The Wikimania Festival goes global

From 11-14 August, the Wikimania Festival will bring together communities from around the world to celebrate free and open access to knowledge. Using a regionally-focused approach, we hope to welcome more contributors to our movement’s global flagship event. 

Registration opens soon. Here is a sneak peek of how the Festival will connect the local to the global.

Bringing regions together at the Wikimania Festival

The Wikimania Festival will have programming that rotates between three longitudinal zones: Asia-Oceania; the Americas; and Africa, Europe and the Middle East. Each day will be scheduled to accommodate the zone being featured, and organized to maximize overlap with other timezones. Each day will feature additional languages of the zone, and will spotlight the local and regional communities working within it. We expect each day to be unique and fun, allowing Wikimania participants a birds-eye view into the dynamics, trends, and contributions of the different broader areas of the movement.

From seven to thirteen languages: welcoming more communities than ever before

Last year marked the first time Wikimania was live interpreted into multiple languages. This year, we are almost doubling the number of languages supported at the virtual event: from seven to thirteen. In addition to the core United Nations languages (Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish), the Wikimania Festival will provide live interpretation on a rotating basis into Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Swahili, Turkish, and Ukrainian. These languages were selected based on the criteria of number of global speakers (including whether the language is a regional language in common), the size of the active editor community, the amount of affiliate presence, and responses to the Wikimania 2022 survey. While we would love to offer support to all of our language communities, we look forward to experimenting with this approach to enable live participation in more languages than ever before. 

Rotating schedule blocks, so that everyone is prime time

The virtual programming for Wikimania 2022 will cater to participants across all timezones. The approach is to optimize for the zone being spotlighted on that day, while also providing times that work in different zones. We wanted to plan with the global whole in mind, building a schedule that spans many hours to allow for each region to connect with every other region.

Day 1 will open with a single schedule block that covers after-work hours across Asia-Oceania, and also overlaps with other zones, allowing people across regions to be part of the kickoff. Day 2 will comprise two schedule blocks, during the day and in the evening for the Americas, separated by the Hackathon. Day 3 will also comprise two blocks, during the day and in the evening for Europe, separated by the Hackathon. The Global Day will have programming separated by global festivities. Days 3 and 4 will take advantage of the weekend with an additional hour of Wikimania programming. On every day, the networking space will be available for a number of hours beyond the program.

	Day 1 – Asia – Oceania August 11	Day 2 – Americas  Beginning August 12	Day 3 – Africa, Europe, Middle East August 13	Day 4 – Global Day August 14
Hours of programming	Wikimania: 9:00 UTC – 15:00 UTC	Wikimania: 14:00 – 16:00 UTC Hackathon: 16:00 – 22:00 UTC Wikimania: 22:00 – 2:00 UTC	Wikimania: 7:00 – 12:00 UTC Hackathon: 12:00 – 17:00 UTC Wikimania: 17:00 – 20:00 UTC	Wikimania: 8:00 – 12:00 UTC Global festivities: 12:00 – 14:30 UTC Wikimania: 14:30 – 19:00 UTC
Core language live interpretation	Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian	Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian	Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian	Arabic, Chinese, French, Spanish, Russian
Additional language live interpretation	Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese	Brazilian Portuguese	Swahili, Turkish, Ukrainian	Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese, Swahili, Turkish Ukrainian

Local in-person events

As part of a hybrid Wikimania, Wikimedia affiliates around the globe will be hosting interactive in-person events, from watch parties to edit-a-thons, to slumber parties and picnics. Many of these events will be open to the wider movement virtually. These in-person events may plug in directly to the virtual event, or provide additional hours of programming or even support in additional languages. Details about these events will be published as part of the program in the coming weeks.

Ready to go?

Registration opens soon, so keep your eye out! Follow us here on Diff or on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook for the latest updates.