Grants:TPS/Mehman97/Wikimania/2019/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2019!

Participant

Outcome

Wiki Loves Caucasus by Mehman

About my trip to Wikimania 2019 and my activities there I told my community in Georgia and representatives of Wikimedia UG Georgia during the Wikimedia Foundation Strategy Salon in Tbilisi, September 9, 2019, where I was an organizer and facilitator.

You can familiarize yourself with this meeting on this link, where photos are also presented, as well as check out the Strategy Salon report.

The whole process of Wikimania was very interesting for me, I had a chance to acquaint the interested audience with my presentation about the upcoming competition, which I will organize with my colleagues.

Wiki Loves Caucasus is the first regional competition, which is organized by Caucasian Wikimedians. The main goal of the competition is to create as many articles about the Caucasus in the languages of the Caucasus as possible. During Wikimania, I and my colleague from Wikimedia Russia, with Oleg Abarnikov presented a report on the upcoming collaboration. Our presentation was called the Caucasian collaboration. Video from the session can be found here & here.

It should be noted that this was my first Wikimania in which I participated and I'm very glad that I managed to take part in the Training Days, where I ended up in the second cohort. We were trained by Asaf Bartov, who taught us in detail how to build sustainable partnerships, how to solve conflicts in Wikipedia and Wikicommunity, and how to conduct trainings. I’m going to apply all these skills to my community.

I got a chance to take part in the reception at the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs on WikiGap. Here I met different participants and organizers of the event.

During Wikimania, I had a meeting with representatives of the Affiliation Committee, to whom I presented the latest news about Wikimedia UG Georgia, where we adopted the charter and registered in the Ministry of Justice of Georgia. Wikimedia UG Georgia already acts as a non-governmental organization on the territory of Georgia.

CEE Meetup at Wikimania 2019. Group Photo

Also took part and spoke at "Wiki Loves Earth" session, along with representatives WMUA and organizers of the contest.

During Wikimania, I visited important and interesting sessions for me, several of them are:

Also attended regional meetings such as CEE Meetup and User Groups Meetup.

New Creation

All the knowledge that I gained during the Training Days at Wikimania, including regarding partnerships and conflict resolution among Wikicommunity, I'm going to apply to my community work.

Also during Wikimania, I visited Hackathon, where with the representative of Israel, Amir Aharoni, I was able to eliminate some of the technical problems in the Georgian Wikipedia.

With the help of the acquired skills at Wikimania, I'm going to conduct Wiki-trainings (see WikiTrainings in Marneuli) for ethnic minorities in Georgia, which will then work actively on Georgian Wikipedia. This is a good opportunity for the integration of ethnic minorities in Georgia.

Connections

CivilServants 2019

During Wikimania, I met representatives of many countries and WikiCommunity, I had a very productive conversation with everyone on different topics. I made new connections with the following users: Тимерхан, Frhdkazan, HakanIST, Spiritia, Gereon K., I JethroBT (WMF), Ynhockey, A.Aida88, З. ӘЙЛЕ, Perohanych and others.

Also met with colleagues and friends from other WikiCommunities, including: Wertuose (WMAZ), Dmitry Zhukov (WMRU), Oleg Abarnikov (WMRU), Stas Kozlovsky (WMRU), Vladimir Medeyko (WMRU), Eldar Azimov (WMAZ), Asaf Bartov (WMF), User:Basak (WMTR), Reda Kerbouche (WMAL), User:Mardetanha (WMIR) and others. Here I wrote some of the people I met or met again, in general, there are certainly more of them.

I had the chance to take part in the summit of the CivilServant, where I also met many other participants of Wikimedia projects.

With new friends, I was able to agree on new projects and cooperation, just as I agreed with the old friends on the next steps for common projects. One of such projects is the Wiki Loves Caucasus, where during Wikimania, representatives of Azerbaijan, Armenia, Russia and Georgia met and all together agreed on further general steps for the project.

Anything else

After the launch of [wikimedia.ge], which will be the official website of Wikimedia UG Georgia, I'm going to write an extensive article about Wikimania and Wikimedia movement there.

During the Wikimania visit, I took a lot of photos of both the event itself and the city of Stockholm. All my photos will soon be available on this link (now there are only a few).

You can also view photos from Wikimania where I'm captured.