Grants:TPS/Kiril Simeonovski/Wikimania/2015/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2015!

Participant

Your username goes here

Kiril Simeonovski

Your home wiki goes here

Macedonian Wikipedia

Outcome

Option 2: Learning Pattern: What is one useful learning pattern you can share with the Wikimedia movement?

Add a link to a learning pattern - either a new pattern you created with insights from your participation, or an existing pattern to which you added your endorsement and some significant new "considerations" or “examples” from your experience.

My participation at Wikimania 2015 was marked with numerous activities, discussions and meetups. During the pre-conference days, I attended the WMF Learning Day and the Wikimedia Conference Follow-Up Day, while during the conference days, among other things, I attended the CEE Meetup and the Chairpersons meeting. The WMF Learning Day was particularly important for me in acquiring better understanding in specifying SMART goals, the difference between measures and metrics and the importance of the learning patterns as a resource in the volunteer engagement process. The Wikimedia Conference Follow-Up Day helped me find out more about the Volunteer Supporters Network, the challenges that the countries may face in relation to copyright and censorship issues and the format of the Wikimedia Conference in the future. The conference programme was also very useful for me in improving our activities within Shared Knowledge and conceiving of new ideas for projects.

On the last day of the conference, I had a presentation titled "Headhunting of volunteers", focusing on the dimensions of recruiting vs headhunting and volunteers vs employees as well as the potential ways of finding volunteers to coordinate activities and the tips for matching them with the paid staff. The scope of the presentation mostly relates to the volunteer management learning patterns but also to the communications learning patterns, including Find volunteers to support a program, Keeping in touch with volunteers, Division of tasks and responsibilities between board, staff and volunteers and When staff work with volunteers. The presentation was attended by about 20 people and was followed by relevant questions and discussion on different aspects covered with the topic.

Connections

Wikimania 2015 was a nice opportunity to meet with the old friends but also to get in touch with some new people from different communities. I had some conversations with the WMF staff and members of Wikimedia affiliates, in which I shared more about the activities of Shared Knowledge over the last year and our future plans. At the CEE Meetup which took place in the Saturday afternoon, I actively participated in the discussion regarding the final preparations for the CEE WikiCamp 2015, the plans for the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2015 and some other ways to strengthen our mutual cooperation. I have also used to mention the CEE WikiCamp 2015 and explain its structure as a way to improve our regional cooperation at the Chairpersons meeting. Shortly after the conclusion of the conference, I had a fruitful conversation with Dariusz about open-source economics and the possibility to examine our movement and some aspects of it by doing economic research, which was particularly useful for my plans to start doing research on some related topics in near future.

Anything else

Thanks for the scholarship!