Grants:TPS/Papuass/Wikimania/2017/Report

Welcome back from Wikimania 2017!

Participant

Papuass

Latvian Wikipedia (lvwiki), Wikidata

Outcome

Shared Experience:

My Wikimania experience was shared in these ways:

• During meetup with Latvian commuity
• Written report in Latvian Wikipedia (established practice for conference attendees)
• Wrote insights from conference in our communitie's Skype text chat.

New Creation:

I attended plenty of Wikidata related sessions as this is one of my interests. Although I follow status updates from project, it was useful to hear various developments from people in real life. Inspired by multiple presentations about Wikidata powered infoboxes, I submitted a speech for Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2017 titled "Current state of Wikidata powered infoboxes". This became my first full length presentation in Wikimedia conferences.

Connections

I met lots of familiar people from previous Wikimedia related conferences in Montreal, but I also made new contacts by participating in social activities during the event and going for a lunch break sightseeing hike to Mont Royal with people who I had not met previously — Deryck Chan and Imzadi1979.

I strengthened my ties with people from CEE region, participating in traditionally long meetup (over 2 hours). This circle of people have influenced me to take up diverse activities from #100wikidays self imposed writing challenge to organizing international part of region wide Wikimedia CEE Spring 2017 article contest.

In addition to CEE meetup, I attended the Nordic meetup. Latvia culturally belongs to both of these regions, so it makes sense to participate. Countries here are much closer and we worked on plans to have a meeting next year with wikimedians from Sweden taking leading role.

For the first time I used chance to talk with AffCom members representing Wikimedians of Latvia User Group. It was a necessary discussion to clarify where we stand as an affiliate and what are the expectations and suggestions from them.

It was interesting for me to attend Wiki Loves Monuments talk by international team members. I am happy to see their advancements in technological and informational support. I am most excited about new WLM maps website powered by Wikidata.

Anything else

I did not present myself, but I attended a great deal of other people talks and was involved in discussions after the presentation. I was surprised to see that many parallel tracks — it seems that people are really eager to present their ideas. Before the conference I tried to encourage other members of my community to apply as historically they have been rather passive. During later talks I found out that some of them were considering it. I will try to work with them more to motivate their participation in international events.

It was also nice to have my portrait photograph taken by WMF photographer Victor Grigas, now I can use it for various representation purposes.