Hello all,
The WikidataCon 2021 team has moved forward with the conference organization and we are proud to share with the community many exciting news: the conference theme, its three day program structure and a special project on diversity taking place before the conference itself.
For the past nine years, Wikidata has been rapidly growing: more data, more contributors, more reuse of the data by various stakeholders. Where are we headed? What is our compass point? Who is doing this journey with us? Who should be with us and is not yet?
During the WikidataCon 2021, we want to envision a sustainable future for Wikidata and address challenges the Wikidata ecosystem faces while the project is growing. We are especially interested in tackling four interrelated points in the conference:
So for 2021, we’ll go with “WikidataCon 2021: A sustainable future for Wikidata”!
We especially want to raise awareness on the issues encountered by communities in the Global South and marginalized communities in the Global North, and their hopes on how Wikidata’s structure, content and community could represent the diversity of the world in a more inclusive way. Before, during and after the conference, we will lead discussions about how to decenter Wikidata from its current focus on Europe and North America and how to address the biases that currently exist in the structure of the data and in the community.
For doing so, we also proudly announce the “Reimagining Wikidata from the margins” project: starting in June, we will coordinate a series of discussions with communities in the Global South and other marginalized communities from the Global North. This is an open invitation to think about how more diverse people can add their local knowledge to the database while meaningfully joining our community. It is about connecting with each other's realities and perspectives, understanding its challenges and expectations, and working together to foster a plural environment in our ecosystem!
We’ll release at WikidataCon a document/manifesto based on the discussions with individuals and communities. If you’re interested in participating in this process, please, sign up on the project page and I’ll contact you for further details.
Last but not least, we also want to share with you that the conference taking place at October 29, 30 and 31 will be structured in the following way:
This will be a distributed event with a full online program that people can access and participate from anywhere in the world. Although São Paulo will not host an in person event as initially planned due the hardening of the pandemic in Brazil, the possibility of connecting local gatherings to the online program is still valid, if your chapter or group is based somewhere sanitary safe. Let’s explore how to safely celebrate Wikidata and our community!
Please, don’t hesitate to reach out to the organizers at info@wikidatacon.org or by leaving a message on the discussion page. Hope to see you all at WikidataCon!
On behalf of the WikidataCon 2021 organization team,