Wikimedians from CEE region gather in Istanbul to build a bridge to knowledge

This year’s Wikimedia CEE Meeting was held in Istanbul from 20–22 September under the slogan “A Bridge to Knowledge!”. There was a record attendance of 195 participants from more than 40 communities and affiliates, including delegates from closely associated communities outside of the region of Central and Eastern Europe, who had the opportunity to learn from each other, share experiences and exchange ideas. The conference took place at the Museum Gasworks.

Changes and novelties

The main novelty in this year’s conference was the introduction of demonstrations as a new session format. At past conferences, many speakers used the lecture format to demonstrate a tool, a workflow or a programme. However, a lecture proved to be too short and insufficient to meet the requirements of one such session, so it was necessary to introduce a new format with a longer duration. The demonstration format was introduced for the first time at Wikimania 2023 where it was positively accepted.

Other changes this year were the abandonment of language intepretation from English into Russian and vice versa due to the low benefit against the high cost from the previous year, the move of the main social event from the evening of the second day to the evening after the closing ceremony so that participants do not find it difficult to attend the sessions of the last day, and the admission of delegates from Iranian Wikimedians User Group as an affiliate representing a neighbouring regionally unaffiliated like-minded community.

A brief recap of the conference

As usual in the past, a pre-conference Learning Day took place on 19 September, which consisted of workshops on group facilitation, capacity building and brief introduction to the Wikimedia movement. The main part of the conference followed in the period 20–22 September. It consisted of numerous talks in the format of lectures, workshops, demonstrations, panels, roundtables and lightning talks that were held in three parallel tracks across halls named after the largest cities in Turkey—Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. There were also several plenary sessions, and a couple of posters were displayed in the venue. All sessions were documented on etherpads and recorded, while the sessions that were held in the Istanbul hall were live-streamed on YouTube via the Wikimedia CEE channel.

The conference began with a video documenting Wikimedia CEE Meeting’s chronology. Afterwards, the chair of the organising committee Zafer Batık welcomed participants, followed by Başak Tosun from the programme committee, Nataliia Tymkiv as chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees and Erkan Saka from Istanbul Bilgi University. Wikipedia’s co-founder Jimmy Wales and Wikimedia Foundation’s CEO Maryana Iskander prepared pre-recorded talks as well. During the opening session, it was announced that Thessaloniki had been selected as host city for Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2025. Shortly after the opening ceremony, Barbara Klen, Toni Ristovski and Philip Kopetzky from the CEE Hub presented an overview of the current state of Wikimedia Central and Eastern Europe. The rest of the programme covered a wide range of topics in the thematic areas of technology, education, GLAM, partnerships, outreach, governance, strategy, research, advocacy and others. Sessions that attracted particular attention were those pertaining to the artificial intelligence in relation to the Wikimedia movement. The programme also included a one-session board training aimed at improving governance within affiliates and an interactive workshop with deliberations on the future of CEE Hub’s programmes. At the closing of the conference, Mārtiņš Bruņenieks of the Latvian community was announced as a celebrated Wikimedian from the CEE region.

Outside of the main programme, a four-hour boat tour along the Bosphorus Strait, which included a dinner and a party, was organised on the evening of the last day. The boat embarked from Kadıköy and sailed to the Bosphorus Bridge before returning back. During the tour, participants had a nice sunset view of the historical peninsula as well as Karaköy and Beşiktaş neighbourhoods with close approaches to the Dolmabahçe Palace, Çırağan Palace and Ortaköy Mosque.

What comes next in the CEE region?

In the upcoming twelve-month period, the CEE Hub will continue to support the CEE communities through the implementation of its annual plan. At the end of November 2024, the second in-person meeting of the Youth Group will be held in Prague. The preparations for next year’s Wikimedia CEE Meeting have already started, and the conference is planned to take place in Thessaloniki in September 2025.