This year I had the opportunity to attend two very important conferences for the Wikimedia movement. In May, I traveled to Bogotá, Colombia, where I participated in the EduWiki conference, which focuses on using wiki projects as educational tools. In August, I was fortunate to attend Wikimania in Nairobi, Kenya, taking part in the most important gathering of Wikimedians in the world. In both spaces I learned a great deal, connected with other people who are just as passionate about free knowledge, and had the chance to share with the world what the Bolivian community is working on.
Every wiki gathering has a special character. In Colombia, we ate local food and visited the Museum of Gold. In Kenya, we saw an impressive performance of Maasai warriors jumping during the opening ceremony of Wikimania. You could say that each of these events is infused with the local flavor. And although there isn’t always time to go out and experience each culture as much as one would like, there’s always the desire for what you’re seeing (or eating) to have its own page on Wikipedia (especially in the Wikipedia in your own language). It was no coincidence that so many cell phones were raised to capture the Maasai warriors dancing on the first night of Wikimania. Unlike other conferences, where attendees take photos or videos for their social networks, at wiki conferences people record and share what they are seeing with free knowledge, so it can reach the thousands of people who consult Wikipedia every day.
I remember at Iberoconf 2019 in Santiago, Chile, we went out to eat mote con huesillo (a traditional Chilean dessert). I was so inspired seeing an attendee take a picture of it and, right then and there, start writing a Wikipedia article about mote con huesillo in her language. It wasn’t a long article; it didn’t need to be. It was a short yet precise article about something that unites us all: food. That moment was very important for me because I saw in that gesture a way to give something back to the country hosting us. Since then, I’ve made a promise to myself that whenever I visit a new place, I must upload some photos to Wikimedia Commons and write something for Wikipedia. And since I have a particular interest in funerary art and cemeteries, this year I wrote the article for a famous tomb in the Bogotá Cemetery and the article for the Langata Cemetery, the largest graveyard in Nairobi. I know it’s not much, but little by little, together, we are building free knowledge and, along the way, repaying the generosity of the countries that host us.
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