Events Team Portal/Community Events

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Conference & Event Grants program

The Wikimedia Foundation partners with affiliates, user-groups, volunteers, and mission-aligned organizations to organize events across the world.

The Conference & Event Grants program provides funding and planning support to groups, individuals or organizations to organize local, regional, and thematic conferences that bring together Wikimedians for experience sharing, skill building, and networking.

The conference grant proposal process is designed to support advance planning and collaboration so that movement events make the most of the time and money invested in them.

Applications are accepted throughout the year.

Funding is generally awarded to three broad categories of movement events:

Thematic events such as GLAM Bootcamp, WikiWomen's Camp and Wiki Loves Monuments International team strategy meeting
National and regional conferences like WikiConference India, WikiConference North America and Regional affiliate meetings such as WikiArabia, CEE Meeting and Wiki Indaba
Growth events which focus on new innovative ideas and events focusing on movement growth.

Important notice- If you wish to host an in-person event, please make sure to review and follow the COVID-19 Risk Assessment protocol for in-person gathering.

Schedule

Grant requests are accepted 2 times per year following the schedule below.

Contact us at conferencegrantswikimedia.org as soon as you begin planning an event to discuss timelines and eligibility.

For more information and to apply - please refer to the Conference Grants Program portal.

Conference Fund

Round 2 (2024-2025)

Submission deadline: February 3, 2025
Eligibility check: February 3 - February 24, 2025
Staff review and feedback: February 3 - February 24, 2025
Community review: February 3 - February 24, 2025
Engaging with feedback: February 24 - March 3, 2025
Committee review: March 3 - March 17, 2025
Decisions announced: March 28, 2025
Event dates: June - December 2025

Conference Fund

Round 1 (2025-2026)

Submission deadline: September 1, 2025
Eligibility check: September 1 - September 22, 2025
Staff review and feedback: September 1 - September 22, 2025
Community review: September 1 - September 22, 2025
Engaging with feedback: September 22 - September 29, 2025
Committee review: September 29 - October 13, 2025
Decisions announced: October 27, 2025
Event dates: January - June 2026

Technical Events

We are an online project, and the technical community is comprised out of volunteers and staff alike. Due to its online nature, some of our technical contributors never meet in real life. Through technical events we provide opportunities for our volunteers and staff to get to know each other and to work together.

Events like workshops, joint projects, conferences, hacking spaces and discussions make it easier to contribute and to connect with people with similar interests and build up technical capacity.

The following section covers technical events organized with the Foundation’s annual budget. Local chapters and communities organize many more smaller events, workshops etc. Some are funded via the Wikimedia Foundation’s grants program, others by local chapters or partner orgs.

Wikimedia Hackathon (since 2011)

Purpose: Goals of the Wikimedia Hackathon might differ from year to year. The main themes of the last years have been:

Tech community empowerment and get together
Working on different projects related to Wikimedia-Tech and MediaWiki, also offline usage of Wikipedia (Kiwix) etc.
Get in newcomers + build local technical capacity, attract them to stick around.

Participants: About 200-250. Since 2018, the number of Wikimedia Foundation staff is limited to 50.

Program: The Hackathon is an unconference, combined with a mentorship/newcomer program with a series of introductory sessions and mentor-mentee matching.

(Mentoring) Program design + selection of focus areas: Local organizers and Wikimedia Foundation event manager + folks the event manager selects. Used to have strong involvement from the Developer Relations team.

Organization /Event support: Every year, a different local chapter or user group organizes the Wikimedia Hackathon, supported by Wikimedia Foundation events team.

Date, length, location: April/May, 3 days, usually in Europe

Wikimania Hackathon

One of Wikimania’s special interest pre-conferences (2 days).

Purpose: Provide space for technical contributors who attend Wikimania to get together and hack, provide support for newcomers to Wikimedia-tech.

Participants: About 200. On average, more volunteers attend who tend to be less technical than at the Wikimedia Hackathon. Number of staff is limited as we have a Wikimania-limit for staff attendees.

Scholarships: There are no specific scholarships for the hackathon, just for Wikimania. Tech-only contributors usually don’t receive scholarships for Wikimania.

Wikimedia Technical Conference (since 2018)

Purpose: Discuss and decide on technical direction + strategy; inform annual planning.

Participants: Limited to about 50-60 participants; about ⅔ are Wikimedia Foundation Technology and Product staff, ⅓ are WMDE staff and volunteers.

Program: Designed by a program committee with input from participants. Sessions are led by members of the program committee and attendees.

Program committee: 3 representatives from the Wikimedia Foundation (2 Tech, 1 Product), 1 representative from WMDE, 1 volunteer.

Organization /Event support: The Wikimedia Foundation

Date, length, location: October/November, 4 days, USA

More information

If you want to learn more about our Technical events, or if you would like to take part in organizing such event, please reach out to Birgit Müller (Technical Engagement), or to Joël Letang (Events).