language Preservation together with Ardzun. This hour and a half workshop was attended by around 15 people and resulted in several new edits to Wiktionary. Originally, we wanted to try Lingua Libre too. However, that day, Lingua Libre was crashing so we couldn't try to record and upload words.

As a participant

I attended the sessions listed below:

Day 1

• Opening ceremony
• Can Oral Hokkien Language be Written? How Can Wikidata help?
• Wikidata Data Partnerships: Use Cases for the Region
• Harmonizing Voices with WikiTutur: Wiktionary and Lingua Libre Collaboration for Language Preservation (as a speaker)
• WikiNaskah: Digitization of Manuscripts as a Massive Effort to Provide Resources for the Development of the Sundanese Wikisource (Wikipabukon)
• Wikimedia Australia’s Partnership with Alice Springs Public Library: Adding an Image Collection to Wikimedia Commons
• Lisa's Wikipedia Bookclub and other initiatives from Aotearoa New Zealand
• Cultural trip to Mari-mari Cultural Village

Day 2

• Indonesian Vulgarities in Wiktionary
• Women@Work: More than Just a Wikimedia Contribution
• How to Encourage Women in Mainland China to Actively Participate in the Wikimedia Global Movement
• Preserving The Manuscripts Of The Malay World Using Wikisource
• WikiMelayu: Inheriting the Malay AudioVisual Heritage of North Sumatra
• UNESCO-WMID on the Training in Ethnic (Indigenous) Languages on Mis/Disinformation and Hate Speech in the Context of Election 2024
• Optimizing the Role of Social Media as a Learning and Collaboration Platform
• The Report of Questionnaire of Japanese Wikimedians 2023
• A 70-year-old Wikipedian Talks About the Charm of Libraries
• Experiences of Wikimedian of the Year 2023 winners
• Karaoke party

Day 3

• WikiRenjana: Perpetuating Sundanese Culinary on Wikibooks Indonesia to Maintain Cultural Heritage
• What is WANZ?
• Human Rights Day in the Philippines: A Community Outreach
• Facing the Heritage Language Crisis, We Provide Promotion and Teaching through Wikipedia
• Uniting networks for free knowledge
• ESEAP Hub
• Closing ceremony

Plans after the conference

I have several plans after the conference:

• Sharing my experience to fellow Jakarta Wikimedia Community members (in a community monthly meeting)
• Sharing my experience to reach wider audience via social media posts and Diff
• Looking for communities and institutions that can be invited to collaborate with Jakarta Wikimedia Community

Comments or suggestions about the conference

ESEAP Conference 2024 has gone well. However, I would like to provide some suggestion so that the ESEAP Conference in future years can be even better. The suggestions are:

• Please be stricter about timing. If there is a presentation that goes beyond the allocated time, it's best to cut it straight away so that the end time of the event doesn't get later in the afternoon.
• Maybe it would be better to provide a printed session schedule in each room. Meta is already very helpful, but the presence of print will be even more helpful! :)
• Maybe in the Google scholarship registration form, a special page could be provided regarding trust and safety questions. Maybe an example of the question is, "Do you think [example of behavior] violates the trust and safety policy?". Maybe this answer can also be used as a consideration when accepting potential participants.

Special thanks to

• Jurina from Kent Wiki Klub for everything you did. You are the kindest soul ever.
• Jess from Taiwan, for introduced me to Gu and Youngjin that I can speak Korean (a little). Thank you! Now I know who I can practice my Korean with :D
• Yuriko and Eugene from Japan. Yuriko taught me about persistence and Eugene convinced me to write in Diff. Thank you!
• My Malaysian friends when we did karaoke and the "photowalk" session after the karaoke night. You guys are really fun to be with!
• The organizing team. Thank you for the unforgettable days!
• My Indonesian friends @ ESEAP Conference 2024. Terima kasih atas semua keseruan dan memori baiknya. Ayo ketemu lagi di Indonesia!