User:Mehman/Reports/Wikimania 2019

The 15th annual meeting of all people who are involved in Wikimedia projects – Wikimania 2019 was held in the capital of Sweden, in Stockholm. I, as Wikimedian and Wikipedian, participated in this conference for the first time. I, at this conference besides myself also represented Wikimedia UG Georgia, where I'm a Board Member and Chairman of the organization. Also, together with a representative of Wikimedia Russia, I made a presentation about Caucasian Collaboration and together with representatives of Wikimedia Ukraine, made a speech Wiki Loves Earth session.

Generally

The whole conference was held in a friendly space. The conference was organized at the highest level by the organizers. All the spaces for meetings and presentations were equipped with all the necessary technical means, but the time for some meetings was short.

Learning Days

Learning Days at Wikimania 2019 was the first Learning Days workshop to be led by the new Community Development team at the Wikimedia Foundation. This iteration of the workshop was also the first to separate participants into three tracks or cohorts based on their prior organizing experience, in order to better tailor the workshop to the needs and capacities of attendees.

I took part in the second cohort, where the trainer was an Asaf Bartov, who for two days explained to us in detail all the topics that were part of the Learning Days program. For two days we listened to presentations on various important topics, including topics:

1. Public Speaking
2. Partnerships
3. Conflict Engagement for Humans

On each topic, we listened in detail to the paths to them and the stage of how to manage or resolve them. 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. I’m going to apply all these skills to my community.

Community Growth Space

Caucasian Collaboration

Wiki Loves Caucasus by Mehman

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.

The Caucasus, a region of locations between the Caspian and the Black Sea, has a strategic location between east and west. The region is rich in culture and historical heritage, but the region is known for its conflicts and unresolved problems. Problems are both political and interethnic in nature, which affects the relations of communities in the region. Our main goal, representatives of the Wikimedia communities of this region, despite the problem situations, is to solve the problems of the situation through the development of Wikimedia projects and to restore the relationship between communities for the development of the Wikimedia movement in this region. We try to do this by conducting various joint projects.

Environmental sustainability

Wiki Loves Earth

Wiki Loves Earth (WLE) is the second largest photo contest organized by the Wikimedia Community. Over seven years, it has helped attract more than 585,000 free-licensed photos of natural monuments from the whole world. Obviously, Wiki Loves Earth has brought a lot of benefits to nature. Apart from its main goal of illustrating nature protected areas, the contest helps raise awareness of the issue of nature preservation.

During Wikimania, as part of an international organizing committee, I attended a session on Wiki Likes Earth where we presented the public with a presentation about our contest.

CivilServant Summit

CivilServants 2019

I had the chance to take part in the summit of the CivilServant, where I also met many other participants of Wikimedia projects. During this summit, we were looking for ways to improve the space of Wikimedia projects for all users, but especially for beginners who are interested in Wikimedia projects but cannot adapt to them.

During the summit, several working groups were able to develop plans to solve various problems to improve the space of Wikimedia.

Also

• 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.