A milestone for me: Wikimania 2024 Katowice (Day 4)

Everyone can have milestones in their lives. For me, Wikimania 2024 Katowice is a milestone. I would like to share with you my experiences at Wikimania 2024 Katowice, which took place between 7-10 August 2024.

There were three of us, myself, Eugene Ormandy and Taufik Rosman. I think it sounds very interesting to have three friends from Türkiye – Japan – Malaysia presenting about the friendship project.

Wikimedia Friendship between Japan, Malaysia and Turkey by Eugene Ormandy, Taufik Rosman and Y. Caner Özyayıkçı

Eugene Ormandy from Japan, Taufik Rosman from Malaysia and me, Y. Caner Özyayıkçı from Türkiye. After Wikimania 2023 in Singapore, Wikimedians in 3 different countries started to do friendship projects with each other. In our presentation, we talked about what we did in these friendship projects and what is happening in our countries’ local Wikimedia movements.

First of all, we told the audience how we started our collaboration. As 3 friends who met at Wikimania 2023 in Singapore, we built Japan – Malaysia and Japan – Türkiye friendship projects. As part of these friendship projects, we do various edit-a-thons, organize large-scaled events with universities, embassies and GLAMs, and collaborate with different professions such as researchers and librarians. In addition to all this, we organize online meetings from time to time and share our interests and knowledge with each other. In this way, we also keep the ties between the participants alive. Also, one of the most important things we do is to encourage WikiClubs in our countries to work together for “Free Knowledge” by declaring them as sister. (Istanbul Bilgi University Wiki Student Club and Student Wikipedian Community in Waseda University Tokyo are sister clubs under this project) We share all this with the members of the Wikimedia Movement through joint or individual Diff articles.

Malaysia

Taufik told the audience about his activities in Malaysia. He says they focus on language preservation, cultural content, content gap. He also emphasizes that they love collaborations as a community. So much so that they cooperate with many institutions from universities to embassies. In 2022, they held their first joint edit-a-thon focused on the theme 40 years of Look East Policy, co-located with Japan and supported by the Embassy of Japan in Malaysia. I think this is a very exciting thing for a community!

Türkiye

In Türkiye, the community is focused on getting people from different backgrounds to contribute to Wikimedia projects, bringing together local contributors to collaborate, making Wikimedians more active in events, and collaborating with organizations, NGOs and GLAM organizations.

With the Wikipedia Education Program, they explain Wikipedia and answer questions in many educational institutions. They organize edit-a-thons on various themes such as Art+Feminism, WikiGap, GLAM and more. In addition, 4 different WikiClubs have been opened in the country in the last 2 years, each with their own focus themes. They also take part in many international competitions such as Wiki Loves Earth and CEE Spring, and host international meetings such as Turkic Wikimedia Conference and CEE Meeting.

Japan

Wikimedians in Japan started to join in the global Wikimedia Movement. In this context, they organize different edit-a-thons such as WikiGap, Wikipedia Town, WikipediaOYA and Wikipedia Bungaku, and do Wikipedia translation events at universities. They also document these activities on Diff.

And how will we continue these friendship projects in the future? We will further expand our topics to areas such as women in red, local languages and structures. We will work on more Wikimedia projects like Wikidata, Wiktionary and Commons. Of course, we will look for more partners and learn more from each other!

Socialize

Wikimania 2024 opens the door not only to learning but also to socializing.

After Wikimania 2023 in Singapore, I was very excited to see my friends Eugene and Taufik, with whom I have been collaborating. We presented each other with the gifts we had prepared for each other before our travels. I love collecting flags, Taufik probably knew that. For this reason, he gave me a flag of his hometown Sabah. Eugene, knowing that I am a graphic designer interested in local cultures, gave me a graphic design book with traditional Japanese patterns. I gave them small flags of my country, handkerchiefs and small notebooks with illustrations of where I live in Istanbul. Remember our friendship in the beautiful notes you take in notebooks!

We also had a conversation with Eugene about how far our Japan-Türkiye friendship project has come in 1 year and what we should do in the future. I think this face-to-face conversation will be very productive for our project. We also had a conversation with Ahmad and Taufik, agreeing that Wiki clubs in Malaysia and Türkiye can work together and that we are ready to help them in this regard. I can say that we are in for a very exciting time until the next Wikimania.

I had long and short conversations with Wikimedians from Indonesia, Armenia, Ukraine, Greece, Kyrgyzstan, Czech Republic, Poland and many other countries. As I chatted with people, I realized that, without exception, everyone was open to collaborations and would do so with great enthusiasm. This really fits in with this year’s Wikimania theme “Collaboration of the Open”.

Mari, Nikos and I reflected after Wikimania 2024 Katowice and talked about what we need to improve for our session at CEE Meeting 2024 Istanbul. Since I am very interested in the cultures of Asian countries, I organized Wikipedia Asian Month in Turkish Wikipedia in the past years. I’m very happy that I now have the Wikipedia Asian Month badge hanging on my bag!

I would love to see Wiki Clubs in my country collaborate with communities in Indonesia, where I know there are a lot of young Wikimedians. I have already talked about this with my friends who participated in Wikimania from Indonesia. We should definitely do this.

During the Wikimania, I met Gosia Tsherzowka, who painstakingly included every day’s events in her work. When I passed Tsherzowka’s work during the day, I stopped by and we talked about graphic design and illustrations. Tsherzowka, who also drewn me, and I had a funny dialog. Although my hair was straight, it looked curly in the drawing. She said she could fix it, but I told her that I liked it the way it was and to keep it that way, because I really liked it that way!

She illustrated the Nazar amulet I gave Jimmy Wales. When I first saw this detail, I was happy and I smiled because I never expected to see this. She also illustrated the detail that I love to collect coins and postcards 🙂 Thank you Gosia Tsherzowka for this wonderful work!

End note

Wikimania 2024 Katowice will always have a very, very special place for me, as I realized one of my biggest goals, made new friends while strengthening my existing Wiki-friendships, and learned a lot from the sessions I mentioned in previous issues of this series (Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3). I hope to continue spreading the power of free knowledge worldwide through our activities in the Wikimedia movement.