Cooperation in hosting the event “Use the power of digital technology to promote the appeal of your region – with a focus on Nagahama Castle Town Heritage”

The Wikimedians of Japan User Group cooperated with the event “Promoting the appeal of your local area with the power of digital technology – with the theme of Nagahama Castle Town Heritage,” held on March 22, 2025, at the Nagahama Culture and Welfare Plaza in Sazanami Town, a cultural complex in Nagahama City, Shiga Prefecture, with our members participating in support roles.

Sazanami Town is a complex consisting of the Nagahama Culture and Welfare Plaza, which consists of the Nagahama City Library, Nagahama Culture and Welfare Plaza, Nagahama Urban Development Center, and Nagahama Civic Collaboration Center, as well as the Nagahama Chamber of Commerce and Industry, and the Nagahama Business Support Center.

Nagahama City has been continuously working on open data initiatives for some time, and in 2022 it hosted Wikipedia Town in Nagahama.

On the day, the lecturer was Sakanoshita （User:Barsaka2）, a user group member and OpenStreetMap activist, and the explanation for the walk around the city was provided by Ota Koji, director of the Oumi Institute of History and Culture.

Starting at 1pm, we met at the Nagahama Urban Development Center, where Sakanoshita and Ota explained the areas we would be walking around. We then walked around the area around Nagahama Hachiman Shrine, which was the main part of the walk, and took photos to upload to Wikimedia Commons as we walked, and mapped the area using OSM.

After returning to the Nagahama Urban Development Center, the participants uploaded the photos they had taken to Wikimedia Commons, and also created a section on “Nagahama Castle Town Heritage” in the article on Nagahama Castle Town where there were no selected locations for 2023 and 2024. They added photos from the day and photos that had already been uploaded to Commons.

I asked all participants to create a Wikipedia account in advance, but some people still hadn’t, so I used the account creation function, which I had access to since I have administrator privileges for the Japanese Wikipedia, to register their accounts.

This time, Wikipedia was not the main focus, and the focus was on uploading images to Commons and adding data to OSM. The Wikipedia article was limited to additions to “Nagahama Castle Town,” but even this article seems to require ongoing maintenance, as no new images have been added since the 2022 editing event, and no new selections have been added for 2023 and beyond. On the other hand, when planning such events, there seems to be a tendency to avoid revisiting themes that have been covered previously. However, when carrying out ongoing initiatives, I believe it is necessary to find a way to tackle the same theme that allows it to be implemented multiple times.

This was the first time that Wikimedians of Japan User Group sponsored an open data event. If you would like to hold an event similar to Wikipedia Town, or if you would like to hold an event related to open data that is a little different from Wikipedia Town, please talk to group members or leave a comment on the user group’s talk page on Meta.