2023:Program/Submissions
16–19 August 2023, Singapore and Online
Diversity. Collaboration. Future.
The ESEAP Wikimania 2023 Core Organizing Team invited the public to submit a program idea for Wikimania.
The program submission form was available in Arabic, English, French, Spanish, and Traditional Chinese. We are working on including Indonesian.
Submissions were accepted from Tuesday, February 28 until Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at
(Anywhere on Earth, equivalent to UTC-12).
Program proponents will get receive decision on their program proposal in June 2023.
There are different session types, themes, and program tracks to consider. So please read on to learn more.
Theme
The theme for Wikimania 2023 is Diversity, Collaboration, Future. It is intended to be cross-cutting and to apply as a lens to all programming ideas. Your submission should have elements connecting to at least one of these. A lot of what we do every day in Wikimedia – on the projects or in the community – is already reflective of the theme and very much in line with how the ESEAP regional collaboration identifies and operates.
- Diversity. Wikimania will be an opportunity to showcase regional and thematic groups such as ESEAP as examples of inclusion: different volunteer groups, individuals, and affiliates, at different stages of development and from different cultures closely involved and collaborating in an equitable way.
- Collaboration. As a distributed, global event, Wikimania will be a way to learn from each other and share knowledge like community initiatives, tools usage, organizing events, governance, online campaigns and edit-a-thons, solving Wiki-related problems, and more.
- Future. Wikimania 2023 will be significant to many Wikimedians as a forum to discuss implementing the 2030 Wikimedia Movement Strategy (#Wikimedia2030), and other current and future priorities facing our movement, from technology to policy around the world.
Tracks
To make the program submissions easier to organize and review, with the help of the programming subcommittee of volunteers, we have suggested 11 program tracks. Please see below for more information about the categories and their sub-categories. Think about which one best fits your program idea. If you think your submission applies to more than one track, you can specify a secondary track in the submission form.
| Program track | Description | Sub-categories / suggested topics |
|---|---|---|
| Community Initiatives | This track welcomes affiliates and communities to present their content development campaigns and programs. | ■ Campaigns
■ Editathons |
| Education | This track provides a space for initiatives and programs in education and academia. | ■ Wikipedia in the classroom
■ Partnership with educational institutions or teachers' association |
| Equity, Inclusion, and Community Health | This track provides a space to discuss equity, inclusivity, and belonging as ways to improve community health. | ■ Diversity centric discussions ■ Equity, Inclusion and belonging ■ Knowledge equity ■ User interface accessibility ■ Languages (& translations) ■ Gender gap and other gender diversity topics ■ IP address range blocks in countries with limited/ shared infrastructure ■ The Wikimedia Universal Code of Conduct (UCoC) ■ Safety of volunteer contributors |
| ESEAP (East, South East Asia, and the Pacific) Region | This track is meant to highlight initiatives by affiliates, communities, and individual contributors in improving content or concerns related to the East, South East Asia and the Pacific region. | ■ Multicultural collaborations in ESEAP countries ■ Community developments ■ Capacity development in Small and Incubator language Wikimedia projects |
| GLAM, Heritage, and Culture | This track provides a space for initiatives and programs in heritage and cultural conservation, collaborations with cultural institutions that include Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums. | ■ Digitalization programs ■ Open access advocacy ■ Working with Indigenous communities |
| Governance | This track supports community discussions focused on governance, structures and reform, key initiatives from the Movement Strategy. | ■ Movement Charter ■ Regional and thematic hubs ■ Roles and responsibilities in the movement ■ Decision-making processes ■ Wikimedia Global Council ■ Administrative specific governance (projects, community, affiliates) |
| Legal, Advocacy, and Risks | This track includes established topics of discussion, such as copyrights and digital accessibility, and newly emerged issues, such as rising censorship and misinformation in the world, as well as public policy and human rights. | ■ Blocking of Wikipedia in certain countries ■ Misinformation ■ Censorship ■ Legal threats, takedown requests ■ Government relations ■ Copyright reforms (Freedom of Panorama, free licenses, etc.) ■ Digital accessibility ■ Environmental sustainability and climate crisis |
| Open Data | This track gives space for community initiatives in data use and reuse, linking different Wikimedia projects together and beyond. | ■ Publicly accessible statistical data ■ Data use/ reuse ■ Open data and transparency ■ Interlinking geographic data, socio-economic data, demographic data ■ Wikidata or Structured Data on Commons |
| Research, Science, and Medicine | This track welcomes works of research with topics relevant to Wikimedia and the theme of Wikimania. It is also a space to discuss various content initiatives in the fields of science, nature, and medicine. | ■ Environmental studies and climate crisis
■ Studies on behavioral patterns in contributing content |
| Technology | The classic track dedicated to discussing everything product and technology in the Wikimedia movement. | ■ Latest products and features ■ Tool demonstration or tutorials ■ Tools in development or testing stage ■ Technological innovations |
| Wild Ideas | A future-oriented open track for Wikimedians to discuss wild ideas and predictions of the future... for good or bad. | ■ Scenarios in the near or far future ■ Black Mirror scenarios ■ Ethics of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning ■ The chatbot take over!!! |
As you think about your Wikimania program submission, remember that we would like to highlight the great work happening across all Wikimedia projects, not just the big ones. We would also like to highlight work happening in all regions of the movement, especially those under or unrepresented at global Wikimedia events.
We plan on sharing program submission abstracts here on this wiki to create opportunities for collaboration. If somebody else proposes a similar topic or discussion, why not collaborate or combine? One-way lectures can be made into interactive panels or collaborative workshops. See below for more information.
Submission types
There will be several formats, including lectures, panel presentations, discussions, and workshops focused on skill development. There will also be sessions of lightning talks and social interaction. We are also open to new and original program format ideas, including combinations of types.
| Type | Description | Standard allocated time | Visual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Workshops | These are sessions where the audience is actively interacting with the topic, usually focused on practical work, acquiring or strengthening a specific skill, or accomplishing a specific task. | 60 minutes |  |
| Demonstration | In these sessions, the audience is given a live presentation or demonstration, such as technological innovation. | 30 minutes |
|
| Lecture | This is an oral presentation intended to introduce information, share ideas about a particular subject, or summarize the results of a project. | 30 minutes |
|
| Panel | This is a small group of subject matter experts or those with real lived experience speaking before an audience. It often includes a moderator who guides the discussion and sometimes elicits audience questions. Audiences are invited to interact with the panel and ask questions | 30 minutes |
|
| Roundtable /
open discussion |
This is a structured conversational process for discussing specific topics, sharing knowledge, and often collective decision-making. | 90 minutes |
|
| Lightning talk | This is a short, sharp presentation to enable a speaker to share a concept or idea, often as a teaser or a starting point for the audience to learn more. Lightning talks are often organized as a succession of speakers one after another. | 10 minutes (or less) |
|
| Poster session | Whether in-person or remote, you will have a dedicated time to present your poster topic and for the audience to ask you questions. Poster sessions can cut across topics and themes, usually presenting a project report or initiative, study results, research, or technology. | TBD |
|
| Entertainment session | Activities such as cultural demonstrations, games, movement, food, talk shows, podcasts, and other forms of entertainment can go here. | 30 minutes |
|
| Other | These are all other activities such as outdoor activities, photography walks, editathons, datathon, resource, and citation hunts, etc. | 30 minutes (duration may vary) |
|
In imagining your Wikimania session, we encourage you to prioritize interactive concepts like workshops and discussions. This is our first time coming back together after 3 years, and it would be good to benefit from that as much as we can by collaborating together and engaging in conversations like we always do. At the same time, over the past few years, we have gained a great deal of experience organizing events online and would love to create a balance between onsite, in-person programming, and virtual. If your program idea is more a focused presentation or a one-way information share out, why not consider submitting pre-recorded and on-demand video content, a short lightning talk, or a poster session in the exhibition space? This year we plan on using our spacious venue and hope to maximize poster sessions with times dedicated to interacting with brilliant people and ideas.
Hybrid, Satellite events, Video on Demand
Movement groups can think about self-organizing watch parties and other remote events with the possibility of connecting live with Singapore during dedicated times each day. Not everyone in the community can or wants to travel to connect with other Wikimedians. You and your colleagues can organize a satellite event during a specific day or time of Wikimania. For Wikimedia affiliates, satellite events can be scheduled and funded as part of General Support Funds. Even if not initially included as a proposal, moving funds around in your budget might be possible to create an event. Find out more and please use its talk page for discussing ideas in advance.
If your submission is not accepted as you submitted it, think about contributing pre-recorded short video content that will be made available on-demand or create a 1 to 3-minute short video presenting your topic, like a virtual poster session.
Questions?
If you are interested to know the contents of the program submission form, you can go to the form questions page. Reviewing the questions and preparing your answers before submitting them would be helpful.
We have set up a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) page for you. If you have other questions and they are not in the FAQ, you can email the program subcommittee at: wikimania
wikimedia.org or also add your questions to the help page.