Grants:TPS/Missvain/Wikimania/2017/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2017!

Participant

Missvain

English Wikipedia

Outcome

Option 3: New Creation: What was one useful outcome that was created at the event for the Wikimedia movement?

I actually participated in a lot of things, but not everything appears to be documented or easily discoverable.

• BANQ Scan-a-Thon - While this blog post actually says it was mainly Canadians who participated, that was not true! There was a handful of Americans - including myself and colleagues from Wikimedia DC. I uploaded all of the images in this and the related subcategories and worked with a team of volunteers to distrubte them into various Wikimedia pages. Given my own academic work in Native American culture, I was able to identify a number of aspects perhaps others would not, and I also sleuthed other aspects of the images (locations, historical moments) with the help of other volunteers. It was quite rewarding.
• I met with User:Multichill to develop a new layout for the Sum of All Paintings project on Wikidata. YOu can find the notes here and we are in the process of redesigning our main page to make it more understandable, easier to navigate, and providing more ways to get involved in the project.
• I participated in an introduction to Wikidata workshop during the North America conference (I know that isn't part of Wikimania but I was able to attend with your support) and participated as one of the most prolific and active Wikidata editors, answering questions and providing insight. Sadly there is no detailed Etherpad or video from that workshop that I could find.
• I translated the captions for 288 photographs uploaded for Project Wikipetia Atikamekw Nehiromowin. Translating captions from French and/or Atikamekw. It appears more have been uploaded since I started, so I have more work to do. Here is an example [1].
• I added Atikamekw to Wikidata for babel translations and added all written words in Atikamekw related to animals into their appropriate Wikidata entries and then improved Atikamekw and English language articles as appropriate. Here is an example, of a weasel. You can see the Wikidata item and other languages on the left menu now exist, when they did not prior to the conference. You have to have the babel on your userpage on Wikidata to see the Atikamekw entry on Wikidata.
• I worked with User:Samwilson and User:Imzadi1979 to make my first significant contributions to Wikisource. Imzadi1979 is really involved in writing about the US highway system and so we decided to upload a public domain document that discusses the closure of Route 66, the most famous Highway in the US, documented in famous songs in the 1950s and 60s. You can find the transcribed work, which we did at Wikimania, here.
• I'm in the process of creating a proper table and list for the List of public artworks in Montreal article, as I took over 200 photographs of public artworks in Montreal over the course of the weekend and will be uploading those images this winter.
• You can find all my Tweets from Twitter about the conference here.
• I met with staff from numerous museums and cultural institutions, advising them on how to partner with Wikimedia projects through GLAM-Wiki.
• I participated in the SPARQL workshop even though I would have valued a bit more one-on-one assistance.
• I met with staff from the Smithsonian Institution to develop the release of public domain scientific notebooks for upload onto Commons and Wikisource. This should be completed in winter 2018.
• I participated in the Wikidata + heritage data: Where do we stand? What's next? workshop which was really great and productive. You can see our contributions on the Etherpad that I co-created.
• I participated in a Whose Knowledge? discussion about citations and oral histories. I haven't been able to find public documentation of it yet.
• A few other things that are coming out of Wikimania:

• I'm back to doing edit-a-thons again! I'll be hosting my first one in Wine Country in March for women's history month and I'll also be facilitating a workshop at the University of Maryland. Additionally, I am attending two workshops being facilitated by the OCLC in California providing assistance.
• I'm also actively seeking partnerships with small GLAMs in my region, hoping to host some events with support of OCLC and other organizations.

Connections

This was actually the most important aspect of my attendance.

• I was able to attend Wikimedia North America's conference, which was an extremely emotional (in a good way), empowering and inspiring aspect of the weekend. It's rare that so many of us North American Wikimedians get to gather together and it was my first time attending the conference.
• I reconnected with many Wikimedians whom I have not spent time with in years, which was extremely heartwarming and valuable. I also met many new Wikimedians, whom I can consider friends and collaborators now.
• I have been invited to join the Wikiconference North America planning committee.
• I was able to meet most of the folks from the Sum of All Paintings project and meet a few new women editors, many whom are doing things that I could have only imagined when I was a fellow at the Wikimedia Foundation working on the gender gap.
• As someone who left the community for a time being after a few road bumps, this Wikimania was extremely valuable for me in re-connecting with the community.

Anything else

I posted most of my contributions above, and most of my images are sort of chaotically organized into the general categories for Commons. But, they are there under my username, Missvain.

Thank you for this invaluable opportunity. I am so grateful.