From Uzbekistan to Greece: CEE Meeting 2025 was my first-ever participation at international conference!

The fourteenth annual Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2025, Central and Eastern European community gathering, successfully concluded in Thessaloniki, Greece. Hosted by Greek Wikimedia members, event offered a packed program, beginning with a pre-session training day and culminating in a weekend city tour.

I am grateful to the founder of the Uzbek Language User Group for trusting and choosing me as its delegate. This was my first experience at the Wikimedia CEE conference and my first large-scale international event at Wikimedia. Unaware of the event’s format, I thoroughly enjoyed interacting with participants I had previously only know on Wikipedia.

Learning Day

I arrived in Thessaloniki on September 24, where I was warmly welcomed by my colleagues from Wikipedia community. We stayed at the luxurious five-star Grand Hotel Palace. The next day, September 25, before the conference began, we visited the Goethe-Institut and learned about the principles of using open, linked data (Wikidata/Wikibase, VIAF) and libraries.

Throughout the day, Camillo and Alan taught us methods for convenient and productive editing of Wikidata. He demonstrated the most valuable tools, recommended their use, and helped us set up common.js pages for our accounts, adding a number of useful commands that he shared with everyone.

They convincingly demonstrated how these tools and commands significantly facilitate and speed up data processing in Wikidata and when working on local versions of Wikipedia. They also presented a series of Wikidata queries, detailing their functionality and demonstrating how they facilitate more productive project participation.

It’s worth mentioning that I’ve made more than 17 thousand edits on Wikidata. But I realized I still have a lot to learn 🙂

Central Asian Community

Being a Central Asian Wikimedians User Group and a board member of Uzbek Language User Group allowed me to happily reconnect with familiar colleagues. Our discussions focused on the potential of Wikimedia contributors to the development of our communities through fresh perspectives, enthusiasm, and creativity.