Wikimania/sandbox

WIKIMANIA PAGE:

WIKIMANIA 2022: The Festival Edition! Call for Session Proposals

Introduction

Wikimania: The Festival Edition! will be taking place on 11-14 August, 2022. Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference celebrating all the free and open knowledge projects made possible by the volunteer community.

This year's Wikimania will bring Wikimedians together to create, celebrate and connect, virtually and with in-person components.

We want to invite you to be part of the program–submit your session proposal to participate at the 17th edition of Wikimania.

Theme

The theme for this year’s virtual Wikimania is “The Festival Edition”. We want to celebrate the diversity of our vast community and spotlight regional projects and movement groups.

For Wikimania: The Festival Edition! we are looking for session proposals that are

fun, celebratory and engaging.
regional: shining a light on communities across the movement through the festivities.
and that welcome newcomers: creating a safe space for first-time attendees that illuminates and inspires.

Program Design

For this festival program we expect to have a mix of live and on-demand content, hosted in different online ‘tents’ just like at an in-person festival.

Main Stage: the space where keynotes, endnotes, entertainment, meet and greet, and other key content will be delivered. We will be having rotational regional segments here to spotlight various projects, individuals and affiliates by region.
Movement Groups and Affiliates Tent: a programming track with sessions from Wikimedia movement organizations (chapters, user groups, thematic organizations, and other recognized movement groups). Submissions to this tent are open to all affiliates in the Wikimedia community.
Individual/Collective Tent: a programming track with sessions from individual Wikimedians or a collective of individuals. Submissions to this tent are open to everyone–submit to present alone or with a group of co-presenters.
Hackathon: as traditionally done - yet with a new twist - the hackathon will have a tent throughout the Wikimania festival for ongoing collaboration and co-working.
Networking Tent: Wikimania will have several virtual spaces where attendees can socialize and meet other wikimedians from around the globe and link up to work together on new or established projects. More information will be provided soon.

We will be sharing more about the skeleton for Wikimania’s program design in the next few weeks.

All of the content will be archived once Wikimania 2022 is finished, as it has been done in previous years.

Multilinguality in the Program

In the past, Wikimania programs catered to an English speaking audience only. However, we want the festival to welcome participants in the languages they feel most comfortable. Language accessibility at the festival will work as follows:

For all sessions (live and pre-recorded) delivered in English, the Wikimedia Foundation will provide live interpretation into Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, and Spanish to enable a bigger audience to join and participate freely. We will be sharing more on how this will look like closer to the event.

For all sessions (live and pre-recorded) delivered in Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish, the Wikimedia Foundation will provide live interpretation into English.

In addition to these languages, there will be 1-2 additional supported languages that will rotate on a daily basis. Sessions delivered in English will receive interpretation into the 1-2 rotating languages for that day, and sessions delivered in the rotating languages will receive interpretation into English on those days. More information to come about rotating language support, including which languages will be offered.

Speakers are free to deliver sessions in other languages, but we can’t offer interpretation support at this moment.

We recognize that we will not be able to accommodate every single person and community, but we have learned from the Movement Strategy process how important multilingualism is and we want to keep improving our language approach. Thanks to all who provided their feedback in the community survey.

Design and Submit your Session

Want to present at Wikimania 2022? Here is some guidance on what the Core Organizing Team is looking for.

Session Topics

We want to encourage sessions on a wide array of topics, as there are many cross-cutting themes that affect all of our communities. Keeping with the focus areas of the festival, we ask you to design sessions that are fun, that spotlight regional work, or that welcome newcomers.

Within those focus areas, you may choose to present on topics like Education and GLAM, Innovation and Research, Gender, Diversity and Inclusion, Regional Partnerships, Language, Community Health, and more.

Session format

Our festival welcomes all types of sessions from community members. Different session types correspond to different amounts of time in the program:

Roundtable or Panel Discussion (45 minutes)

Conversations between a small group of speakers, usually with a facilitator. The facilitator can choose to involve the audience throughout or during a question and answer portion.

Workshops (45 - 90 minutes)

Let’s get our hands dirty! Workshops are hands-on opportunities to learn and create things together.

Tutorial (45 minutes)

Walk attendees through the steps, workflow and processes of a specific skill, project, topic or task.

Lightning Talk (5- 15 minutes)

Short lectures - big ideas! Share short yet impactful ideas with attendees and have a Q&A afterwards.

Case study (30 minutes)

Showcase impactful work from your community! How did this serve your community or projects? What did you learn from this work?

Lecture (30 minutes)

A traditional talk given by a speaker.

Social Gathering (Performances, Songs, games, theater, picnics, etc) (You specify the amount of time needed)

Let’s have FUN! Have a great, crazy or “weird” idea? Submit it here! We are looking to integrate lots of sessions like this into the program, so please get creative!

Virtual/Local Breakouts (You specify the amount of time needed)

Joining the in-person meetups and the virtual attendees in co creating a space for work, fun and play.

Other (You specify the amount of time needed)

Have another wild format not listed here? Feel free to submit your own proposal of a format.

As part of choosing the format, submitters can decide whether their session will be live or pre-recorded.

Live Session: You will host your session live, which would allow for live contributions, questions and dialogue from the attendees. We encourage as many session hosts as possible to choose live and interactive sessions that engage the audience and offer a space to co-create.

Pre-Recorded Session: You will record your session ahead of time and send it to us to live stream it at Wikimania 2022. This option reduces the amount of attendee interaction you would have with your content, but you can also host a live dialogue or Q&A after your recorded session.

Your submission

Please fill out this application to submit your session for consideration. The application accepts traditional submission formats as well as non-traditional submission formats like videos, slide decks, idea boards, and audio (if you present video or audio, no more than 2 minutes).

While your session will be eligible to receive language support during Wikimania, we ask that your session submission be done in English in order for all session reviewers to be able to read through submissions, and accurately review.

Wondering whether you’re prepared to speak at Wikimania?

Whether you have been active in the movement for years or months, or whether you are an experienced public speaker or this is your first time speaking to a large audience, we want to hear from you. For Wikimania 2022, the Community Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation has created a Speaker Training program that will help prepare all speakers, and the Core Organizing Team will be available to support you throughout.

Important Dates and Information

Task

Deadline

Submission open

04 May 2022

Submission close

10 June 2022

Submission period open

5 weeks

Review

10 June 2022 - 24 June 2022 (2 weeks)

Decision communicated to submitter

27 June 2022 - 15 July 2022

Get help

Reading all of this information has probably left you with questions. We will be hosting office hours to give you answers. More information on when and how to engage with us will be provided next week.

In the meantime, you can leave your questions for the Core Organizing Team on this talk page or by emailing wikimania@wikimedia.org.

ANNOUNCEMENT

Headline: Wikimania 2022 Grants and Program Submissions OPEN

Dear Wiki Community,

Wikimania: The Festival Edition! will be taking place on 11-14 August, 2022. Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference celebrating all the free and open knowledge projects made possible by the volunteer community.

This year's Wikimania will bring Wikimedians together to create, celebrate and connect, virtually and with in-person components. [Want to know how this year's Wikimania: The Festival Edition came about? Check this out to learn more. ]

Program submissions and grant applications open today. Here’s what you should know:

Program submissions:

The Wikimania 2022 Core Organizing Team is looking for session proposals that are

fun, celebratory and engaging.

regional, shining a light on communities across the movement through the festivities.

and that welcome newcomers, creating a safe space for first-time attendees that illuminates and inspires.

As last year, Wikimania: The Festival Edition! Will have a main stage, as well as a “tent”, or programming tracks, for movement groups and affiliates (for user groups, chapters, and thematic organizations to present as a group), and a “tent” for individuals and collectives (for community members to present alone or together with other individuals).

The program will be multilingual, but this time with expanded language support.

Read more about the program and submit your session proposal by 10 June, 2022.

Affiliate grants and individual scholarships:

Wikimania 2022 will have a grants program for affiliates to fund the organizing of Wikimania local events. These events could include local meetups and watch parties, affiliate led sessions.

We are also offering scholarships for individual attendees to enable their participation in Wikimania 2022. Scholarships can cover things like childcare, meals, data packages and small hardware purchases.

Looking forward to bringing the Wikimania 2022 Festival to life with you!

What are we funding?

Affiliate Program (grant)

Individual Program (stipend)

Local meetups / events

Childcare

Data

Small hardware (webcam, microphone, mouse, head/ear phones)

Meals

Admin costs

Translation services

Travel?

Grants and scholarships:

Important Dates and Information

Task

Deadline

Application open

05 May 2022

Submission close

3rd June 2022

Submission period open

4 weeks

Application Review

16 May 2022 - 24 June 2022 ( 6 weeks)

Wikimania 2022 Call for Proposals

If your session submission is in another format (video, audio, idea board, slide deck) other than this application please send to wikimania@wikimedia.org

Proposal title:

Session type

Roundtable or Panel Discussion (45 minutes)

Conversations between a small group of speakers, usually with a facilitator. The facilitator can choose to involve the audience throughout or during a question and answer portion.

Workshops (45 - 90 minutes)

Let’s get our hands dirty! Workshops are hands-on opportunities to learn and create things together.

Tutorial (45 minutes)

Walk attendees through the steps, workflow and processes of a specific skill, project, topic or task.

Lightning Talk (5- 15 minutes)

Short lectures - big ideas! Share short yet impactful ideas with attendees and have a Q&A afterwards.

Case study (30 minutes)

Showcase impactful work from your community! How did this serve your community or projects? What did you learn from this work?

Lecture (30 minutes)

A traditional talk given by a speaker.

Social Gathering (Performances, Songs, games, theater, picnics, etc) (You specify the amount of time needed)

Let’s have FUN! Have a great, crazy or “weird” idea? Submit it here! We are looking to integrate lots of sessions like this into the program, so please get creative!

Virtual/Local Breakouts) (You specify the amount of time needed)

Joining the in-person meetups and the virtual attendees in co creating a space for work, fun and play.

Other (You specify the amount of time needed)

Have another wild format not listed here? Feel free to submit your own proposal of a format.

Specify the time you need for your session

Are you making this proposal as an individual or affiliate/movement group?

What is the main Affiliate/Movement group that you are applying with? List which one?

Abstract

Please write at most 750 characters.

Additional Speaker (Optional)

If you have a co-speaker, please add their email address here, and we will invite them to create an account. If you have more than one co-speaker, you can add more speakers after finishing the proposal process.

Choose the language for your block (2 additional languages rotating per day)

English

Spanish

French

Russian

Arabic

Chinese

Other (add explanation in notes field)

see Submission Guidelines/Language approach to make sure you understand the implications of different language choices.

Topics (Optional) (To renew)

Education and GLAM

Partnerships

Advocacy, Safety and Community Health

Strategy 2030

Community Topics

New Voices and Newcomers

Innovation and Research

Gender, Diversity and Inclusion

Languages

Our Stories

Other

Which topics does your block most relate to?