Announcing the Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021

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Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021 logo (Credit: Kiril Simeonovski, CC-BY-SA 4.0)

As a result of the extended effect of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wikimedians from Central and Eastern Europe are prevented from meeting in person at a Wikimedia CEE Meeting for a second consecutive year. However, following the success of the Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2020, this year’s Wikimedia CEE Meeting will again take place as a virtual conference known as the Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021. The online event will be labelled with the slogan “Meet for a Better Future!”. In the same way as last year, the conference dates were not fixed until the CEE community members decided for the period from 5–7 November in a poll with three options that was open from 1–15 July.

Call for submissions now open

The programme for the event will be mostly filled with session proposals received through a call for submissions running from 1 July to 31 August 2021, while there will also be a handful of sessions that will feature keynote speakers or will be formatted as plenary discussions on important topics from the Wikimedia movement.

As was the case with last year’s conference, session proposals can be submitted as discussions, panels and workshops with a standardised duration of 45 minutes, as well as lightning talks with a duration of 5 minutes. There is also the possibility of participating with a pre-recorded video. No tracks have been pre-defined in the submission process this year and interested speakers are left with the option to indicate the topics that their session proposals fit the best into (e.g. Education, Community Engagement, Partnerships etc.).

A major novelty this year is that the programme is planned to accommodate sessions in Russian alongside English following the successful implementation of the language interpretation service from English to Russian and vice versa during the inaugural online event. Interested speakers can also indicate the level of advancement of their submissions on a scale with three levels — basic, medium and advanced — so that participants easily identify if a particular session suits their experience and knowledge.

Global participation welcomed

Since the conference will again take place online, no travel or accommodation costs exist so every individual contributor from the Wikimedia movement with a Wikimedia account can freely participate. At last year’s conference, participants from non-CEE communities made up a substantial share and significantly contributed to the flow of sharing knowledge, experience and ideas with insights from their regions. Therefore, the presence of such people would truly enrich the conference and make it an invaluable experience for everyone.

In case you have any questions regarding the conference, please do not hesitate to contact the Organising Committee members. See you at the Wikimedia CEE Online Meeting 2021!

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