Organizing a Wikimedia Hackathon 2023 satellite event

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The Wikimedia Hackathon is finally taking place in person this year in Athens, Greece, between May 19-21. This year’s edition focuses on inviting and bringing together people who already contribute to various technical areas of Wikimedia projects to hack on projects, participate in technical discussions, and explore new ideas. The application phase for obtaining a scholarship is now over. If you applied for a travel scholarship that wasn’t accepted, or for any other reason, you might not be able to attend the Hackathon in person and would like to be a part of it remotely, read on.

Enter Satellite events – the coordination team encourages you to organize pre-Hackathon events, watch parties, or meetups around the Wikimedia Hackathon with help from your local community. 

These events could either take place in-person or online. You could choose to organize such an event:

  • Before or during the main event to onboard newcomers to Wikimedia’s technical ecosystem, collaborate on Hackathon projects, interact online with technical contributors attending the in-person event in Athens, etc.
  • After the main event to share and reflect on contributions made to projects and the overall program, learn from local community members who attended the event in Athens, etc. 

These are some ideas for you to decide on and plan a theme for an event. You are welcome to develop your technical focus and format for such an event. 

If you are looking for inspiration, you can explore the list of 11 meetups organized during the online Hackathon in 2022

Location of local meetups from 2022

One key piece of information related to the satellite events is the funding available for up to 5,000 USD to organize these events through Rapid Funds grants maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. If you will require funding for your event, there is one week remaining before the deadline to submit a grant proposal on March 20th. Organizers have also developed a checklist for you to help plan a satellite event keeping in mind who will organize it and for whom, what would be the goals of the event, what will the program look like, how you will promote it, how would you fund the event & handle logistics, etc. 

Learn more about the funding process and checklist of ideas for organizing a satellite event on the Hackathon wiki.

If you want to brainstorm ideas, need more resources, or have questions about submitting grant applications, email us at hackathon@wikimedia.org.

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