Grants:TPS/Nkansahrexford/Wikimania/2014/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2014!

Participant

Your username goes here: Nkansahrexford

Your home wiki goes here: English Wikipedia, WikiData, Commons Wikimedia

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).

The Wikimania Conference was a first time experience for me. I have interest in taking pictures and videos. With this interest, I planned working on a video documentary to share with friends back home who couldn't attend the conference, and also show to others who've not yet come to know the world of Wikimedia to see how volunteers around the world help in making knowledge free and open and easy to access. I'm glad to also have assistance and tips from Victor Grigas on how to go about it all.

I am glad to be working on the documentary and really enjoyed hearing the stories of some 10 wikimedians from different part of the world, sharing their stories in some 8 different languages. This new initiative will, hopefully, help increase the interest many have in sharing with Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation project websites, as they'll realize many people from different places already are actively a part of this global community.

I have started work on the documentary, and hope to complete in the upcoming months.

Connections

The conference was an opportunity for me to meet in person many wikimedians I've been in contact with via the emails. Taking part in some of the hackathon sessions that interests me also drew me closer to some of the developers behind the systems of Wikimedia.

I had the opportunity to also discuss potentials collaborations with other volunteers such as the Medical Translations for some of the local languages we have in Ghana. Some volunteers in Ghana have already showed interest, and we hope our collaboration with Carl, who's part of the Med Translating team will be fruitful, and beneficial, going in the long run to promote knowledge in local languages.

As part of a team of Wikimedians in Ghana aiming to be recognized by the WMF as a User Group, I enjoyed talking to Tanvir from the AfCom in that regard. It was such a great opportunity to meet a member of the AfCom and discuss the group goals with.

I met with Adele, from the Wikipedia Zero team, and was excited to know Ghana is on their radar and hope to strike a similar project with networks in the country.

Having a booth at the community village also gave me the opportunity to meet new people. Some who came around had no idea about Wikipedia, and it was a nice opportunity to share my story with. In the process, I also met a Ghanaian who has heard about Wikipedia, but had no idea to get started. I'm in touch with him, and hope to get him started.