Jump to content

GLAM/Newsletter/August 2023/Contents/WREN at Wikimania report

Add links
From Outreach Wiki


WREN at Wikimania report

Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network at Wikimania Singapore

By Anthere
Wikimania group photo

Several members of the WREN attended the annual conference Wikimania in Singapore.

The Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network (WREN) is a recognized Wikimedia user group and affiliate which arranges professional networking among Wikimedians in residence to share peer to peer support with each other, although any Wikimedian is invited to participate in WREN activities.

Several sessions were of interest to members and some were directly proposed by the members of the network. A curated list of GLAM-related sessions may be found here, many of which have been recorded and are available on YouTube.

I facilitated two GLAM sessions myself.

First Learn and discuss with member of the Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network - I organized and facilitated that session, meant to learn about and discover the activities of WREN. Additionally, a member of the network (James Gaunt) collated and published a diff for the user group. Mike Dickison's closing thoughts were powerful, pointing to the need to fixing and supporting metrics or WiR will "disappear ». This discussion session was very lively and very well attended.

Second Joining forces: Partnering with intergovernmental organizations creates new opportunities for the Wikimedia movement - I facilitated this panel conversation. It was a slightly challenging thing to do given that I was alone on stage ... and sound management on the big stage was not optimal. All other panelists, from WIPO, Unesco, OECD, FAO, and Wikimedia Sweden attended online... Also, the initial organizer of the session, Eric Luth, had to cancel his participation to Wikimania entirely and was replaced online on the fly by one of his colleague, Josephine. But ultimately, I believe this was a useful session for the audience as well as for the panelists themselves :)

A major topic discussed this year during Wikimania was the disastrous state of several popular tools, largely unsupported. There is currently a very involved conversation on the GLAM Wiki Telegram group about how to fix the metrics and other parts of the toolchain. It's long, but there is widespread interest in keeping this momentum going. https://t.me/c/1723589369/2842

Retrieved from "https://outreach.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=GLAM/Newsletter/August_2023/Contents/WREN_at_Wikimania_report&oldid=252149"