ESEAP Conference 2024/Report/Dody Ismoyo

The ESEAP Conference 2024 was the bi-annual international conference of Wikimedia Foundation which took place in Kota Kinabalu, Sabah, Malaysia on 10–12 May 2024.

Sponsorship

I would like to thank Wikimedia Foundation for granting me the full sponsorship to attend this conference.

Words of Thank You

I would like to convey my biggest gratitude to all of the members of Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia who are part of the conference's core organizing team and also volunteers who have made this conference possible and successful as the first ever international conference of Wikimedia held in Malaysia.

Roles

During the conference, I carried out five different roles:

MC of Welcome Sunset Reception and Dinner, ESEAP Conference 2024
President, Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia
Core organizing team, ESEAP Conference 2024
Trust and safety team, ESEAP Conference 2024
Committees, ESEAP Preparatory Council of ESEAP Hub

MC of Welcome Sunset Reception and Dinner

Mia and I as the MC for the Welcome Sunset Reception and Dinner

I had an almost impromptu (or very short amount of time of practice) prior to becoming the MC for the opening reception of the event to welcome all of the participants to the conference on Thursday night, just few hours after my arrival at the conference city. I had to ensure that I addressed everyone correctly and thanked all of the related parties. I allocated a slot for the trust and safety team leader, representative from the hotel and representative from Sabah Tourism Board to have their say during the opening reception.

President of Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia

Giving welcoming speec during the opening ceremony

I presented a welcoming speech to the audience on the opening ceremony of the conference on the first day, presenting the short history of Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia, thanking the organizer of the conference and welcoming the participants to Kota Kinabalu. And also making the remark that the Malaysia user group is committed for any gap, not only gender gap, but also location gap, in a sense that the very first Wikimedia conference in Malaysia was held outside the capital city Kuala Lumpur.

I tried to give some words of encouragement to the Kent Wiki Club during their presentation session on the challenges that they may face in the future, and that is very normal and part of daily life of Wikimedians.

Core organizing team of ESEAP Conference 2024

Maintain constant communication with Wikimedia Foundation people from the beginning of this conference preparation stage until the end, and also maintain close communication with the hotel people before, during and after the conference. Standby for all of the technical (e.g. audio, video, visual etc) help for most of the sessions. Answer (or redirected to the appropriate parties on) all inquires from the participants.

Trust and safety team of ESEAP Conference 2024

Throughout the conference, me and my team had encountered several trust and safety violations, and we tried our best to solve it as early as possible within the highest confidential level to the victims or perpetrators. I reminded the participants several times regarding the trust and safety matters whenever I am hosting the session to enforce the safety rules during the conference (e.g. to keep wearing the participant tags at all times etc).

Committees of ESEAP Preparatory Council

Getting audience input for ESEAP Hub

Making an open poll to decide the host for ESEAP Conference 2026

Having been elected as one of the committee of the ESEAP Hub under the ESEAP Preparatory Council during the Wikimania 2023, me and my team finalized the final draft of the hub's charter to the conference audience. My team and I presented on the latest progress of ESEAP Hub to the audience. We also opened for input from them on what are the important matters for the hub to grow in the future. Lastly, we organized the open polling to determine the next host for ESEAP Summit 2025 and ESEAP Conference 2026.

Others

There were other roles and discussions I had with several people or groups for idea exchanges or knowing latest update.

Wikimedia Foundation

Had a discussion with one of the Wikimedia Foundation (WMF) staff on the relevance of Wikipedia with newbies knowing rules are getting stricter year by year.

Wikimedia Indonesia

Had a discussion with the people of Wikimedia Indonesia Chapter to further strengthen our collaboration (with Malaysia user group) for future events, and also to learn from them in their daily operation and challenges.

Wikimedia Mongolia community

Had a detailed discussion on the outreach work in Mongolia and the (then) current problems about Wikimedia Commons in Mongolia due to the absence of Freedom of Panorama in the country, in which it was eventually settled when the new copyright law had been enacted and interpreted to show that Mongolia is now have the Freedom of Panorama. Other discussion is the future works on Mongolia articles with the collaboration with Wikimedia Malaysia user group.

Improvements

The use of Navan website for flight booking may ease and standardize the flight booking process, but there is less flexibility in case the participant has to do some last-minute change of flight date or time. In my case, due to some internal problem, I had to reschedule my flight a day later, and when I logged back to my userpage in Navan, it said my flight could not be changed at all. Had I booked from the original flight website, there would be more flexibility for changes until the very last minute.
The full conference schedule should be printed out and pasted out side all of the conference rooms so that participants could easily know what at the session going on without having to go through their phones to check online on the conference schedule again and again.
There should have been more organizing team members of the conference to deal with any matter, especially the audio visual and technical-related helps, especially when the conference consisted of three parallel rooms.

Future plans

After fully immersed in this conference, I have learned more things to prepare myself to organize any future Wikimedia conference in Malaysia, with all of the improvements learned from any previous shortcomings.