Wikimania 2017: Learnings, ideas, motivation and outcome

Wikimania 2017, a 5-day conference held at Le Centre Sheraton Montreal hotel during 9th Aug - 13th August was full of learnings, connections, getting inspired, motivation, free knowledge, events, hackathon, food (sorry, I'm foodie :D), positive vibes and what else, you call it a family of Wikipedians.

My previous blog post, depicted my experience at the hackathon. This post will share my experience at Wikimania 2017 as a whole. I hope you will find it worth a read!

Wikimania 2017: An unexpected twist

This year too, I was awarded with Wikimania Scholarship. How many times does it happen to you, that you wake up, check your mail, and you see you're going to Canada to attend Wikimania? It happened with me. The moment I received the E-mail from Scholarship Committee, I almost fall off my bed in happiness. I didn't go to college that day, and went back home to deliver the happy news to my family. They were equally happy. It was a moment of euphoria for all of us. If you think this was the twist, you're wrong. I applied for Canada TRV in June. With all other Indic Wikipedians getting rejected by the Canadian embassy, I was very nervous. August arrived and still there was no news from the embassy. On August 03, I went back home totally disheartened. I was sure I won't be going to Canada. So, how many times does it happen to you, that you wake up, and unexpectedly, you get Canada visa just 4 days before your flight. The twist didn't end here. We were celebrating the good news but my passport didn't arrive at the VFS office. It was still with the embassy. I wasn't sure whether the embassy will release my passport that day. And I was again depressed. It was Friday and if embassy didn't release the passport that day, my trip would have been canceled despite getting the visa. Saturday, Sunday and Monday was off at the VFS office and I had my flight early Tuesday. :( I called my dad and he said, "Believe in God. You go to Chandigarh. Don't let your hopes die." So, I went to Chandigarh later that day and guess what? The moment I reached the VFS Office, I got the confirmation that my passport has been dispatched from Canada Visa Office. I was so happy. It was unbelievable. So, after waiting for 2 hours more, I finally got my passport with Canada visa and I went back home with victory.

Agenda

My agenda for this year Wikimania was pretty clear and straightforward. With my involvement in Wikipedia Education Program and my evolution in the existing program, I thought of sharing my experiences and learnings with the community in the lightning talk. I also wanted to gain more insights in the technology so I spent the first two days in the hackathon sessions. Build more connections from different communities and get inspired from their experiences. So, in a nutshell, Learn from the workshops and sessions, get inspired from the talks, meet with other Wikipedians and enjoy.

Learnings:

• Gained better insights on the Wikimedia tech. Learnt about the technologies used in Wikidata.
• Attending a session on "Speaking the language of non-Wikipedians helped me a lot. Now, whenever I run an education program or just teach the people how to edit Wikipedia, I think like them and I make sure I teach them in a way they find it interesting and contribute more and more even after I leave.
  • Encourage them to write in Google Doc, MS Word, wherever they feel comfortable and later paste it later to sandbox.
  • Make plans and strategy that ease them.
  • Welcoming the new editors with Visual editor and teaching them references, the article format, media upload etc.
  • Sharing the educational experiences within the community.

• I gained better insights on how to develop an education program from scratch.
  • Importance of Context in implementing the education program.
  • Advertising the education program with the help of local newspapers.
  • Importance of partners such as teachers, students and logistics such as ISP's.
  • Sharing the educational experiences within the community.

• Learnt from the experiences of Wikipedia Year of Science 2016.
  • Approaching the students to share their knowledge of science.
  • Professors bring the subject matter expertise.
  • Recruiting instructors was a bad idea.

• The session from Zach was the best session I attended at Wikimania 2017. His outcomes from WEP were outstanding and his way of connecting Wikipedia with real life was amazing.

• The Wikispeech session was very nice. I was finally seeing the latest innovation in Wikipedia. Though, it needed some improvements but still the demo was worth watching.
• Wikispeech was followed by the "Editing through Telegram" session by Amir. A. Aharoni where he created a bot which is connected with translatewiki.net and you can continuing your translation just by using Telegram. People actually find it difficult to edit Wikipedia via phone so they skip doing it but at the same time they are using messenger apps like WhatsApp, Telegram and FB Messenger to talk. What if we make them edit Wikipedia using these apps? A brilliant idea indeed!
• The Kathabhidana workshop was very informative. Wikitungi was explained in this session which focuses on preserving the languages and dialects. I am working on to expand it in my area where different dialects of Hindi is being spoken. Preserving their dialect for future is a much essential need.

Outcomes

• I talked with Education experts like Nichole, Vahid, Zach and learning from their experiences, I was delighted. So, I implemented their learnings in my WEP program at SSPM College of Engineering and my school and it came out to be so fruitful.
• Wikipedia SAARC Meetup was very constructive. A lot of things for the next year was decided especially the next WikiConference India.
• I ran a Wikimania 2017 learning session to share my learnings with the local community. Apparently, one of the people who attended it got motivated to contribute more. He is now my very good friend and he will be joining the Hindi Wikipedia Technical workshop at Jaipur hopefully. He is Sachin Katiyar.
• MEP (MediaWiki Education Program) implemented at SSPM College of Engineering! (So happy)
• Will be opening a WikiClub in my college to invite young editors from my college to edit Wikipedia and run edit-a-thons.

So, this was it. Wikimania 2017 was indeed my best Wikimanias ever. The hotel, the place and my post Wikimania trip to Toronto and Niagara with my cousins was so exhilarating. With the amazing memories, people, learnings and outcomes, I am missing Montreal. Thank you Wikimedia Foundation for the scholarship application. Noting would have been possible without you.

Wikimania Hackathon 2017 - Learn, teach, hack!

So, we're back from Wikimania and certainly I got a bit late in writing the hackathon blog post. But, here I am writing about one of the best Hackathons I ever attended. I hope you'll like the post. Happy reading!

This year's Wikimania at Montréal, Canada had one of the best Hackathons ever. With such a beautiful and open space at Le Centre Sheraton Montreal hotel, the hackathon was full of positive vibes already. This year, we had so much to do at the hackathon. We had,

• Sessions: to provide an overview of the technologies that powers the technical areas of Wikimedia
• Skillshare: to teach the newcomers the relevant skills to contribute to Wikimedia tech
• Sprint: which focuses on special areas like improving documentation, translation, design etc.
• Featured projects: to engage newcomers with projects ^[1]

With all the aforementioned things, the key element of the hackathon was "THE MENTORING PROGRAM". Keep reading to know more about this.

Hackathon - For whom?

One of the best things about Wikimania Hackathon is that it welcomes people from every background, whether technical or non-technical. This year's hackathon had developers, testers, mentors, newcomers and volunteers with each person playing more than one role.

Significance

Wikimania Hackathon is a juice that is always worth the squeeze. Have some glimpse of it below:

• We have projects for every developer - whether Android, iOS, PHP, Machine Learning etc.
• Work on existing projects, report new bugs, solve existing bugs etc.
• Scrum kinda task workboard


Photo by: Anmol Wassan. Released under CC-BY-SA 4.0

• Hackathon sessions
• Overview of Wikimedia technology
• Improving MediaWiki - What to do at MediaWiki when you're new
• Sessions on ORES, Extension:Translate, TemplateData, Parser Hooks etc.

Photo by: Katie Chan. Released under CC-BY-SA 4.0

The Mentoring Program

The coolest thing about Wikipedians is their power of free knowledge. They are the true believer of free knowledge and they know that knowledge only grows if it is shared. To keep this legacy alive, this year at Wikimania we had The Mentoring Program. This program was dedicated especially for newcomers where mentors were matched with newcomers to help them start with projects. The mentor sessions were scheduled on 9^th and 10^th August. The first session included an overview of technologies used by Wikimedia. It was lead by Srishti Sethi and Quim Gill followed by Aaron and Rachel. In the Thursday session, the newcomers were introduced to projects. The mentors were there to help them at every step. Overall, the mentoring program proved to be a huge success.^[2]

One of the newcomers I met, told me his experience with MediaWiki for the first time. He mentioned,

"I never knew learning MediaWiki was this easy. With great mentors around the side, now I can contribute to the technical stuff in addition to the editing stuff. All thanks to hackathon organizers for this amazing mentor session."

I met the recent GSoC Intern who was working on the Wiki Ed Dashboard. It was her first Wikimania. When I asked her, how does it feel to be here in the midst of free knowledge enthusiasts, she said,

"It's like magic. Seeing so many people contributing to free knowledge movement is amazing."

And when I asked her, if she would like to stay associated with the community after her internship ends, she mentioned,

"Indeed! I would love to volunteer for Wikimedia and learn more about MediaWiki. You will definitely see me around IRC and Phabricator even after my internship."

With two days of learning, teaching and hacking, we had the hackathon showcase, with contributors showcasing their work they did in the 2 days. The hackathon was then officially concluded with the group picture.

Photo by: Martin J. Kraft (1979– ) Released under CC-BY-SA 3.0

If you ever plan to come to Wikimania Hackathon, if you are familiar with the MediaWiki code, do come and work on your existing project or task. Present it during the showcase. People will appreciate your contributions and keep you motivated. If you're newcomer but MediaWiki excites you in any way, don't think, just come. There will be people guiding you and matching you with the projects to help you get started.

At last, but not the least, I would like to thank Wikimedia Foundation for the Wikimania scholarship. It was indeed a very enjoyable, fruitful, and knowledgeable experience at Montreal.

References

^[1] https://wikimania2017.wikimedia.org/wiki/Hackathon#Focus_Areas
^[2] https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Hackathons/Handbook/Mentoring_program/Wikimania_2017#An_overview_of_the_mentoring_program_plan_for_Wikimania_Hackathon_2017_in_Montreal