"If all sessions are in English there's no point for people who only speak French, Arabic, Portuguese and a bunch of other African languages but no English to go to that conference."
I don't get this part. How can I, an English speaking person, organize a session and speak Original Arabic? How?
Sessions are open for application. Whoever applies, and is picked, speaks the language he/she is comfortable with. At the end of the day, its not up to the WikiIndaba organizers to generate Arabic or English sessions. The speaker of the session's language is what determine the language to be used. Of which many who came from Tunisia and Egypt who are damn fluent in French and Arabic, but speak little in English, all decided to speak English, as they spoke to people from other parts of Africa.
There are no grammar ninjas at the conference to patrol what mistakes others make.
Samuel Guebo, ABir, Habib and Ouda, all had wonderful stories to share at wiki indaba. English is not their first language. These guys, for the benefit of all, decided to use a language that we all could hear. They could have spoken their various local languages, of which I think no one could have questioned them why, but they shared with all their lovely stories in a way all could benefit equally, of which I really appreciated.
So yes, the session language is dependent on the speaker of that session, however, many decide to use English.
Thus the next conference, you are free to apply to handle a session, and you're welcome to speak French. No one will penalize you for that.
rexford | google.com/+Nkansahrexford On Dec 7, 2014 4:29 PM, "Kasper Souren" kasper.souren@gmail.com wrote:
I may be wrong, but I don't think drawing language lines in this
conference
is of any importance. Whatever the different countries that come, the default language to be used will be English. The conference is for
Africans,
not anglophone or 'portophone' or whatever. Of course, attendees are
free to
speak language they are comfortable in when they attend.
Sure, English as default makes complete sense but there should be tracks (sessions) in languages other than English. Not everyone in Africa speaks English, not even everyone in Africa involved in Wikipedia speaks English ;) and this should be acknowledged. If all sessions are in English there's no point for people who only speak French, Arabic, Portuguese and a bunch of other African languages but no English to go to that conference.
To make it a conference for all Africans a lot of effort should be put into making WikiIndaba accessible to Africans who don't speak English. As far as I know most Africans don't speak English:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_English-speaking_populati...
I also must say that, I've hardly known Douala if not for my WiR in za. However, I cannot say for sure that, because myself or one or two of
people
I know doesn't know Douala, for that reasons, Douala isn't reaching out
to
many or Douala is making poor country-based representations.
Douala was just a session with 15 people (including me and other trainer) as part of the Afripedia training sessions.
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