Wikivoyage:
https://en.wikivoyge.org/wiki/Wikimania_2018_Cape_Town_Guidebook
has a page with advice for Wikimania attendees. It's a good start, but
needs more local knowledge. Please help to improve the page if you can
For instance, South Africa uses both "Europlug" and "type D" power
sockets - but which is most prevalent at the city's hotels, and the
conference venue?
--
Andy Mabbett
@pigsonthewing
http://pigsonthewing.org.uk
Hi everyone,
I'll be arriving in Cape Town a day earlier than other scholarship recipients, on July 15th, and will be staying for one night in the nearby Stay Easy Cape Town City Bowl. The minimal rate for both single and double rooms seems to be the same. Would anyone be interested in sharing?
I'll be making the reservation in about 48 hours, so you'll need to inform me ASAP.
Best,
Abbad.
*Hi everyone*!
Are you coming to Cape Town this South African winter? And can you spare a
couple of hours at the conference? Then please join us as a trainer at
the *Learn
to Edit desk*!
The Learn to Edit desk will (most probably) located near the registration
desk and will be open from Friday till Sunday, all day. Aim is to help
people taking their first steps on the wiki: getting an account, exploring
the different pages and doing an edit or an upload. We'll have tables with
laptops, for people that did not bring their own, or maybe want to edit on
a mobile device in the future.
*For this I'm in need of Wikimedians who would like to share their
knowledge*, and it would be nice if you...:
- Have good knowledge of the English language
- Maybe even another language? French, Afrikaans, ...?
- Know how to edit Wikipedia, Wikidata and Commons
- Know how to explain things in a simple and patient way
- Have approximately one and a half/two hours to spare each day.
*I'll make us volunteers a scheduale* and will take your wishes into
account if you want to attend certain talks or meetups and are not
available. Even if you cannot make it every day, please let me know if you
want to help, I'm sure I can work around that.
Send me an email!
Kind regards, Vriendelijke groet,
Ciell
Dear WikiWomen attending Wikimania,
WikiWomen's Lunch is scheduled for 12:00-14:00 hrs on Sunday, 22 July at
Room London. Everyone who identify as women are welcome to attend. This
lunch meetup is for women to socialize with each other, discuss issues of
common interest and talk about the projects that aim at reducing the gender
gap on Wikimedia projects.
Here is the link to the page where you can sign up for the meetup:
https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiWomen%27s_Lunch
Regards
Netha
--
Netha Hussain
Institute of Neuroscience and Physiology
University of Gothenburg, Sweden
Hello everyone,
Given the huge impact of the Cape Town Water crisis
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Town_water_crisis> that has impacted
the city for the past few years this year's Wikimania edit-a-thon
<https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_edit-a-thon> will have
a water sustainability focus. Water sustainability issues for large
cities, such as the Cape Town crisis, are likely to become an increasingly
common phenomenon
<https://www.cnbc.com/2018/04/11/cape-town-water-crisis-cities-should-prepar…>
around the world in the future.
It will take place at the Cape Town Tourism office in the City Centre
<http://www.capetown.travel/visitors/plan/information/visitor-centres/>right
across the road from the Southern Sun Hotel where the conference is
happening. From *10:00 to 16:00, 19 July 2018*.
I have just put up the edit-a-thon details onto the pre-conference
program. Please sign up if you are interested in attending, it will help
give us an idea of how many people will be joining us.
The point person for this event is Rossouw van Rooyen <rossouwvr(a)gmail.com>.
Rossouw will be present at the event to ensure everyone finds the place and
it all goes well. The location is very very nearby to the main venue and
so it should not be a problem finding it.
We have teamed up with Cape Town civil society and government to include
local water sustainability experts in on this event so Wikipedia editors
will have access to expertise on the subject.
Thankfully the water crisis, whilst still a drought, is not a crisis this
year due to good rains so far. This means that water situation will not
directly impact the conference
<https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Water_shortage> or the daily
lives of the city's residents this year but people are still requested to
try and use no more than 50 litres of water a day.
Regards,
Douglas.
--
Douglas Ian Scott
司道格
Skype: douglas0scott
South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727
Hi all,
Like many attendees I expect, I am looking forward to visiting Kirstenbosch
Botanical Garden and other gardens in Cape Town! Laura (cc'd) and I were
wondering if there would be interest in an informal edit-a-thon about South
African plants during the conference? We could take pictures, add sources,
improve Wikidata items, etc etc.
If there is interest, I can make a page and we can try to figure out a good
time. Perhaps as a thematic meetup, during the pre-conference, or just
afterwards as a field trip?
cheers,
Phoebe
Hi Phoebe,
The short answer is yes, we are interested in doing a botanical edit-a-thon
but it is looking increasingly unlikely. :-(
Rossouw has been trying to organise a Wikimania edit-a-thon with the South
African National Botanical (SANBI) society (the people that run
Kirstenbosch) for some time now. They have indicated their interest to us
in doing some thing but have been very elusive over the past few months.
As such we have swiched focus to doing a Water Sustainability edit-a-thon
instead but if SANBI gets back to us we are still very happy to include
them in any edit-a-thon we organise.
Regards,
Douglas.
On 21 June 2018 at 10:05, <wikimania-l-request(a)lists.wikimedia.org> wrote:
> Send Wikimania-l mailing list submissions to
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>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Wikimania-l digest..."
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>
> Today's Topics:
>
> 1. let's edit about plants! (phoebe ayers)
> 2. Wikimania 2018: 30 days to go - general update (Douglas Scott)
> 3. Re: let's edit about plants! (Jackie)
> 4. Re: let's edit about plants! (Lukas Mezger)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Wed, 20 Jun 2018 12:17:25 -0400
> From: phoebe ayers <phoebe.ayers(a)gmail.com>
> To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)"
> <wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org>
> Cc: Laura Soito <laura.soito(a)gmail.com>
> Subject: [Wikimania-l] let's edit about plants!
> Message-ID:
> <CACXHzD55B-UQETUJnu0_RnBfg7KPx4pjOeppMKatpyzn7=faPQ
> @mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Hi all,
>
> Like many attendees I expect, I am looking forward to visiting Kirstenbosch
> Botanical Garden and other gardens in Cape Town! Laura (cc'd) and I were
> wondering if there would be interest in an informal edit-a-thon about South
> African plants during the conference? We could take pictures, add sources,
> improve Wikidata items, etc etc.
>
> If there is interest, I can make a page and we can try to figure out a good
> time. Perhaps as a thematic meetup, during the pre-conference, or just
> afterwards as a field trip?
>
> cheers,
> Phoebe
>
Hello Wikimania team,
Wikimainia is only 30 days away now and things are getting very busy on our
side in Cape Town now.
==Updates==
Here are a couple of updates that have happened since my last email. As I
write this email it is raining hard which I feel is a great omen.
===Event program==
The program committee has released the program
<https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program> for the main event at
Wikimania.
I want to thank the Program Committee and the co-chairs (Liam, Emna and
Felix) for managing and producing a great program for Wikimania this year.
You all did a great job!
I want to send out an especially big thanks to Liam for taking the lead and
managing the Herculean task of wrestling with the ironically named Easy
Chair system and with AirTable to get the program organised. Liam also did
a great job as the main point person for organising the program team.
We will get the pre-conference events up on the program soon as well.
===Voluneers===
We have gotten a huge response for volunteers (103 responses) with a large
number of high quality applications (largely measured as the number of
people with past conference volunteer experience). Our contacts within the
University of Cape Town really came through and we also got some great
applications from there. Raymond and I have already done a preliminary
check of the list. Raymond and Erin Lacey (WMF) will be getting back to
successful applicants within the next week or two.
===Meetup locations===
Due to a shortage of space for meetups at the conference venue and due to
the super abundance of very nearby locations to have events at we have
decided to encourage people to host their meetups at locations offsite.
There are a large number of restaurants, coffee shops, bars, within a
hundred meters from the venue. Some of them stay open late. I have made a
helpful map of such locations that you can see here
<https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Orientation>.
===Website redesign===
I want to give another big thank you to Blanca Flores (WMF) and James Hare
(WMF) for helping out so much with the reworking of our website. Blanca
did a great job of working on the design aspects and James pulled it all
together. We have simplified the site and changed the look and feel. You
will also notice the new logo which pays homage to Zulu bead work.
==My current focuses==
* Getting locals to attend as part of our outreach efforts within South
Africa. My focus has been on a diverse group of people ranging from
Librarians, to university academics, government officials, copyright
activists, civil society, GLAM partners, educators, and students.
* Monitoring the 50% discount system for South African attendees
* Publicity for Wikimania - I am doing a number of press interviews to
publicise Wikimania in the South African media.
* Water sustainability event(s) - Given the water situation in Cape Town we
have decided to have water sustainability as a focus for a number of
Wikimania events. It is an issue that will very likely affect more cities
in the future so it would be same to 'waist' this crisis in the context of
Wikipedia. I am currently working on at least one edit-a-thon with a strong
water focus to be the Wikimania edit-a-thon that will take place on the
Thursday before the main conference begins on the Friday. I am already in
talks with the adviser who is in charge of the civil society aspect of the
City of Cape Town's water crisis outreach efforts to make this event
happen. We hope to organise multiple water focused events at Wikimania but
we will see how it evolves. Please let me know if you would like to get
involved in helping organise this or have any ideas. Once this has reached
a certain point of development I will be handing this project over to
Rossouw van Rooyen to implement it during the conference.
* Dealing with Plenary Speakers - all three speakers have given me their
speaking titles and I am just getting the last of their biography details
(pictures and written bios) as well as their speech descriptions.
* Opening and closing sessions at Wikimania. The closing session is
largely sorted out. As for the opening session I am just trying to sort
out a few details but otherwise it is also looking good.
==List of responsibilities==
An updated, non-exhaustive and current list of team point person
responsibilities can be found here
<https://docs.google.com/document/d/1aGDk_02UfsblM4ubGtbH_4oRAJBAE1cwMqaCYYS…>
.
==General team requests==
One thing we all as team members need to focus on for the next week or two
is outreach and getting local (South African) attendance up. So please let
all of your South African, and especially Cape Town based, contacts know
about the event. We really want to see more locals attending Wikimania.
With this in mind 80 complementary tickets to local Wikimedians and key
partner groups have already been given out to attend Wikimania. We are
unfortunately out of complementary registrations but South Africans can
still claim a 50% discount when attending Wikimania this year. Lets push
this and let the world know.
Overall everything so far seems to be on track and going well.
Best regards,
Douglas.
--
Douglas Ian Scott
司道格
Skype: douglas0scott
South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727
Hello everyone,
We are now taking submissions for tables at the Community village at
Wikimania in Cape Town.
Please submit your application to book a table to our Community Village
point person, Jessy Appavoo Moodelly <jessyappavoo(a)gmail.com>.
There are only 12 tables available at the Community village and they will
be given on a first-come first-serve basis so please let us know ASAP if
your community would like to book a table.
Regards,
Douglas.
Organising Chair for Wikimania 2018
--
Douglas Ian Scott
司道格
Skype: douglas0scott
South African mobile number: +27 (0)79 515 8727