ESEAP Conference 2024/Report/Ultron90

Role

I was tasked to be one of the Programme Coordinators in the Organizing Team. My work started way before the actual conference days. I along with several other Programme Coordinators discussed weekly about how to obtain interested parties that wanted to conduct presentations during the conference. We opened up applications for presentation submissions and obtained almost 80 submissions for the conference. Through careful analysis by all the coordinators, the presentations were filtered based on quality and relatedness to the conference theme of Collaboration Beyond the Horizon. Several drafts of the overall timetable of the conference were discussed and I prepared the final yet still tentative timetable on the Meta page of the conference at the time. At the same time, I had taken the role of surveying the conference venue in order to make sure that the conference rooms were adequate for the presentations and amount of participants involved.

Experiences

Pre-Conference (Thursday – 9th May 2024)

I went to the Sabah State Library to help with organizing a Wiktionary Workshop to give training to conference participants that arrived early as well as local participants. The training involved having the participants learn how to use Wiktionary to document ethnic languages (specifically Sabahan ethnic languages) in a few simple steps. The workshop managed to achieve about 120 new words in various language Wiktionary sites.
After that, we went for a photowalk around the Warrior's Monument just near the library. Additionally, we headed to the Sabah Art Gallery which was a short ride/walk from the Warriors' Monument. All the participants were provided a car ride service to go to the gallery, but we miscalculated the amount of participants and had an extra person. The car did not want to accept an extra person, so I gave my seat to the participants while I just walked to the gallery.
During the evening, I attended the Sunset Reception dinner and got to see a wonderful view of the sunset while meeting up with Wikimedians who had just arrived later during the day. The Sabah Tourism Board provided us with a magical display of cultural performances while we enjoyed dinner.
Due to the hotel having a high-profile guest at night, we were not able to test out the Audio/Video setup until very late. This caused us to have issues as we found out that the setup by the hotel was inadequate for the conference. We tried asking the hotel for help but to no avail and thus had to think of a rough solution before the conference starts the next day. I did not get enough sleep because of the troubleshooting.

Conference Day 1 (Friday – 10th May 2024)

On the first day of the conference, as I was handling the Audio/Video setup for the plenary hall, we encountered issues with the online streaming which in turn delayed the start of the conference as expected due to the inadequate setup equipment. While it was an unfortunate start, we managed to figure out the solutions to the issues and eventually proceeded with the conference with relatively no further issues.
Other than that, I had to also manage the interpreters for the Zoom stream sessions to make sure the interpreters had a proper setup during the conference. As the plenary hall had some issues with capturing audio to the Zoom stream, the interpreters did face some issues with listening to the speakers. Despite that, they managed to interpret the speakers to the best of their ability.
Since I had to monitor the sessions for each room to help with any technical issues, I was not able to fully focus on one session during the whole conference. It was an unfortunate fate, but I tried my best to listen to as many sessions as possible before I had to move to another room.
During the evening, we went for a trip to the Mari-mari Village Cultural Tour. It was such a fun experience to visit all the various ethnic houses from Sabah and learn while experiencing how they lived in their traditional way of life. It was eye-opening to learn that each ethnic tribe lived very different lives from one another even though they all lived in one region.The diverse culture seen in just a few ethnic tribes shows that Malaysia is not just made up of the commonly promoted "Three Main Races" but instead a cornucopia of cultures all living in harmony. I loved seeing the way each tribe displays their cultural dances, each full of life and color.

Conference Day 2 (Saturday – 11th May 2024)

On the second day of the conference, I got up early to set up Audio/Video equipment in the plenary hall again. I planned to attend the photowalk session but technical issues continued to take up my time before the conference sessions started.
I managed to listen to Challenges in Building Multilingual Technology Platforms and Trust and Safety Product - The Road Ahead as I was managing any issues in the plenary hall.
After that, everyone gathered in the plenary hall to take big group photo to remember the event.
Subsequently, I managed to listen to Collaboration Between Wikimedia ESEAP and Sweden before rushing to the other rooms as well as interpreters' room to check up on any issues popping up.
Then, I watched a nice cultural performance before having to head to the Timpohon room to set up a Zoom streaming for the live online translation of The Report of Questionnaire of Japanese Wikimedians 2023 and A 70-year-old Wikipedian Talks About the Charm of Libraries talks in Japanese.
The rest of my day was spent moving around the rooms to check up on issues and also discuss plans for the evening as well as 3rd day of the conference.
At night, we were able to celebrate Eugene Ormandy's birthday while we had dinner. It was a nice feeling to surprise him with a birthday cake and see him enjoy himself. After that, everyone enjoyed having karaoke sessions until the end of the night.

Conference Day 3 (Sunday – 12th May 2024)

On the third day of the conference, I planned to join the Gaya Street photowalk but again due to my duties to set up the Audio/Video equipment in the plenary hall, I was not able to attend the session as setting up took most of my time before the start of the conference sessions.
I was able to attend some talks such as Imagining Community-led AI Governance in ESEAP before I went to check up on the interpreters to make sure they were not stressed with interpreting. After that, an issue arose that I had to be involved in. This took most of my time during the morning sessions so I was not able attend other sessions until after lunch.
After lunch, I attended all the ESEAP Hub sessions and voted in the elections for the next candidate host for the ESEAP Strategy Summit 2025 and also ESEAP Conference 2026.
The conference ended with the Wiki Celebrates award and closing song as well as show of gratitude to the organizers.

Comments

I enjoyed the sessions whichever I managed to join, but I wished I was able to join more if not for the issues I had to troubleshoot.
I wished the hotel was honest in what they could actually provide for the conference as we were told they were able to handle online streaming with audio directly into the livestream but instead, it was not the case. The hotel staff was not helpful in figuring out a solution and instead said it was just how they have always done online conferences, which was audio going through the loudspeakers and into the laptop microphones. Additionally, I was told that the hotel was only able to provide proper support if the organizers paid for the technicians to come, which to me was not the proper way for a hotel to handle an issue that was not caused by the organizers. The organizers instead opted to just figure out a simpler and cost-effective solution.
It would have been better if the organizing team was given the option to come and test out the conference rooms at least a week or a month before the actual date so that proper equipment setup and rehearsal could be done.
The food variety to me was underwhelming as the hotel provided the same choices of food for breakfast and lunch for all the days. I preferred the food during Wikimania 2023 in Singapore despite having food issues there as well.
In terms of the ESEAP conference in general, I wished it was more open for a larger amount of participants so that proper representation from each ESEAP community was able to be shown.
Additionally, I was confused on whether scholars should be involved in helping as volunteers for the conference's coordination. I would have preferred that scholars were given tasks to help with the conference coordination so that they had experience in the behind the scenes side of the conference. I am very thankful for the scholars that volunteered for the online stream interpretation duties. But it seems there were concerns that the scholars wouldn't be able to attend the talks/sessions if they were to help with coordination tasks. In that case, I would prefer the Wikimedia Foundation provide adequate funding and support in terms of coordination during the conference instead of the host country's Wikimedian community bearing the burden of handling the conference due to low funding. This is so that every single Wikimedian would be able to focus on just attending the sessions.
Overall, I enjoyed the conference and it was a big learning experience for me in terms of coordinating Audio/Video equipment setups with livestreams as well as ensuring each conference room had no technical issues. I appreciate the logistics team who have been a great help with reducing any issues that might have arisen without their presence.