2021:Highlights for Newcomer Foundation Staff

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	Celebration	Mixed format	Ideal for newcomers
Lecture	Lightning talks	Case Study	Assume basic understanding (90% of community)
Roundtable	Panel discussion	Workshop	Assume medium understanding (10-50% of community)
			Assume advanced Wikimedians (<10% of community)

Disclaimer

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

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

• Try attending the Welcome session: as the name suggests it's the session that welcomes you all. Of course you should attend, to get the feeling of Wikimania going!
• Wikipedian in Residence in the Battle for Cultural Heritage Wikimedia Serbia (and many other organizations throughout the movement) talks about a Wikipedian in residence. You may already have heard about them, they're Wikimedians who work at cultural institutions and support the institution in their interaction with the Wikimedia projects. You might want to attend this session if you're interested in Wikimedia's work with GLAM institutions (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) and how our communities interact with them. TAGS:#glam
• Alternatively or if you want to learn even more about collaboration between Wikimedia and institutions you could attend 100 years of Weather Observations from the Meteorological Service of Canada in Wikimedia Commons, and learn more about Commons. TAGS:#commons #data #glam
• The Afrocine Project: Learnings from organizing a Pan-African Campaign will show you about a campaign on Wikimedia Projects. A good way to undersatnd how volunteers across countries organize to work together and add content to our projects. TAGS:#campaign #wikimediaprojects
• Unpacking the Foundation Board is a good session to attend to learn more about "those that govern us". The board of the Wikimedia Foundation is the ultimate oversight body of our organization. This session will among other things unpack decision making at the board level, discuss choices made in the past and loot into the present and future. A must attend for those who intend to exert their voting rights in the Board elections, and for anyone who wants to better understand how the Board functions. TAGS:#movementgovernance, #foundation
• While Sharing decolonization strategies throughout Wikimedia projects is tagged for more advanced Wikimedianitude, the topic is fascinating and in line with so many of the things the Foundation has been working on: giving voices to historically underrepresented communities. This will help ground the Wikimedia Movement Strategy direction in concrete actions taken at the level of our projects. TAGS:#decolonization, #wikimediaprojects, #DEI
• Cross-wiki ideological conflict and Wikimedia's vision of knowledge equity sounds like a fascinating way to approach how Wikimedia projects in different languages address the same topic differently, as well as question the understanding of "reliable sources". TAGS:#knowledgeequity #wikimediaprojects
• Still on the GLAM topic, you might want to learn more about the challenges that our colleagues in emerging communities in the Global South face by attending the session Wikimedia and GLAM in the Global South. This will give you a good contrary perspective to GLAM in Europe or North America. TAGS:#glam #emergingcommunities
• How to find tools to improve your workflows will show you the amazing array of tools that our communities come up with to support their work. While you might not need those tools for your own work, it is actually mind blowing to see what contributors come up with to help doing the every day work of curating our projects. This will definitely give you an insight into the grand array of tasks that are being taken care of by our communities. TAGS:#tech #tools byfoundationstaff
• Photography documentation of built heritage of rural West Bengal for Wikimedia Commons will show you how the Wikimedia Projects are an essential part of preserving and documenting the world's knowledge by taking you through West bengal in pictures and how community members keep track of what affects landscapes and historical sites. TAGS:#culture #commons
• Wikifunctions and Abstract Wikipedia might be tough to follow but it's all about the latest Wikimedia Project, Wikifunctions, and how it will work. Worth a dive in if you're interested in the future! TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #tech #future
• An overview of the COVID-19-related content of Wikimedia projects is a glimpse into how the Wikimedia projects helped fight the pandemic. TAGS:#wikimediaprojects

Sunday, 15 August

• Of course you absolutely want to watch the Wikimedian(s) of the year awards, because they will feature amazing community members who have brought so much to our movement.
• Harassment is a tough subject but it is important to understand the state of the Wikimedia Communities. Peer-support networks - a working model for the support of targets of harassment in the Wikimedia movement? will show you what we're doing together to support our communities through tough experiences. TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #communitysupport #future
• Can we rid Wikipedia of its content gender gap? Views from Women in Red will be talking about the Gender Gap. The Women in Red project (refers to women whose articles don't exist in Wikipedia - and have a red link) is an important effort to bring women back into the encyclopedia. Definitely a topic to visit. TAGS:#gendergap #future
• Conflict Resolution: Collective Responsibility is a session that aims to present solutions to conflicts on wiki. While not many staff may be editing wikis, it is important to understand the dynamics that run through our communities, conflict, and its resolution being an important part of how people interact on the Wikimedia projects. TAGS:#communitysupport #byfoundationstaff
• Copyright Trolling and the Commons might be a bit complicated for those who don't understand free licenses (especially Creative Commons licenses) but if you do have an idea about them, this session will present an interesting case of how our "good" side (i.e. make knowledge available for free) can be turned into a not so good thing. TAGS:#legal #freelicenses
• English as a lingua franca of the Wikimedia movement: how do we ensure people's inclusion? is a tough subject as well, and will give you a real insight into how difficult it is to work together when people don't get to speak their own language and have to collaborate in a language that is not theirs. TAGS:#DEI
• OK, we can't be all work and no play, so to experience the true spirit of collaboration join the SongDivision session to make a unique, new and fun song about Wikimedia.
• Wikimedia Legal History: Past Practice and Future Trends This session will give you a good understanding of all the legal background that underlines our work and the movement's direction. If you want to know what legal reasons are behind the movement's structure, our organizational development, and our advocacy role, this is a perfect session for you. TAGS:#legal #byfoundationstaff
• Documenting social movements through the Wikimedia Projects: Argentina, Chile and Colombia experiences will give you a glimpse of how Latin American affiliates have managed to embed Wikimedia vision and mission into their local context (or is it the contrary?) and how they have found new and different ways to support communities bringing content into the Wikimedia projects that makes sense within their cultural political and social context. TAGS:#culture #wikimediaprojects #emergingcommunities

Monday 16 August

• OCR and other tools for Wikisource will help you understand on of Wikimedia's most interesting projects (ok, according to me), Wikisource, through the tools developed for it. Wikisource is a project that acts as a repository of original texts in the public domain or under a free license. TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #byfoundationstaff (too)
• The experiences of WikiGap and WikiForHumanRights. Working with UN experts on topics for impact will give you a glimpse on the worldwide campaigns Wikigap and WikiForHumanRights which brought communities across the world in partnership with institutions with an international reach. TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #gendergap
• Towards a more environmentally sustainable Wikimedia Movement will delve into how Wikimedia can be more sustainable, as recommended by the Movement Strategy recommendations. TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #future
• Wikidata: What happened? Where are we going? will catch up about where Wikidata is and where it's going. As the fastest growing Wikimedia Projects of the last few years, Wikidata is extremely important for the future of how Wikimedia content is used across platforms. Catch up on Wikidata's state with this talk. TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #future
• Universal Code of Conduct Roundtable. The Universal Code of Conduct, aka UCoC, is one of the greatest endeavour movement wide since Movement Strategy. It aims at making WIkimedia projects safer for all. Learn all about it in this panel! #wikimediaprojects #wikimediaprojectsgovernance
• The GLAMWiki Tour (Africa) will take you around two African Museums and show you some behind the scenes action. A good way to see how our partner institutions work to preserve knowledge too! TAGS:#glam #culture

Tuesday 17 August

• Reflecting on the Past, Present and the Future 25 years of the wiki, 20 years of Wikipedia, what happened and what is in store for us. Surely you want to hear about our future as communities, as a movement, as a product. Join in this plenary to see what's up! TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #future
• Raising the voices of indigenous communities from Latin America through Wikimedia Projects. Whether or not you think that indigenous languages are a thing of Wikimedia, it's important to witness first hand the struggles of people trying to make Wikimedia projects and indigenous languages together. TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #emergingcommunities
• Inclusive Product Development: Building With, Not For: Product is sometimes even for people in the Wikimedia Foundation, a bit of a fuzzy term. What is, what are our product(s)? And even more importantly, how are they developed? This session will give you an insight as to how the Wikimedia Foundation Product and Tech teams are working to include principles of inclusion and diversity into their work. TAGS:#byfoundationstaff
• Partnerships for content, on a global level will, through the experience of Wikimedia Sverige, give you an idea of how "not alone" we are in working towards free knowledge being available for all. This session will look at partners and how we can develop partenrships to make sure that our projects stay relevant with the right content. TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #glam
• Preventing misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic: How Wikipedia, public health experts, and news media can collaborate to share trustworthy knowledge in times of crisis this is definitely a session about our times! Learn how the Wikimedia movement is associated to try and fight disinformation in times of COVID. TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #disinformation
• Science and storytelling: Why who we talk about matters OK, i've tried to be objective but I can't stay objective about Dr. Jess Wade's talks. They are as compelling as the amazing work she has done in WIkimedia projects and elsewhere to bring women back to the forefront of science. Do not miss this talk, if it's the last thing you do before the end of Wikimania. Oh, wait, this is the last talk :) TAGS:#wikimediaprojects #gendergap #science

Tags explained

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