On Thu, Dec 4, 2014 at 11:59 AM, Isla Haddow-Flood islahf@africacentre.net wrote:
In June, Wikimedia ZA held Wiki Indaba. It was for wikipedians from Africa and wikipedians working on Africa from outside, as well as those from the aligned movement across Africa. We had delegates from all over Africa, including Cameroon, Côte d'Ivoire and Tunisia, and France. Afripedia was invited, I know, because I made a special effort to make sure they knew about it. I believe Florence also mentioned it to them. But there was some change happening at Afripedia too.
That's participants from 3 Francophone countries in Africa, the relevant Wikipedia mentions 24 and 31 countries. Last week I asked and none of the 14 Africans who attended the Douala session knew about WikiIndaba. Same for the participants in Madagascar if I remember correctly. Also on wikiindaba.net I don't see *any* French language content (I googled "français site:wikiindaba.net" ). That makes it pretty hard for people who don't speak English to attend.
I think another Wiki Indaba will definitely happen, but for when and where you will have to check with Douglas at Wikimedia ZA the original organizers (and aiming for Ghana for 2017 is a great idea, hopefully having had others in 2015-6).
That's great!
I really don't see any point in spitting the conference and having a francophone one separate from the rest. It means we are going backwards, but with Afripedia on board, perhaps the weighting of the conference can become more balanced. You can find out more about the conference at WikiIndaba.net ... And on meta: http://meta.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wiki_Indaba
It's not really splitting if there was no French language part to begin with, right? ;)
With a separate it would be much easier to convince French language organisations such as La Francophonie to support the event. But I guess a separate track with a big effort to attract Francophone participants could also suffice for that.
Also note I can't speak for Afripedia, I'm merely a contractor who did 2 Afripedia training sessions. I do have some connections now though that can help a lot to build afro-anglo-francophone bridges.
Moreover don't get me wrong, I agree it's better to create one multilingual event, ideally also include Arabic and Portuguese and at least 2 African languages spoken in different countries (e.g. Swahili, Mande languages, Peul). But this requires a lot more effort than from what I can see from last WikiIndaba - and I'm happy to help make with that to assure the next WikiIndaba will be a real polyglot conference!
Cheers, Kasper