Hello fellow Wikimania-goers,

I can’t wait to see you all in Stockholm next week. Excited to meet those of you I haven’t, to connect with those of you I have, to perhaps sample some Surströmming [1] with the most adventurous of you? Why not!

For those of you I haven’t met yet, I’m Elena Lappen with the Community Relations team at the Foundation. Our team works on projects that connect volunteers across the movement and keep communication flowing between Foundation staff and community members.

I wanted to write because our team recently launched Wikimedia Space [2], a platform being developed around the needs of movement organizers, newcomers, volunteers in underrepresented regions, and volunteers in underserved groups. I think it can support the work of many of you, leading up to Wikimania, during Wikimania, and beyond. Many Learning Days participants and general Wikimania attendees have already started signing up in order to coordinate before the event.

Wikimedia Space is a platform facilitating community exchange, made up of a blog and a forum. The blog publishes news by the movement, for the movement. The forum has moderated discussion boards with discussion facilitation tools, as well as a movement-wide map [3] and calendar [4], where you’ll see that other movement organizers have already started posting their events. The forum also accommodates closed groups, to allow for private collaboration between trusted peers.

Signing up is easy [5]. Join Wikimedia Space to chat about Wikimania, post an event, or ask any question pertaining to the Wikimedia projects. Tell us how we can build the platform to best support your work.

If you’re interested to learn more about Space or to share with me how we can improve it to meet your needs, please feel free to message me and we can set up a time to talk!

See you all in Stockholm, Elena

[1] https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimania-l/2019-August/008828.html https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikimania-l/2019-August/008828.html [2] https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/introducing-wikimedia-space-a-platform-f... https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/introducing-wikimedia-space-a-platform-for-movement-news-and-conversations/142 [3] https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/c/events/l/map https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/c/events/l/map [4] https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/c/events/l/calendar https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/c/events/l/calendar [5] https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/how-to-join-wikimedia-space/113 https://discuss-space.wmflabs.org/t/how-to-join-wikimedia-space/113

-- Elena Lappen (she/her) Community Relations Specialist Wikimedia Foundation