Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia/Reports/Wikimania 2019

Other languages:

Wikimania 2019 is an annual international conference for Wikimedia projects which was held in Stockholm, Sweden from 14 – 18 August 2019. This is the first Wikimania where we have our representative.

Representative

Wikimedia Community User Group Malaysia (WCUGMY) was represented for the first time by User:Tofeiku from Sabah, Borneo Malaysia. He mainly edits in Malay Wiktionary and Wikipedia, and he is also one of the admin of Malay Wikipedia. Having a delegate for the first time for Wikimania is a step in the right direction; showing that the user group is growing and being represented in a global stage.

Report summary

This report offers the perspective of a delagate from a slow yet big community of the main native Malay Wikipedia in Malaysia.

PERSONAL EXPERIENCE BY USER:TOFEIKU

I am really grateful to have the privilege to join Wikimania in Stockholm. Never in my thoughts to join it and so far I enjoy my days in Wikimania. Being around astounding and dedicated people made me want to do the best for my community in Malaysia generally and specifically for Borneo.

Entry process

I (User:Tofeiku) was granted a full scholarship from Civil Servant, a research group that helps Wikipedia and other collaborative website. I did not chose to apply via Wikimedia Foundation due to personal reasons. However, Civil Servant opened an application to attend Wikimania and its post-conference after the dateline which made me consider to try applying for it.

RECOMMENDATION:

Send personal message to small language Wikimedia projects for better representation.

Communication, Financial & Travel Advice for Malaysian Attendee

Flights to and from Sweden, accommodations and conference fee are fully covered by Civil Servant. However, your journey from Stockholm Arlanda Airport to your hotel are by yourself including journeys back and forth to the Wikimania venue. Thus, having some money in hand is important to pay for the bus, tram and metro journeys. Journey to and from the airport can be purchased before coming through online. It is recommended to buy the 7-day pass SL access card for cheaper trips.

Malaysians do not need visa for most European countries thus making the trip to Sweden a breeze.

Meals are provided for free for breakfast in the hotel and lunch in the conference venue. You need to find your own dinner outside and the food portion here is not as big as in Malaysia. Ensure that you have strictly tell the Wikimania team if you have any dietary preference like halal and vegetarian. I have only managed to get my halal lunch on the first day due to having the halal meals running out on the rest of the conference despite having the list of participants.

Communications are done through Telegram which some Malaysians do not use. It is quite convenient for them to have a separate channel for the official conference and for social-related chats.

Do bring some food, coins or souveniers from Malaysia to share them with the global delegates.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

Despite the full scholarship, having a sum of money on hand is important. However, debit or credit card can be used also since it's the norm here. Make sure to activate overseas transaction before travelling.
It is a bit of a challenge for me to find halal food. I only ate breads, egg, fish and vegan/vegetarian food in the hotel and outside. Do bring some food from home just in case like bread or cup noodle.
Despite being there during summer time, it is quite cold due to the constant breeze there. Preferably wear 2 layers or more and long sleeves.
Make sure to have an international adapter due to different socket.

Conference experience

All of the programme details are available in the main wikimania:2019:Program page. This is only a portion of the sessions attended by User:Tofeiku.

Conference Day 1: Friday, 16 August 2019

Session	Notes
Welcome session	Welcoming all the delegates and listen to keynote speech from Michael Peter Edson of The Museum for the United Nations. Safety precautions and introduction about the conference and Sweden by Wikimedia Sverige. Made some acquaitance with delegates from South Korea, United States and the Netherlands.
Intro to the Education Space: Grants for Individuals	Shani Evenstein, Melissa Guadalupe Huertas, Ryan Merkley, TJ Bliss, Ad Huikeshoven, Naureen Nayyar Sharing experience in using Wikimedia projects for education.
How to sustain your language online	Daniel Bögre Udell A language session explaining on how to make languages especially endagered and indigenous language to strive in the modern era. There are 3 steps to sustain the language which are Digitisation, Normalisaiton and Documentation.
Advancing Minority Languages through Wikimedia projects in Educational Settings	Sharing ways for a minority language could use Wikimedia projects for their education. Some instances were in Africa.
Welcome reception	A social function welcoming all participants at Stockholm City Hall. Meet with participants from Indonesia.

Conference Day 2: Saturday, 17 August 2019

Session	Notes
Scaling Wiki in Education: Overcoming Challenges & Growing	Manavpreet Kaur of Punjabi Wikimedians
QUIPU: Quechua Language based Knowledge Graph	Elwin Huaman Showing data programming for the Quechua language in South America. Asking questions in Quecha that will be answered by a chat bot.
The difficulties of Wikipedias in languages that are not taught in school	Zita Ursula Zage, Gereon Kalkuhl Sharing problems faced by indigenous languages that are in the risk of extinction. How does Wikimedia projects could help in teaching younger generations.
Why indigenous languages matter more (now) and what we can do for them	Subhashish Panigrahi, Anass Sedrati, Kristen Tcherneshoff Explaining the importance in preserving indigenous languages and the efforts that can be made to preserve it.
Australian Indigenous language on Wikipedia	Ingrid Cumming Demonstrating how Noongarpedia works in preseving the language. The language edition is still in Incubator but it is written in both Nyungar and English. This is to encourage more speakers to write about their culture. The cultural challenges faced when editing Wikipedia abiding the customs.
Wikidata lexemes	Finn Årup Nielsen A workshop on creating lexemes in Wikidata. Lexemes add words or phrases of a particular language with all the data added for computers.
LinguaLibre	Hugo Lopez, Lucas, Mahuton Possoupe Demonstrating on how to use LinguaLibre in pronunciation of words in any languages. It could also record words of non-native speakers and of different age or country. It is an easy tool to record many words in a short of time and automatically added into Wikimedia Commons.
Luganda Wikipedia	Paulina Bäckström, Caroline Gunnarsson, Dan Frendin, Paul Kiguba Sharing experience from a secondary school teacher from Sweden that organised a visit to Uganda. Helping the community there to give a free knowledge through Wikipedia. It gave a big impact to the village.
Poster session	Activities held across the globe in promoting free knowledge. I talked with some of them. One of it was about a fun teaching module for school kids. The other one is about the events made by Tatar community for schols. There was also a Wikipedia project for kids that help peer assistance.
Meetups	ESEAP meetup Discussing on the plans to organise next year's Wikimania conference in Thailand.

Conference Day 3: Sunday, 18 August 2019

Session	Notes
How to effectively manage Wiki initiatives with the Programs & Events Dashboard (and Event Metrics!)	Krishna Chaitanya Velaga, Ryan McGrady, Sam Walton Demonstrating on how to use the Events Dashboard for education. There are many modules that could be adopted from existing ones. This also helps to give the statistics and outcome from the education programme.
Reviving the wiki in your language	Amir E. Aharoni Recruiting more editors for language and activities and initiatives that could be made to grow the Wikimedia project.
Lunch and meetups	Had a lunch and meetup together with Wikimedians that are interested in indigeneous language. Sharing the activities and challenges faced by the indigenous community.
A wealth of opportunities hiding in plain sight	Kimberli Mäkäräinen, Susanna Ånäs Shairng on experience by Sami community in Norway to preserve their language through Wikimedia projects.
Australian Indigenous language on Wikipedia	Ingrid Cumming Demonstrating how Noongarpedia works in preseving the language. The language edition is still in Incubator but it is written in both Nyungar and English. This is to encourage more speakers to write about their culture. The cultural challenges faced when editing Wikipedia abiding the customs.
Lightning talks	A sharing session relating to the language space. One of it was about the degree of politeness in Sundanese and the measures taken in Sundanese Wikipedia.
Closing session	Listening to speech delivered by Jimmy Wales and last year's Wikimedian of the Year. Announcing 2019 Wikimedian of the Year.
Closing party	A social event at the Nordic Museum.

Minor impressions

Wikimania did they best to have a sustainable conference.
Quite active presence in social media.
Met and made contacts with many participants from Indonesia, India, South Korea, the Netherlands, Israel, Jordan, United States, Germany and many more!
Planning to join Wiki Cute Association :3
Many aspiring people that helped their community and change it for the better good.
Not that many people "youth" here but everyone is friendly regardless.
Not everyone know rock-paper-scissors apparently. It happened during the opening ceremony.
People share about their country and the Wikimedia movement there.
A lot of coin collectors took all my Malaysian coins. Wished I brought more.
Participants here are outgoing and quite chill.