Grants:TPS/Discott/Wikimania/2014/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2014!

Participant

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Discott

en.Wikipedia

I am also a board member of the Wikimedia chapter in South Africa (recently elected president of Wikimedia ZA).

Outcome

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Option 3: New Creation: What was one useful outcome that was created at the event for the Wikimedia movement?
Add a link to something new that was created as a result of your participation in this event (for example, you might link to a new tool that you and your co-participants worked on at the Hackathon, or to pages created in a workshop you participated in).
  • African meetup: I helped organise and run a meetup for African Wikipedians at Wikimania, more information about which can be found on our 2014 Chapter's report here.
  • Met with Wikimedia CH (Switzerland) to discuss the rollout of Kiwix in South Africa. This directly led to me applying for, and successfully obtaining, a grant on Wikimedia ZA's behalf to obtain 2 offline wireless Kiwix devices for demonstration and rollout purposes in South Africa. If we are successful this could lead to the rollout by government or other non-profit-organisations of the offline Kiwix system in South Africa. I am particularly excited at the prospect of rolling it out in rural schools. Very exciting!

Connections

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Hanging out with some of the North Africans by the the Wikimedia ZA stand at the Chapter's village.

Where to start!? I love connecting with people at Wikimania and always find that I never have enough time to talk with everyone I want to or even plan to. Having said that below are some of the most important connections I had at Wikimania 2014:

  • Because I am the organiser of Wiki Loves Monuments in South Africa I connected with the usual crowd around organising and hosting Wiki Loves Monuments. We discussed strategy and coordination around hosting this year's event. I have just completed this year's WLM on South Africa and feel that it was a great success. Meeting the team at Wikimania, I feel, helped in achieving this success.
  • Connected with Wikimedia CH (Charles Andres) about Kiwix, see above for more information on that.
  • Connected with Wikimedia UK to discuss future cooperation and inter chapter cooperation.
  • Connected with previous hosts of Wikimania: connected with and discusses issues and experiences of hosting a Wikimania in preparation for future possible bid for Wikimania in Cape Town. I discussed this with: Edward Saperia (Wikimania 2014) and Deror Avi (Wikimania 2011).
  • Members of Wikimedia ZA who are now based in Europe as well as some key staff at the Wikimedia Foundation.
  • Chatted with Andy Mabbett about mass uploads onto Commons as well as his voice biography project. Also connected with Roger Bamkin to discuss rolling out a Cape Town version of Jobergpedia.

I could go on but I will stop there.

Anything else

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I took load of photographs at Wikimania but did not think to categorise them. In lue of that here is a selection of some of them: