Hello everyone,

As many of you know Wikimania (the annual international Wikimedia/Wikipedia conference) will be coming to Cape Town this year (18-22 July). If you are interested in presenting at this year's Wikimania then you have until the *18th March* this year (little over one month) to submit your proposals. Proposals can be fore anything from a standard presentation to a discussion group to a poster presentation. You can submit your presentation proposals and find out more at the event wiki here https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions. I have written a blog article which can be read at the Wikimedia Foundation's blog here expanding on what this year's theme means and intends to highlight. You can read that here https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/05/wikimania-cape-town-ubuntu/.

Best regards,

Douglas.

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Liam Wyatt liamwyatt@gmail.com Date: 5 February 2018 at 10:49 Subject: Wikimania 2018 Call for Submissions now open To:

Dear Wikimedia 2018 Theme Team - The blogpost and submissions process are both public. We are now 'live' and accepting submissions for the conference! Thank you for your help in building this theme and for getting it to the point where we now have a very strong link between the theme of the conference and the submission criteria.

Now comes the next task: spreading the word. Below is the information I sent to various mailinglists, on-wiki message boards, and various social media groups. Feel free to adapt it, copy/paste it, or forward it to your communities and individuals you would like to explicity invite to present at this conference.

Sincerely, -Liam

We are pleased to announce that Wikimania 2018 is now accepting proposals for workshops, discussions, presentations, or research posters to give during the conference. To read the full instructions visit the event wiki and click on the link provided there to make your proposal: https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions The deadline for submissions is 23:59 UTC on *Sunday March 18, 2018*. This is approximately 6 weeks away. Whether you are a community member of one of the Wikimedia projects, or a fellow open content creator or consumer, we welcome your proposal for a session.

*Theme*This year, the conference will be taking place in Cape Town, South Africa, where the organisers are giving this Wikimania a unique flavor — an explicit theme based in African philosophy: “Bridging knowledge gaps, the *ubuntu* way forward.” Read more about this theme, why it was chosen, and what it means for the conference program at the Wikimedia blog: *https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/05/wikimania-cape-town-ubuntu/ https://blog.wikimedia.org/2018/02/05/wikimania-cape-town-ubuntu/* Throughout the conference program, this theme will be tightly held, but loosely defined - in order to encourage a diverse range of responses to the theme. It is our hope that this theme will give us the opportunity to further our goal of creating the “sum of human knowledge”, by encouraging greater diversity and inclusion in who participates and what we discuss at Wikimania. To learn more, and to make a proposal for the conference, please visit: https://wikimania2018.wikimedia.org/wiki/Submissions

Please forward this announcement to other lists and groups across the Wikimedia movement. We look forward to reading your submissions. Sincerely, Program committee co-chairs Emna Mizouni, Felix Nartey, and Liam Wyatt.