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Contents of https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/2025_Future_of_Wikimania

Wikimania 2025 Session name: Future of Wikimania Date: Saturday, 9 August, 2025 Time: 11:45–12:40 local time, 8:45 UTC Venue: Nairobi, Kenya and Online

Resource Persons: Butch Bustria, Lodewijk Gelauff, Eric Luth, Phoebe Ayers, Andrew Lih, Iván Martínez, Maciej Nadzikiewicz, Remy Gerbet, Adélaïde Calais, Florence Devouard, Alice Kibombo, Antoni Mtavangu, Winnie Kabintie, 2025 team

RELATED SESSIONS (Re) Imagining conferences - Rachit (WMF) - https://wikimedia.eventyay.com/talk/wikimania2025/talk/8A9FMK/

Program Details on Eventyay: https://wikimedia.eventyay.com/talk/wikimania2025/talk/CUHCFQ/ Slide deck : https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1dKqivs4AJPnwyrxPZWEqivznSYC6iBTJvOEM_r38tXI/edit?slide=id.p73#slide=id.p73

Agenda

Overview of the Wikimania Steering Committee 20 Years of Wikimania Reflections from the recent hosts Visions of the Future Co-Creating the Future

Co-Creating the Future open Choose any question below and provide your response/ suggestion:

   Inclusivity. 

What do you envision Wikimania’s role in bridging representation gaps and engaging marginalized communities? What should we do to make it happen?

It is not only important to consider the event but what comes before and after. Before and after is also when you can organise events in different languages, involving partners, addressing schools and specific communities Maciej - Wikimania can be a change to involve new participants (their first wikimania and sometimes their first Wikimedia event in person) The Trademark Hotel is in Gigiri, the most expensive area in Nairobi, which surprised me. In the center of Nairobi id KICC, a great conference venue. Much as I hate having everything in a secure complex near a posh hotel in an expensive area, I was in the city centre this morning and felt quite vulnerable at times. People approached me on the street asking for money. Ones approach to supporting more marginalized communities to participate at Wikimania is to invite representatives from those communities to join in some of the decisionmaking groups related to the confernece, such as around scholarship decisions, selecting the conference venue, or selecting programming for the confernece itself. https://diff.wikimedia.org/2023/11/14/wiki-women-camp-declaration-paving-the-way-for-gender-equity-in-wikimedia-movement/ the declarations published as an outcome of the WikinWomen Camp 2023 to bridge the gender equity deficit. How we are planning to organise the events in the region where the Wikimania have never been organised so that more number of the participants will be join the event in person. Ivan - Having Wikimania going in different continents

While English tends to be the dominant language for many movement conferences (including Wikimania) one way to engage marginalized communities is to try a Wikimania where the main conference language is the local language.  - Chris Schilling

Hasn't that been the case the majority of times? Germany, Taiwan, HongKong, Italy, Sweden, Mexico, Italy, Egypt and so forth. Conversations at those were still mostly (but not entirely) in English, though. --Mike My point is not about the majority language in those countries, but how the conference programs/materials of the conference are generally conducted and prepared. English speakers are privilged because they generally do not need translation services to be able to meaningfully participate in most programs, whereas non-English speakers rely on them. GLAM-WIKI 2023 might be a nice example of a conference that had a lot of content in Spanish rather than English - one to learn from? --Mike Agreed, but that's more about the organizers making a decision rather than the place it is held then. Fair enough, it is less about the where and more about the manner of organizing and preparing interpretation services. Some regional conferences (like some CEE Meetings) have been able to balance these needs pretty well and the common language of the conference *is* the local language, rather than defaulting to English. Wikimania panel notes that this work (recruting and coordinating interpreters, considering about whether to host separate sessions in separate languages) is resource intensive and challenging, but not insurmountable. The current Wikimania has some interpretation services available as well. More transparency about metrics and criterias behind the selection of hosts and how each criteria weighs like visas, being a greater hub and there should be inclusivity in terms of minority languages and population of the language speakers in a region GLAM volunteers/staff/leaders are often well represented at Wikimania (and other movement events), but there are other less common insitutions we could be reaching out to, such as botanical socities, historical societies, aquariums, performance spaces (such as concert halls), and more. Of course, this isn't just a Wikimania leadership task, but a task for the whole movement (including the Wikimedia Foundation) to work on as well.

Impact

What strategic changes or improvements do you suggest for Wikimania for it to be a medium in scaling Wikimedia's presence and relevance globally?

What are we considering as the metrics of success, by making the conferences hybrid? Can be floated to the communities in the very early stage of planning the proposal as well as budget. LuisCG11 - parallel activities where the main event is Wikimania, designated for members of the movement (the central activity), and leaving at least one short day at a secondary site for the local public who are not part of the movement to listen in person to some talks associated with the movement/free knowledge. Probably one of the aspects we have to be addressed is how people, who probably are not related to the wiki environment, see these events, and how these events could generate a better comprehension of how all this wikiuniverse works, i.e. through mass media and other ways to communicate the outcome of these events. Consider satellite events around the world Online/ Hybrid aspects could be more tailored for sessions that work in that format, maybe should be over adjacent days Impact should not be only about the number of participants in the event (online and offline) but also how the event activates people, institutions, territories. Phoebe - there are also other conferences such as the regional conference. Important to consider them. Maciej - Wikimania is an occasion to exchange, invite people, add expertise Mayur - the team in Nairobi addressed through Wikimania specific issues they face (i.e discussions related to admin with the crreation of an admin session) Romeo - having the chance to get together and in Nairobi it was possible because visa are not required for Africans. Supported the African communities and their needs. Expand conversations. Andrew - the greatest impact are conversations. it is difficult to measure it. Adelaide - to evaluate the conversations and the online impact. Maybe counting contacts, evaluating impact after 6 months. We need also to work on the documentation. Content can also be the impact we produce. Reusing content, valorise it, reuse it, archiving it. We can select videos, highlighting resources, reusing them... Florence - we ask reports to participants. Those documents could be use to evaluate participation. Florence - the orientation could be useful spread during the event. Having a short morning session to get toghether. Maybe a call for Wikimania memories on a wiki page would be interesting at some point? Like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Editor_reflections - but for Wikimania memories. To try to capture some of the data that Maciej was saying was missing? --Mike Important to map what happens after the conference. It should be a responsabity of the organisers to map and document gaps and what happens.

Sustainability

How will future Wikimania host teams & Wikimedia Foundation address long-term challenges such as resource allocation to participating Wikimedians, technological scalability, and being eco-friendly?

In terms of resource allocation, funding for individuals to attend Wikimania is primarily supported by the related scholarship program. In addition, affiliates that receive general operating support from the Foundation or have other funding can usually support 1-5 people to attend as well. One other opportunity that could be explored in the future relates to the role of Regional and Thematic Hubs in the movement. Some of them support resource allocation for various needs within their regions or thematic communities, or are interested in doing so in the future. It's possible they could support some additional access to Wikimania, especially in communities where there is no Wikimedia affiliate presence. Reducing the ecological impact of travel realted to Wikimania is a real challenge, because there is usually an earnest effort to support broad participation from across the movement. If the goal is to reduce how much travel-related ecological impact the conference has, we should generally prioritize participation that is more local or regional in Wikimania. In 2022(?) we had viewing/participation hubs in different countries, maybe worth trying to do the same again in the future, so people can locally gather and still get some in-person engagement, rather than having to travel long-haul? - Mike Peel +1 LuisCG11 - There are currently many local NGOs seeking funding for environmental conservation/restoration projects. Perhaps we could organize an activity in which the event funds a small-scale project in the area where the event is held? This would have a positive impact on the environment and leave a mark of public use in the local community. This could be a good opportunity for compulsory volunteering for scholars. Adelaide - Working with a regional collaboration / hub is important to involve different competences, enlarge the team, capitalise on expertise Remo was great, but no-one seemed to like it at the time, which was a shame? Similar systems still exist, for example gather.town - but they haven't hugely taken off. --Mike Earlier announcements of host cities would be helpful. If next year is a long-haul flight but the following year is local, people can choose to skip the long-haul without too much FOMO. --HJM

======================== BELOW SECTION IS FOR NOTE TAKING ===========================

Sdkb: A very modest hope for the future of Wikimania: an app where the schedule page has sticky headers so that we don't have to scroll up every time to see which room a session is in! +1 Vigneron, other small improvments could be very useful (some people find hard to navigate : to find the videos, find the translations, etc.) +1 +2 +3. Can we have a printed list of sessions on room doors as well? Loved the screen at Katowice. I added those suggestions on the notes from The Future of online engagement https://etherpad.wikimedia.org/p/2025_Future_of_Online_Engagement . We loved the cosplay Butch... . Increasing the safety procedures since Katowice. the problem was not bag checks itself but the slowness of checks :/ Important to making sure Wikimania is safe and memorable. There was a booth set up at the Trademark to create a video time capsule with good reflective and forward-facing questions about the movement in general. Really appreciated this opportunity to contribute to this fun project, and whether it is time capsules or something else, having some space for attendees to reflect on the movement in a fun way is a great way to make Wikimania and other movement events a joyful experience. Paris 2026 team. The event is *not* at the Eiffel tower. 😭 Feedback from users and participants at Wikimania should be always very useful for organizing teams.