Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia/Reports/ESEAP 2022

The ESEAP Conference 2022 is a regional conference of Wikimedia Foundation held in Sydney, Australia on 19–20 November 2022.

Representatives

The Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia was represented by:

WAqil (WMYS), Committee

ESEAP 2022 was the first time for the said representatives to come, in which the previous ESEAP 2019 was attended by other different three editors from the Malaysia user group. Our aim is to always equally share and distribute the experience and knowledge among all of our core active members.

Report Summary

Things I learned at the conference

I had a great time there as my focus is to involve as much as I can in every discussion I joined for the sake of the Wikimedia movement's in my country. I've a changing-ideas discussion with all country's representatives. Things I've learnt, but not limited to, were:

Different approaches done by different communities in ESEAP regions to empower their communities as well as expanding them to a bigger scale. As an example was the one done by Wikimedia Korea, where they get universities involved in their article creation program with theme-based event on particular events as AIDS Day and etc along with interesting gift;
Challenges faced by communities around the world in contributing to the Wikimedia movement and projects. For example, through a survey by Wikimedia Indonesia on their community, stating that the lack of time and the complex policies in the Wikimedia project became one of their obstacles. Also, in Myanmar there are problems with their government policies that block Wikimedia project sites as well as the risk of being arrested by the Myanmar government when editing sensitive sites about Myanmar. I was also fascinated with small community as Paiwan Wikimedians User Group which was also in the same fate as us, Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia, in terms of their activity, where they were so active and doing very well to promote the movement in their communities;
Little is more. I learned a lot from Mia from the Indonesian community that the lack of equipment did not stop her from running the WikiSwara project. This is something that is really good, as long as we have efforts, in any way it can be obtained and of course benefit others. So I learned to take make use of the surrounding resources.

Discusssion/ contribution

19 November

B2 ESEAP Hub

I joined the discussions in this session and share the situations and my insights on my local communities. I oversee lots of challenges shared by the communities in the discussion as well as their necessities to overcome it.

C2 Governance

I participated in the discussions between the ESEAP communities in this session and we had come for an agreement that we need a coordinator in the ESEAP. We also pointed that a certain base of accordment needed for the coordinator and a sugestion was based on geography. There is another suggestion which was based on the language. But the language is too wide and we agreed on to have it based on geography. The discussion continued after the tea break and few have volunteered to take the role as the coordinator.

Sunday 20 November

H1 Lightning talks: Education

I do a sharing in this session which was moderated by Pru Mitchell. My talk was about "Wikimedia towards health education", on how Wikiproject medical and health content through WikiProject Medicine can be brought into education and how we have done and it can be done.

J2 Discussion: Wikimania 2023

I participated in the group discussions to discuss on Wikimania theme and vote for it. We finally have an agreement to have it as Diversity. Collaboration. Future.

Plans after the conference (from what was learned or contributed in the conference)

Do a strategy planning for the local Wikimedia community and projects
Conduct more implementable activitity like ones have done by other communties i.e;
- Digitization of manuscript by Balinese community;
- Article creation/edits-a-thon on local Wikipedia in conjuction with certain events like HIV/AIDS day and etc.;
- Wikipedia reading in classroom
Maximise the usage of social media to outreach local community
Outreach more people to contribute based on their interest, i.e. medicine (invite medical students@institutions to take part)
Do a research on Malaysian communities on patterns of activities and interests
Organize ESEAP Conference in Malaysia in the future

Comments/ suggestions/ improvements about the conference

Everything was so good especially on halal meals, the prayer rooms as well as the conference location.
Australis is very strict on the visa application, that I've to apply for 3 times, before I was approved.

Recommendation for future participants

Even with full sponsorship, a delegate requires some investment in time and money to attend a Wikimedia Summit.
Recommend to subscribe to roaming.
Bring bread or cup noodles (check on immigrations website if they're allowed to be brought) from home. Also, some souvenirs from Malaysia to exchange with others participants.