Wikimedia tables and displays

Having a table or display at an exhibition or conference is a very useful way of engaging the attendees, to educate them about Wikimedia projects and the potential for collaboration. Many new projects and partnerships have started through interaction at conferences and exhibitions.

Planning your display

Audience: What is the audience for the event and what kinds of things could they be interested in learning about? This will be different for different kinds of events e.g education professionals conference vs college freshers fair.
Goals: what goals do you have for the event? Are they practical? Are you trying to recruit new contributors? Educate people about the kinds of partnerships you can do with Wikipedia? Depending on your objectives its likely you will do and show different things. E.g trying to run a new editors training at a large professional conference with 100s of stalls is unlikely to work well due to people's interests, restrictions on people's time, noise and space. Possibly a more effective goal would be to education people about the possibilities of working with Wikimedia projects and starting conversations about partnerships.
What to display: Based on your audeince and what you want to achieve what are the resources you'll want to display?
Sharing your work: To help others to learn from what you did, share your example below including photos.

Examples

UNESCO Mobile Learning Week

Full report
About the event

About the event: UNESCO Mobile Learning Week is the largest ICTs in Education conference run by the UN.

Audience: The conference has over 1000 attendees, mainly education professionals, government employees, ministers, UN delegation staff.

What we were trying to achieve: Connect with people attending the event to find potential projects

The display: We displayed a wide range of Wikimedia projects including Wiki Loves, Kiwix, Monumental, Education projects and had sweets and stickers

Biggest learnings: We had very prominent Wikipedia branding, it is the brand everyone knows and it attracts people. We found this to be much more successful than presenting Wikimedia and expecting people to be interested something they don't know. Also show people things working don't tell them and expect them to imagine it.

Overall view of the table (we added more things over the week)
Showing offline Wikipedia through leaflets, a tablet and Kiwix boxes
Wiki4Women event as part of Mobile Learning Week

Frankfurt Book Fair

Wikimedia Deutschland ran a booth at Frankfurt Book Fair, the largest book fair in the world.

All Digital Week 2018 & 2019

https://alldigitalweek.eu/finland/

About the event: All Digital Week 19.3.2018 in Bildningsalliansen's house and All Digital Week 26.3.2019 event in Oodi.

Audience: Non-technical common people. People who are not inside the digital world.

What we were trying to achieve: Generic outreach and information related to Wikimedia. The secondary target was to publish information about Wiki Loves Monuments and rephotography.

The display: Leaflets and talking with the people. In 2018 we had a round table discussion with a group of people related to rephotography, in 2019 we had a presentation about Wikimedia Finlands public art project and rephotography walk.

Wikimedia Suomi at All Digital Week event 19.3.2018 in Bildningsalliansen hq
Wikimedia Suomi at All Digital Week event 26.3.2019 in Helsinki

Voluntary Action Festival 2018 Athens

https://www.voluntaryaction.gr/the-voluntary-festival-2018/the-voluntary-festival2018

About the event: The Voluntary Action Festival is organised every year in Athens by Skywalker.gr and is a major and established event for every NGO in Greece. It took place in Technopolis of the municipality of Athens at the 14th and 15th of July 2018.

Audience: Volunteers, visitors of the festival

What we were trying to achieve: The volunteers of Wikipedia Community Schools Association Greece were answering questions about what is Wikipedia, how it works and its importance. We presented ours educational programms in schools, universities e.t.c..

The display: Leaflets, bookmarks, stickers, guest book, on screen presentation, talking to people.