Dear Wikimedians,
Hope all of you are doing well. We are writing this email to restart the
conversation to host the next WikiConference India.
As you may remember, some of our fellow Wikimedians started a conversation
regarding the next WCI in 2020 but due to the unexpected COVID-19 pandemic,
it couldn't go on stage. However, we are hoping to reinitiate this
discussion and for that, we need your involvement, suggestions, and support
to help organize a much-needed conference in February-March of 2023.
As you may remember, we have had two national-level conferences in India — the
first one in Mumbai in 2011[1], and the second one in Chandigarh in
2016[2]. Both the conferences had been effective in bringing diverse Indian
communities together for a collective effort. The cross-community
connections made during these conferences led to many collaborations across
the communities and further strengthens our work as a collective movement.
The Community Resources team at the Wikimedia Foundation published Global
Event Strategy[3] which stressed on more and regular regional conferences,
in 2022 conferences are being organized in other regions such as WikiIndaba,
CEE Meeting, North America, Iberocoop, Francophone convention, Wikiarabia,
ESEAP, etc. As a community, it is crucial to have a national
inter-community gathering annually or at least bi-annually. However, we
only had a single conference in the past six years.
The proposed 2023 conference will bring our energies, ideas, learnings, and
hopes together. It will help us in our journey towards better
collaborations, and diversified efforts and reinforce our identity as the
Indian Wikimedia community. This conference will enable us to have better
knowledge about current capacities, and gaps and also to build equitable
leadership. Apart from all these, providing a national-level platform for
Indian Wikimedians to connect, re-connect, and establish their
collaboration itself can be an essential purpose on its own- in the end, it
will empower us all to strategize, plan ahead and collaborate- as a
movement.
We hope we, the Indian Wikimedia Community members, come together in
various capacities and make this a reality. We believe we will take
learnings from earlier attempts, improve processes & use best practices in
conducting this conference purposefully and fruitfully.
Here is a survey form[4] to get your responses on the same notion. We would
like to know if you are interested in participating in a national-level
conference where we can meet and plan our next activities, and purposes,
learn new skills, come to know new ideas, and so on. We can proceed further
only when you respond to us, actively.
Please note: Unfortunately we are working with short timelines since the final
date of proposal submission is 5 September. We request you please fill out
the form by 28th August. After your responses, we can decide if we have the
communities' needs and support for the conference. We plan to reuse the
2020 proposal[5] and remodel it according to the current needs of the
community.
Please note that this organizing is not tied to a single community, we have
formed an initial group of volunteers from different language and technical
communities. For a national conference, we will of course be needing more
volunteers and support. The form linked above has a section to join the
organizing team if you are interested. We have created a Meta-Wiki page[6]
for initial conversations and endorsements to support if you are happy with
the idea of having the next WikiConference India in 2023. Please add your
comments and suggestions to the talk page[7] directly which will be
constantly monitored and updated once every 48 hours.
Look forward to hearing from you and also taking some collective steps
towards having us all together in 2023!
Thanks & Regards,
Nivas, Nitesh, Neechalkaran & Vasanth
Links:
1.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2011
2.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2016
3.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Conference_2018/Reading_material#…
4.
https://forms.gle/VMnqcy9Kd9yipGoC8
5.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:Conference/WikiConference_India_2020
6.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/WikiConference_India_2023:_Initial_conversa…
7.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:WikiConference_India_2023:_Initial_con…