Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia/Reports/WMSUMMIT19

Event Name

Wikimedia Summit 2019

Report Summary

This report offers the perspective of a delegate from a small and new User Group of a developing country.

Entry Process

In February 2017, I was not able to attend the 2018 conference because of emergency errand and forced us to select new candidate which was MYMMMC.

So this year I redeemed myself to attend this year summit to gain more knowledge and sharing the experience of how other affiliates organizing and success of what are they doing.

Communication, Financial & Travel Advice for Malaysian Attendee

Ticket purchasing and lodging arrangements were provided by the organizer through their travel agent.

Malaysians do not need Visa for most European countries. It is recommended that attendee check that their credit or debit card has international transaction allowed. Ensure transits flights take into account possible flight delays and time spent in security.

And if using KLM flight, please tick send anything from flight into Whatsapp. It's help a lot if you have delayed flight or where the next gate you must go into.

It takes some time to digest the information from the summit website, making preparations, and investing in following the communication channels: Facebook Group, Whatsapp Chat, Telegram (more Europeans).

Bring sweets and also a good sense of what the group has accomplished, its challenges, presented verbally or via posters.

Laptop is optional. Friendly disposition and name cards is a must.

RECOMMENDATION:

Even with full sponsorship, a delegate requires some investment in time and money to attend a Wikimedia Summit.
Editing alone involves learning a lot of in-house rules and practices. Being a part of the movement requires another layer of knowledge.
To the agent that booking for hotel and flight, make sure it is Muslim-friendly in all kind of services because I got a tough time to whether eat or not even though some food are gluten-free and vegan. But there were other Muslim helping me with this problem. But in another time, put a verified "halal" logo to the food that Muslim can consumed.

Summit Experience

Please find details to program and presenters here. I am labelled as "Kindl 1" in this program.

Day 1

Session	Notes
RE-CONNECTING	Session was 2 hours for an introduction speeches and present the main topic of this Summit according to Wikimedia Movement between all the core members of WMF. The minutes of meeting was recorded using speech recognition system to auto log all speeches through out all the events in 3 days, which is good for future reference if we missed something important.
Group photo	Session was happened when I need to go to Friday Prayer. Because here in Berlin, Zuhr is early, I have to rush to the nearest mosque to pray.
2B. YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN THE MOVEMENT STRATEGY PROCESS	We were split into groups and we need to prepare a question about the Wikimedia Movement or anything related to Wikipedia each and passed to each other and rank it. The cumulative ranks will be added and the final point determined the important of those questions. The best 3 questions were answered. My question got cumulative point of range of 19-15 point. My question is "How to retain the engagement even after meetup?". The WMF member also encourage us to use any of the scope that we feel fit in into our affiliate's goal for next discussion with affiliate members after going back home. After that we sit in the group back and already assigned to the 9 scopes in the Movement Strategy working groups. My group got Diversity. This got my interest of how Wikipedia treat small communities and and some lost cultures that notable enough to get an article in English Wikipedia, but because of not notable enough worldwide, these topics are deleted or challenged because of "lack" of resources — in this case there are not because there is a lot of resources from a small, public or private organization that collected these reliable sources but not been verified among Wikipedians. This make us question back what the diversity is the Movement wanted to.
3B. YOUR INVOLVEMENT IN GOVERNANCE – ASBS	Session was actually 1 hour and 45 minutes. This session was a discussion whether all Board of Trustees are elected with or without user groups. Most agreed that this election need user groups involvement. And this session were dragged much of our time because of inflicted agreement in the resolution stated and fight to how to improve or stay with the drafted resolution. Minutes of meeting, comments and suggestion are recorded in this etherpad.
Dinner & Thematic Meet-ups at Wikimedia Deutschland office	Because I am late to the dinner, I missed a chunk portion of meetings with Asia-Oceania Wikimedia. Butch introduced me to Asaf Bartov, Head of the Global South Relationships of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF), to discuss about how hard to get a grant for any meetups or meetings that will happened in Malaysia. He said that this is very easy to request. Because you just need to create Wiki page and follow all the simple procedure to request, and then you are done. He also said, they in WMF are really want to support all small communities. Butch also added that great power comes great responsibility. If we got the grant, we need to do an impact and a financial report after that. If not, this group will be not recognize anymore like some other group that already dissolved.

Day 2

Session	Notes
4. and 5. CHANGING MOVEMENT STRUCTURES	SNN95 There are 9 scopes in the Movement Strategy working groups. I choose to stick with Diversity because there are more than just "not notable resources" and "accept what small communities had". Copyright issue is the most concern thing especially in Commons. I heard that certain country like New Zealand are accept any copyright picture into Commons after they make it public domain and permitted to upload. This project is called Wikilivres. I would like to implement this project in Malaysia in soon to come project. Formal colonial power control the narrative of the topic about those they colonized. This happened in many subjects. One of the subject is, about Christopher Columbus — American feels Christopher was the greatest figure in history, while in France or any part of Europe feels he was not that great. This cause edit war between the facts they had. After this event done, my group was approached by Ivo Kruusamägi and talked more deeper on bias that exist within this Diversity scope. After a few minutes, he introduced Wiki Science Competition 2019 that will happen on November to December. He encouraged us Malaysian of any schools and universities to join in this competition. He would like to hear more from us.
6. PROGRESS CHECK-IN Reflections from the Board of Trustees.	This session was where any participant wanted to discuss something with Board of Trustees. But the MC also said that we can continue our own topic at outside the room. So I doing that and continue chat with others. What make me want to talk more to others are I impressed how well the others in there project such as GLAM. There was a user from Ohio user group that recommended by WMF core member to share about my problem. I told her that we, WCUGM had a problem to convince archive or National Library to partnership with GLAM. What surprised me that, all she told about make a network in high school and university first before approaching National Library was already and currently done in my country through 20 meetups and meetings. Some of the meetings were the school or uni that approaching us to engage. I was also talked to a user from Hindi Wikimedians User Group, in India, the small organizations and museums are so receptive about whole GLAM thing. And because now India having internet penetration, some rural places at there was so eager to share their knowledge and history through out the world. They are so success that each time they asked for grant to support the meetup for long travel users were approved.

Day 3

There was a Daylight saving time happened on 31 March, on 2 a.m, where at 2 a.m. will be skipped one hour forward.

But if you are using your smartphone, please set the time update automatically. It save your worry on how to figure DST time.

Session	Notes
7B. YOUR AGENDA Open Space (Networking, sharing, get things done)	I choose to get things done by compiling all the knowledge I got and make a report. I already making more networking with users that I think capable to be absorbed by my user group current situation. Even though we already in year 3, we still need to take it slowly and make each one a success project.
8. WHAT HAPPENS NEXT Present Recommendations Process	I have a serious headache in these sessions. So I was not able to attend them. I went to the dinner and say good bye to friends that must fly tonight.
9. CLOSING
Get-together and dinner at the Mercure Hotel / venue

Back home incident

On 1st April, there were a strike happened for the whole day by the BVG's employees. So the public transport to all directions in Berlin were on halt. Luckily Wikimedia staff already provide us free shuttle bus that run between 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. to any airports.

And because of this, a full day tour around Berlin was cancelled.