Grants:TPS/Islahaddow/Wikimania/2014/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2016!

Participant

Islahaddow

en.wp

Outcome

Option 1: Shared Experience: What is one way you shared something from your experience with your community (either locally or globally), after the event?

There were several emails on the Wikimedia list. Specifically here is the blog post that I wrote and the WikiAfrica team released a newsletter with 3 articles that related to Wikipedians from Africa at Wikimania.

Connections

Wikimania is less about making connections and more about cementing friendships and colloaborations face-to-face. I found Wikimania London a bit overwhelming due to the shear size and the numbers of people. However there were several new people that I met and many fascinating and insightful conversations that I had. It was also a good opportunity for the African Wikimedians to get together and we had two interesting discussions.

Anything else

At Wikimania London I co-presented KUMUSHA TAKES WIKI: ACTIVATING COMMUNITIES ACROSS AFRICA with User:Anthere. As there were few people from Africa at the conference we decided to give people an overview of the Wikipedia landscape in Africa, and the work that had been done - as well as, the Kumusha Takes Wiki project. You can view the slides here
One of the only overwhelming negative impressions that I had was that the difficult or awkward subjects - women, lgbti or Africa/Global South - were lumped together under diversity and placed in the most difficult and the farthest possible room. It was pretty insulting for a movement that insists it is trying to cope with its lack of diversity. I really hope that future Wikimanias do not do this. I am sure it will not happen again.