Grants:TPS/Discott/Wikimania/2014/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2014!

Participant

Discott

en.Wikipedia

I am also a board member of the Wikimedia chapter in South Africa (recently elected president of Wikimedia ZA).

Outcome

Option 3: New Creation: What was one useful outcome that was created at the event for the Wikimedia movement?

Add a link to something new that was created as a result of your participation in this event (for example, you might link to a new tool that you and your co-participants worked on at the Hackathon, or to pages created in a workshop you participated in).

• African meetup: I helped organise and run a meetup for African Wikipedians at Wikimania, more information about which can be found on our 2014 Chapter's report here.
• Met with Wikimedia CH (Switzerland) to discuss the rollout of Kiwix in South Africa. This directly led to me applying for, and successfully obtaining, a grant on Wikimedia ZA's behalf to obtain 2 offline wireless Kiwix devices for demonstration and rollout purposes in South Africa. If we are successful this could lead to the rollout by government or other non-profit-organisations of the offline Kiwix system in South Africa. I am particularly excited at the prospect of rolling it out in rural schools. Very exciting!

Connections

Hanging out with some of the North Africans by the the Wikimedia ZA stand at the Chapter's village.

Where to start!? I love connecting with people at Wikimania and always find that I never have enough time to talk with everyone I want to or even plan to. Having said that below are some of the most important connections I had at Wikimania 2014:

• Because I am the organiser of Wiki Loves Monuments in South Africa I connected with the usual crowd around organising and hosting Wiki Loves Monuments. We discussed strategy and coordination around hosting this year's event. I have just completed this year's WLM on South Africa and feel that it was a great success. Meeting the team at Wikimania, I feel, helped in achieving this success.

• Connected with Wikimedia CH (Charles Andres) about Kiwix, see above for more information on that.

• Connected with Wikimedia UK to discuss future cooperation and inter chapter cooperation.

• Connected with previous hosts of Wikimania: connected with and discusses issues and experiences of hosting a Wikimania in preparation for future possible bid for Wikimania in Cape Town. I discussed this with: Edward Saperia (Wikimania 2014) and Deror Avi (Wikimania 2011).

• Members of Wikimedia ZA who are now based in Europe as well as some key staff at the Wikimedia Foundation.

• Chatted with Andy Mabbett about mass uploads onto Commons as well as his voice biography project. Also connected with Roger Bamkin to discuss rolling out a Cape Town version of Jobergpedia.

I could go on but I will stop there.

Anything else

I took load of photographs at Wikimania but did not think to categorise them. In lue of that here is a selection of some of them:

• 
  Conservatory at the Barbican on one of the first hackathon days.
• 
  The plenary session, this picture did the rounds on facebook during the event.
• 
  A picture Julie Anne Workman took of me at the Open Street Map event in the Fountain Room.