Wikimania 2016

Wikimania 2016, the event that marked the beginning of a new era in my life. To all those who are not aware, Wikimania is an annual event where all Wikimedians across the globe meet each other. This blog post is nothing but a memory to be shared. 

I came in interaction with Wikimedia during Google Code-In 2015. I worked for the foundation and completed various tasks. Meanwhile, I came to know about Wikimania, and applied for scholarship. 

The day I received the E-Mail that I am one of the scholarship recipients for Wikimania 2016, my reaction was similar to this:

I was so overwhelmed and cried out in joy. I was so happy, because I haven't even completed my high school yet, and I got the opportunity to attend Wikimania. I had my exam the next day, but I was so pre-occupied with the excitement, that I could not concentrate. :P Well, I'd like to share the immortal memories I captured at Wikimania 2016.
Before going to Wikimania, I had some things in my mind and I vowed to myself that I will fulfil it.

• Learn everything, even if you know it. 
• Meet other Wikimedians and listen to their stories and how they came in interact with Wikimedia. 
• Discussions with Wikipedia Education Program leaders and how it can be implemented in high schools.
• Learn to make your own MediaWiki extension/skin.
• Migrating the pages in translate extension.

On June 21, 2016, along with some other Indic Wikimedians, I arrived at Esino Lario. The next two days were the learning days (pre-conference). I attended both the sessions at the collaborative space.

Me with Vahid Masrour during learning days. License: CC BY-SA 4.0

Clicked by Ezarate. License: CC BY-SA 4.0

It was really helpful for me. I learnt the use of Phabricator, though I knew it already, but I always created a very bad bug report, which was then rectified. The next thing I learnt during pre-conference days was IdeaLab. IdeaLab motivated me a lot. No matter how big or small the idea is, IdeaLab can really turn the idea into reality. Along with Reem Al-Kashif and few others, we even posted an idea to IdeaLab.
Wikipedia Education Program was something I wanted to know everything about. I have always believed that,

"High School is the most important phase of one's life". 

And introducing the high school students to Wikipedia is one of the great ideas to grow the community. Since, I already did some campaigns in my school, I knew there's a lot of work to do. So, I attended as many sessions as I could on Wikipedia Education Program.
Belonging from a coder background is full of fantasy, and I experienced it at Wikimania. I was attending a session on SVG, and a really talented guy who built the Parliament Diagram Tool, showed us the tool. And me being an immense tester, and error-handler geek, found a bug in the tool while using it. I showed the bug to him and he asked me to add it under the "Issues" on GitHub. I did it, and he fixed it in a couple of hours. MediaWiki drove me towards PHP. And I have always wondered how people created tools and extension or the skins for the MediaWiki. However, with some research and people like Rohit and Tony, I got to know about Google Summer of Code, and they told me to participate in it next year.

I always wanted to learn Python and I got the opportunity at Wikimania when I attended a session on how can we develop SVG's using Python. The beauty of Python is amazing.

At the last day of conference, I was doomed with happiness and sadness. Happiness because I made so many friends, fulfilled my mission, and learnt so much. Sadness because, I was leaving the family behind, the beauty of Esino Lario, and the moments I wanted to live every day.

Thank you WMF for providing me with the trip of my life.