Gebruiker:Effeietsanders/Wikimania 2014

During Wikimania 2014 (London) I was allowed to go on a scholarship of Wikimedia Nederland (travel & accommodation only). Following is a short overview of the most relevant activities during the conference in which I was involved.

On the Wednesday/Thursday, during the hackathon, I was involved with some wrapping up activities for Wiki Loves Monuments 2013 - especially with relation to the Guinness World Record application. Also, I had some good discussions with people from Tunisia, Kazakhstan and other countries about their challenges in the contest and future activities.

On Friday, I mostly attended sessions, and I participated in the panel discussion after the 'Cool Projects' presentation. For the first time since I organized that presentation in 2010 (Haifa), I was not involved with the actual preparations and presentation, but only participated in a panel that talked about the wider scope of the topic (what are cool projects, how to run them etc).

Saturday was the focus of my Wikimania attendance. This day I was the main organizer (together with Iolanda Pensa) of the Wikimania Discussion Room: 8 sessions of 40 minutes with facilitated round table discussions. I was able to lead the discussions and make them more effective. The notes of the discussions are available at the Wikimania2014-wiki, and at least one blog post on the WMF blog resulted from these discussions (Sixty ways to help new editors).

There were many many fruitful discussions, which are impossible to capture here to satisfaction. Discussions with candidate affiliates about their future plans, discussions with WMF staff about staff-community interactions and grant systems and discussions about Wikimania 2015. At the very end of the conference, I collected the favorite sessions of a large number of participants, and tallied that, to help people at home decide which sessions they should definitely watch back: Favorite sessions tally. Have fun watching!