Event:Wikicon Australia 2024/Reports/Chinneeb

Questions to be addressed

Things learned at the conference
How the participant hopes to use his/her new learnings/skills
Comments about the conference
Suggestions for future Wikicons

Response

I attended Wikicon Australia 2024 in Adelaide, my first regional Wikicon. While my contributions to Wikipedia have mostly been Mongolia-focused until now, I've been trying to become more involved in local community events in Australia since attending ESEAP 2024, and I'm grateful to Wikimedia Australia in offering a scholarship to attend.

Wikicon Australia 2024 had a focus on First Nations content, with a theme of "the Power of community, diverse voices". It was great to learn about various initiatives and projects that have been undertaken with a focus on First Nations content, and more representation by First Nations Wikimedians would be great to see moving forward.

I enjoyed the various talks given during the conference, and it was nice to see and connect with local Wikimedians in real life.

Learnings

I’ve been interested in mining Wikipedia data for trends and knowledge gaps for a while, and the talk "Measuring the progress of Australian content with Wikidata" by 99of9 was a great intro on Australian content in Wikidata. I’ve been aware of Sparql for some time, but it was nice to finally see a demo and some interesting use cases. I’m keen to utilise Sparql for future scripting as well as data analyses of Mongolian content within Wikidata.

Bilby’s talk on recognising and managing Conflicts of Interest was quite illuminating, especially re. the anecdotes on paid Wikipedia editors. I’ve been contemplating the possibility and implications of getting paid editors into small language projects, so this is a topic I’m keen to follow-up on.

Aliceinthealice’s talk on ensuring cultural sensitivity when uploading First Nations images was also quite instructive, and the project described (digitising materials from remote communities) is something I’d be keen to participate in in the future.

Finally, Bracteantha’s summary of the happenings at Wikimania Katowice was quite interesting for someone who's never attended a Wikimania, and Pakoire’s collaging session was a nice chill session to break up the day and think (and my first collaging experience in what feels like decades).

Comments and suggestions

Time: While I enjoyed the various presentations and workshops at the conference, I wonder if they were all a bit rushed. Some more wiggle room between talks would be good to see at future events.
Host city specific events: Some education/sessions on the local area the Wikicon is held in would be much appreciated, especially if held by local Wikimedians.
Finally, a thank you to everyone who organised the conference, it was a great opportunity to meet up and learn from the Australian Wikimedian community!