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2021:Highlights for Newcomer Foundation Staff

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Are you a newcomer to Wikimania? A newcomer to the Wikimedia Foundation? Both?

This page is here to help give you a quick overview of the Wikimania program seen through the eyes of a longtime Wikimedian and relatively long time Wikimedia Foundation staff. The idea is not to be exhaustive but to give you a few pointers as to things you might not want to miss.


To see the full program and exact times for the sessions listed below, please refer to the Program page.

The program is available in all UN languages + German. It also shows visual aids to know what sessions are what and how accessible they are depending on your level of Wikimedianitude. (Is that the Wikimedia attitude?). In any case, here is a reminder of the various icons and their meaning (in green the things you should not miss, ideal for newcomers and lightning talks!):

Session Identifiers
Plenary session Plenary session Celebration Celebration Mixed Format Mixed format Ideal for newcomers Ideal for newcomers
Lecture Lecture Lightning talks Lightning talks Case Study Case Study Ideal for basic understanding of Wikimedia Assume basic understanding
(90% of community)
Round table Roundtable Panel discussion Panel discussion Workshop Workshop Ideal for medium understanding of Wikimedia Assume medium understanding
(10-50% of community)
Ideal for advanced understanding of Wikimedia Assume advanced Wikimedians
(<10% of community)


Disclaimer

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This selection is done from the abstracts available in the program. It tries to put sessions a bit more into context, but I haven't had a preview of how compelling a speaker might be, how tough a subject might be to parse, or how relevant it is to your own experience. This is meant to give you a bit of an idea of what might be interesting depending on your own interests, and definitely geared at giving you an overview of everything Wikimedia communities do. It is not exhaustive, nor really objective ;) Delphine (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 13 August 2021 (UTC)

Throughout the conference

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Well, before the conference, read this blog post on Diff to know what's coming to you. Then you can dig into this curated schedule.

In general, as a newcomer to Wikimedia and Wikimania, you probably want to look for sessions that have the "Ideal for newcomer" tag. You also want to try and catch as many of the lightning talks as you can, as they'll be lightweight glimpses into what our communities (and even sometimes the Foundation) does on the projects, in an easy to digest format.

Here is a list of sessions you might want to consider as a newcomer. These are not specific to any type of work you do. They're more chosen to give you a good idea of what the Wikimedia Communities do as a whole, and you might want to add to those sessions the ones that are specifically on topics you work on or are super interested in. Some sessions might overlap, many you will be able to watch later on video or in an asynchronous manner.

  • COMMUNITY VILLAGE: You want to visit at some point the Community Village which will have virtual tables from affiliates and other people. You want to know what's going on in Latin America? Find one of Wikimedia affiliates in the region. Want to know what Wiki Women are up to? Join them at their table in the community village. Want to know more about Wikidata? There's a table for that too!
  • UNCONFERENCE: You might want to check out what goes at the Unconference, where people will on the go decide to present their project, their hobby or how they did this incredible thing. Join them to discuss with a small group of people as they're talking!

Saturday, August 14

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Sunday, 15 August

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Monday 16 August

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Tuesday 17 August

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Tags explained

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The tags are just a quick way for you to parse the content I'm proposing here. They are a creation of mine :)

  • #byfoundationstaff: these sessions are led by Wikimedia Foundation staff. While I think that we should aim for community led session in priority, some of the sessions highlighted here show the work we do or give important context to the work we do.
  • #commons: this talks about Wikimedia Commons, our image repository project
  • #communitysupport: talks about developments aiming at supporting the Wikimedia communities
  • #culture: about local or regional cultures
  • #DEI: Diversity equity and inclusion, or any session that touches on important gaps in our diversity as a movement, an organization or content.
  • #disinformation: on the subject of disinformation
  • #foundation: about the Wikimedia Foundation
  • #glam: this is about working with GLAMs (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums)
  • #emergingcommunities: Emerging communities are one of the ways to name communities that have been left out of history, there is a definition on meta that more exactly explains what emerging communities are for Wikimedia. There are a lot of other ways to refer to those communities, from historically marginalized communities, to global majority to Global South... I chose this tag because it's the one I know we've defined for ourselves.
  • #legal: attention, legal content inside
  • #movementgovernance: this might be about the governance of the Wikimedia movement, any affiliate or the Foundation
  • #science: about scientific knowledge
  • #tech: this includes tech talk
  • #tools: this shows tools used to do Wikimedia work
  • #wikimediaprojects: This tags sessions that may talk about various Wikimedia projects
  • #wikimediaprojectsgovernance: on the governance of the Wikimedia projects
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