What happened at Wikimania?
Wikimania 2017 was 9-13 August. Many people used the conference as an opportunity to participate, speak up, learn, engage, and form collaborations. The challenge following the event is to capture the momentum and meaning of it all while it is still fresh. The Signpost would like to publish all the news and updates from the event, but you and your colleagues have not yet written your articles about the event!
Will you please share what you learned at Wikimania in the form of a news story for The Signpost? Write your draft now, but feel free to submit your story anytime. As a conference which is largely volunteer organized, it takes some time to categorize all the media produced at the conference and publish all the lasting ideas which people had there. Over the next few weeks the professional videographers will be uploading the official videos of the keynote talks and some other presentations. The majority of talks either were not recorded, or were recorded by volunteers who will share the videos on their own time. Individual presenters may or may not share their slides or other materials.
Did you present at Wikimania? If so, and you want to reach an even larger audience, consider turning your talk and the discussions you had about your presentation into an article for The Signpost. Did you attend a talk at Wikimania that you found meaningful? Then please consider contacting the presenter, doing a 2-3 question follow up interview with them, then publishing your response to their presentation in The Signpost. Did you and another person have a conversation at the conference that you want to share? Again, The Signpost is a record of current thought in the Wikipedia community as we present it to each other and to the non-wiki outside world. If you can draft at least 5 sentences in the manner of a journalist and will agree to go through a traditional editorial process, then congratulations, you qualify to be a freelance writer for The Signpost.
The impact of Wikimania does not end at the in-person event. Please, everyone, ping everyone else who did anything significant at Wikimania and offer them the option to publish their project, idea, discussion, controversy, opinion, argument, conspiracy theory, rant, fan letter, or other journalistic material in The Signpost. Writers get a relevant audience, entry into the public record, and sweet community discussion.
To submit drafts or proposals, or for further information, visit the Submissions desk.
Discuss this story
No more scholarships to those who don't turn in their reports! Why do I see so many heads looking down at their electronic devices in the picture? Are they busy taking notes, or just bored by the discussion? I watched this one online, and was underwhelmed by it. Certainly not worth paying rack rate to get in the door. wbm1058 (talk) 12:05, 6 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
For one thing, many people want to attend Wikimania but can't, due to money; others would like to, but cannot due to other commitments. So being given a grant to attend Wikimania is a privileges do not have, & being cavalier about submitting reports disrespects those who did not enjoy this privilege. (I notice that there are reports from previous years, so I suspect submitting a report in return for the scholarship has been communicated better than you think. I also notice that as many as 9 more people turned in reports since Chris' post above, so maybe our comments are prodding people to file their reports.)
Another reason is that I would expect attendees to be motivated & excited about what they learn at Wikimania, thus eager to share this information. Were the sessions & interactions disappointing this year, & that is why the reports are coming in late?
A last reason is that while I doubt I will have the opportunity to attend a Wikimania in the next couple of years -- I have two small children I help parent -- I would like to know more about what happens each year than the text of the keynote addresses & the haphazard notes of sessions & discussion boards. Knowing what attendees thought were the most events & topics raised would convey a sense of actually attending.
So not having any report of this year's Wikimania disappoints me. Maybe it disappointed its attendees this year. Or maybe the attendees refuse to live up to their responsibilities, both as scholarship recipients & as Wikimedians, to help make the information free & are disappointing the rest of us. -- llywrch (talk) 02:47, 13 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]