Wikimania 2023 will be the first in-person Wikimania since 2019. It will be designed as a hybrid conference to allow for remote individual participation as well as supporting local regional meetups.
This page is meant to collect ideas for Wikimania 2023, both practical and bold! Please add!
Public programming
Engaging new or non Wikimedians at Wikimania has always been a challenge. What are some ideas for public programming for Wikimania 2023?
Teaching Wikipedia editing in the four languages of Singapore - English, Malay/Bahasa, Chinese, Tamil.
Wikimedia Commons photo exhibition
Poster exhibit to explain Wikipedia to newbies - something like Wikipedia Space (:en:WP:WPSPACE). See photo.
"+1 A poster expo with language of choice. Then we can have a QR code with link to translated abstract of the poster."
With enough floor space, we could create a Selfie studio or Selfie museum with Wikipedia/Wikimedia themes and props, so that folks who are interested in doing Instagram selfies can create their own social media posts. Ideas that might attract the public and do grassroots sharing of Wikipedia content might be:
A ball pit full of Wikipedia puzzle globes (er, COVID health protocols may disallow this)
Props for things in the Wikipedia world such as a real physical "village pump" from English Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons that people could be photographed with. Other equivalents: Water cooler, Le Bistro (fr.wp), Café (es.wp), Taverna (ca.wp), Beer parlour/Grease pit (en.wt)
Prop signs with Wikipedia famous phrases in multiple languages, such as: citation needed, Be Bold, NPOV, etc.
Prop signs for weird Wikipedia things: cetacean needed (with a stuffed orca)
A field trip for Wikimedians to the Singapore Botanic Gardens, where everybody will try plant photography for Commons, with an indoor session straight afterwards to upload the photos and deploy them in Wikidata and multiple-language Wikipedias. We could also reach out to amateur photographers in Singapore, encourage them to join us, and teach them how to upload to Commons. No copyright issues with plants! The Botanic Gardens probably has a volunteer group of guides who may be interested in this too. I would be happy to lead if able to attend. —Giantflightlessbirds (talk) 22:47, 26 February 2023 (UTC)
Programming
Poster sessions should be a significant part of the conference - they have been a successful way to show a lot of different projects in an efficient way, and in a social setting (usually during a cocktail hour or social time). They also allow for non-native English speakers to present their projects in a more supportive setting, while also connecting in one-on-one conversations. Posters can be just like submissions for conference sessions, or they could be specific to affiliates.
We should provide easy to use templates for making posters, such as using Google Drawings.
What does neutrality mean? Neutrality is in the core of Wikimedia, but there are very different views on what the concept itself means. This can be a good topic to cover with wikimedians, phylosophers, activists and scientists. We can cover a full morning with keynotes, discussions and specialiced presentations.
EXPO / Community Village
With a large expo type space available, where individuals can collaborate to focus on projects
areas with a focus on each of the projects where
communities can hold demonstrations and discussion
where individuals can give short lightning talks on a local project, example WMID on building Wikis in the Incubator, or a wikiksource project in Indonesia.
Wikimedia Commons workshop on how the basics to take, edit, upload photos, or use the Commons App
Wikiwomen - share details about efforts to improve content
Affcom - explaining what needs to be done to become an affiliate, as well as promote affiliates
Area about WLE, WLM, or other global projects
Audience
Try creating programming for different age groups - how can we have "youth-oriented programming" that is both interesting and engaging?
"An example - Singapore Writers Festival 2022 has different pathways for age group - younger children (I.e SWF playground), young people (youth fringe), literary pioneer, country focus etc"
Try including some kind of side events to commemorate International Youth Day since this coincides with the Conference in the same month and time (12th August). For example WikiVibrance had a session in this year's Wikimania to celebrate International Youth Day 2022 and showcased youth diversity in the movement. Maybe a tale or show space to spotlight innovative wikimedia projects led/co-led or implemented by young wikimedians from diverse communities particularly those not known beyond some communities but meaningful to the growth of such communities.
Wikipedia topics and content creation
Some articles or areas for improvement related to Singapore could benefit from attention for Wikimania.
Robotics in Singapore could be a great one, as it is the number two user of robots globally behind South Korea. They are perhaps more high profiled because of Singapore's smaller size and for it being used for subway cleaning, coffee making, library tasks, etc. News article. WorldRobotics2020Robot Report
Terminology and phenomenon unique to Singapore. The foodie culture would be good, and the culture of "choping" or marking a held seat with a tissue pack at restaurants. Maybe good for video making.
Organize a visit to the National Museum of Singapore and examine possibilities for content creation, GLAM projects, and examine implicit and explicit forms of colonialism, bias, domination and power.
It's 500 years since the first world circumnavigation, an event that touched (in very different ways) Europe, South America and Sout-East Asia. We could organize an edit-a-thon about this topic, taking care of different views on the event itself. There can be a collaboration with interested user groups to organize this.
Experimental
Hackathon - make these more inclusive by embracing data science, video production, or other "making" activities. Datathons, Video challenges, Documentation, etc.
Social media/marketing challenge? Bring in social media influencers or makers to challenge them to make social media content around Wikimedia content such as Depths of Wikipedia.
"We could also try visual facilitation for a change. Moving away from text heavy, PowerPoint heavy, towards more visually appealing and succinct conference content."
"Would it also be possible to feature South East Asia languages and Indian languages all together? Since we’re in the region..."
Wikimania mobile app that contains program/speaker details, participant list, chat function with participants, venue map and other useful information.Netha Hussain (talk) 13:20, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Contests
Wikimania Awards (for contributions to knowledge and the projects, pre-event photo walks, &c)
Photo scav hunt: including y'allfies with portable photo frames that you have to use to frame a group with a combination of properties
Physical scav hunt across the campus / city
Nature photography
Urban landscape photography (don't worry there is Freedom of Panorama in Singapore)
"Loyalty card" style system, conference attendees get a stamp for each completed sessions (only for those sessions who be willing to participate) and those who completed a pattern or the whole grid gets a prize, maybe first 100.
Social
Food
Foodie tour with Singaporean social media influencers
Vegetarian food crawl
Fried chicken
Jollibee outing to taste the number one fast food chain from Philippines
Dedicated space for displaying plush toys and other members of the Wikimedia Cuteness Association.Netha Hussain (talk) 13:21, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Breakout rooms can be built in order to establish communication between cultures and languages. Even cross-wiki collaborations can arise from these breakout rooms. -Kurmanbek (talk) 17:54, 14 October 2022 (UTC)
Provide possibilities to get in conversations with online participants through some kind of communication possibility through a platform and maybe also with some devices positioned at corners with lower noise level quiet enough for communication. At the WikiCON 2022 in Stralsund in Germany Venueless was used for that. How much it was used is something I do not know, but I really liked the possibility. --Hogü-456 (talk) 16:26, 22 October 2022 (UTC)
Partnerships
Possible partnerships or institutional invitees?
Internet Archive - always an ally of ours, find a meaningful way to do something?
Open Streetmaps - they are not doing a big 2023 global State of the Map conference at this point (announced October 2022), so maybe invite them to do something? They are in close contact with Wikimedia Italia.
Creative Commons - something related to license education for the masses? Not just about CC on Wikiverse but beyond that, like licensing your video with CC on Youtube, etc.
Volunteering
Provide certificate of participation for volunteers
Working in ICT room for ensuring effective presentations
Documentation of activities
Awareness of Wikimania via social media platforms and usergroups
Welcome in-person participants with direction to different halls for activities
Set up boards and resources for posters. -Ngostary2k (talk) 00:42, 15 October
Travel and stay
Provide ride-sharing-like planning system for participants who want to co-ordinate and travel with others
ideally already before booking travel, but also after
ideally just dependent on Wikimedia User accounts, but optionally with more info
ideally use the opportunity of shared time for informing, inspiring, skill share or similar, but maybe also just getting to know about each other
Provide for stay-together/near planning system for participants who are flexible with stay
ideally so participants can share both costs and interests
ideally for participants who have limited EN language understanding or need other assistance to get it from a peer
Optimising online participation
Someone suggested I relocate here a comment I made at Facebook's Wikipedia Weekly. Wikimania, I think, is a good opportunity to continue the WM movement's history of creativity and innovation by finding how to make the online experience better. It so might well result in stronger international impact, and is in the interests of the cultural and linguistic equality that the WM movement has been pioneering for two decades. Why don't show, by example, how the academics and medics can arrange better online conferences?
Here's the comment I made at Wikipedia Weekly on Facebook, modified and expanded a little:
Very glad the coming Wikimania will also be online. Is there space for some creative designing of the schedule so that participants can pre-organise themselves into online "coffee tables" – say, 30 minutes between two panels/talks, perhaps with a pre-appointed facilitator and note-taker, and a question posed that could be brainstormed, possibly related to themes of the panels/talks? It could be great way for people to network – the difficulty of forging new collaborations with each other has always been a complaint about online conferences.
There are also ways of making video the interpersonal factor more rewarding and dynamic. Eye contact is very important in video conferencing (specifically, making and breaking eye contact, we've known since the results of 2018 research). So guidelines for setting up your Zoom would be great: level with camera, pretty close to it so your portrait fills the screen, and as good a connectivity as possible. A good thing about Zoom is that people's names are displayed, and it can be set up so they can text to each other and to all, as they wish, through the chatbot.
I know it's fiddly and hard work, but could bookings be made with the help of local chapters at a place like a central library internet room, in a few countries where connectivity is not always good. I'm thinking of a cities in Africa, for example, and the Subcontinent (Nepal, for example). We need to make participation easier for WMians in the developing world!
It could be achieved by volunteers who are good with people in a cross-linguistic environment; and probably an overall manager responsible to the Wikimania organisers.
Regrettably my volunteer load is already so great that I can't be involved directly. My ideas owe a lot to Dr Richard Parncutt, a friend who is an academic at Graz University in Austria and has organised pilots of conferences that aim to do the online stuff really well.)
Wikimania 2017
Wikimania 2017
Wikimania 2018
