------- TL;DR -------
Wikimedia Deutschland is looking for a partner organization to jointly
design and run the WikidataCon 2023. This organization should be recognized
legally in their country, be located in the Global South, have previous
experience with running events and have a Wikidata-enthusiastic community.
If your organization is interested, please reach out directly to Léa
Lacroix before July 31st.
----------------------------
Dear Wikimedians,
As you may know, the last edition of the WikidataCon in 2021
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikidataCon_2021> was organized
jointly by Wikimedia Deutschland and Wiki Movimento Brasil. The result of
these intense 10 months of collaboration was an incredibly successful
online event with about 500 participants, more than 40% of which joined
from the Global South.
This partnership not only created an innovative event, hosting multiple
conversations about the future of Wikidata and reimagining it from the
margins, but also gave us the opportunity to examine our priorities and
points of views, to learn from each other’s experiences and to share
skills. You can find a summary of what we learned, tried and achieved in
our common documentation
<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiProject_remote_event_participation/Documentation/WikidataCon_2021>
.
We’re starting to work on the concept and planning of a new WikidataCon
event for 2023, and so we’re very eager to form a new partnership with a
new organization in the Wikimedia movement. Together we would design and
organize the event and bring new perspectives to this important gathering
for the international Wikidata community.
We have defined baseline criteria to help select our future partner, based
on our vision of WikidataCon:
-
In order to broaden our perspectives and decenter from the existing
majority of Wikidata editors, we are looking for an organization located in
the Global South;
-
Those involved in co-organizing the conference should show a lot of
enthusiasm for Wikidata and have an existing connection to local
communities involved in Wikidata-related activities;
-
We are looking for a group of people with prior experience in organizing
events who are keen to experiment with new formats and design the future of
Wikimedia events together;
-
For administrative reasons, we can only partner up with a group legally
recognized as an organization in their country that is able to sign
contracts, issue invoices and receive funds from Germany.
This call for proposals will remain open until July 31st. If your
organization would like to apply, you need only to send me a private email
so we can start a conversation about your ideas and how this partnership
would work.
The selection of a partner will take place in August/September 2022. After
a public announcement, the collaboration between Wikimedia Deutschland and
this organization would run from October 2022 to November 2023. The event
itself would take place in a format to be later decided among the
organizers (online, onsite or hybrid) in October 2023.
Feel free to share this email with anyone who might be interested or on any
relevant channels.
I remain available for any questions, and I’m very excited to engage in
discussions with the many organizations of Wikidata enthusiasts in the
movement!
Best regards,
--
Léa Lacroix
Community Engagement Coordinator
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.