Wikimania 2022/Individual Reports/Natalia Szelachowska (WMCZ)

Welcome back from Wikimania 2022! Please write your report here. Once you have completed the application, please email the link to wikimaniawikimedia.org (by 30 September 2022). If you have any questions or concerns, feel free to email us.

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--Natalia Szelachowska (WMCZ) (talk) 05:49, 28 September 2022 (UTC)

How did you attend Wikimania (virtually or in-person)?

I subscribed to Wikimania as an online participant. I find myself lucky to be a person, who actually can enjoy the format of the online events, because of the freedom of choice regarding sessions as well as no geographical limits. After the experience of pandemic restriction the idea of an event, which will bring the entire Wikimedia movement together was already very exciting. I started with following the newsletter and getting familiar with the program, which was straightforward thanks to the regular updates from the organizers.

What did you spend the scholarship funds on?

As the time of Wikimania approached, I was able to organize my attendance during weekdays and provide childcare to my daughter throughout the event thanks to the scholarship. It made a great difference because as a part time employee I could spend the rest of working time investing in new knowledge thanks to joining different sessions. As the program was so diverse and extensive, sometimes I found it difficult to choose which topic would be the most accurate for me. There were times I decided at the last minute to switch to other presentations, there were moments when I set a session to rewatch later. My overall experience was that all of the hosts were well prepared and the quality of the content was very good.

Takeaways – choose 3 specific Wikimania sessions you attended and describe your key take-aways per session.

I very much appreciated the clear structure of the session Getting started with organising Wiki Loves Monuments. It was a valuable lecture because it gave much better insight on the international aspects of this competition. My experience, as a member of Czech chapter, is having a local project on monuments (Popiš památku), which is more adjusted to the community needs (starting from the language and ending with an active Wikipedian, who takes the responsibility for the general organization). A definite lesson learned was the information about the Montage tool, which can be used by the jury as well as the idea of photo-walks, which can be a great added value to the online part of the competition. Another valuable experience came with the presentation Centering Race and Equity at Art+Feminism. As a Community programs manager, one of my main activities within Wikimedia projects is WikiGap. I am continuously developing this project, which is also dear to my heart. Therefore listening to the Executive Director of Art+Feminism program was beyond any doubt and inspiring story. I hope we would be able to grow our WikiGap to include also more women from the world of art and their creative perspective. What followed and was striclctly connected to Art+Feminism, was the study case presented by the Danish chapter and showcasing a partnership between GLAM institutions and Danish Archive of Women Artists, who run a WikiLab event. This example was a fascinating addition to the women's presence on Wikipedia. I was genuinely impressed by the presentation done by the Wikimedia Botswana Community Usergroup called The challenges and opportunities of building a Community. Due to my professional interests stemming from my role at the Wikimedia Czech Republic chapter, any opportunity to talk about community development is valuable to me. Our experience is more wide-ranging and well-established, but it was interesting to recognise similar challenges as retention of participants. We also face a great issue of establishing policies for both online and offline events based on Friendly Space Policies. On the other hand I have the impression that in Europe the recognition of Wikipedia as an open-knowledge resource is concrete, hence creating or maintaining partnerships with different stakeholders such as local NGOs is quite straightforward. In addition to the above, I benefited greatly from the technical sessions, such as Discussing improvements to the desktop Wikipedia experience (Vector 2022) or how to plan a podcast.

How did you connect with other people during Wikimania 2022? How did you celebrate at Wikimania 2022?

To get more direct experience of Wikimania, I enjoyed staying in the Pheedloop environment because I felt there was more of a movement and interactions. I had fun by adding my photo with the Wikimania’s design and I was closely following the chat sections in most of the sessions I participated in. As a member of the Volunteers Support Network, I was involved in preparing some content for the Guess What! It's trivia and games time! as well as I was supporting my teammates with their presentation - How to promote your activities and why having a PR and fundraising specialist makes sense. Lastly I joined two sessions which I found intriguing by the description and I must say I deeply appreciated both of them. The first one described The story of the Last Lion and was created based on Wikimedia Commons materials. As art promotion is one of my interests, I was under the impression how the director composed open-sourced images and wrote text to tell the story. The second event was a Poetry in Motion, which was beautifully filmed and touched on some of the issues, which can be translated beyond the differences such as journey through life or a place of a person in the world. The events, which I attended, gave me a sense of how diverse and basically infinite possibilities the world of Wikimedia has and all this is built on the idea of open knowledge and I am truly grateful for this experience.

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