Wikimania 2024 Day 1: Sessions, meetups, and Wikimedians of the Year!

Thank you to everyone who joined us in-person and online for an amazing first day of Wikimania Katowice 2024!!

This year’s Wikimania puts the spotlight on multilingualism, with sessions available in six languages. Attendees represent over 140 countries and come from a variety of language backgrounds: no more than 36% of the attendees have the same native language.

Jimbo said it well, live from the Wikimania stage:

“We have as many countries as the UN, except we are not yelling at each other.”

We made a lot of noise, though, for the Wikimedian of the Year Awards, announced in today’s opening ceremony:

• Wikimedian of the Year: Clovermoss
• Wikimedia Laureate: DerHexer
• Media Contributor of the Year: Kurmanbek
• Newcomers of the Year: the Wayuu community, represented by Leonfd1992
• Functionary of the Year: Vira Motorko
• Honorable mention: Gu Eun-ae
• Tech Contributor of the Year: Siddharth VP

Other highlights from today’s sessions include:

• Breaking records: Members of Wikimedia Polska shared how they broke the Guinness World Record for the longest edit-a-thon. Last year, 126 contributors edited for 100 continuous hours, making over 293 new articles and 13 thousand edits on Polish Wikipedia! 
• Closing gender gaps: The WikiWomen Summit began today, bringing together Wikimedians who are passionate about addressing gender gaps within Wikimedia projects. Discussions highlighted the ongoing challenges for women in the movement and persistent stereotypes of women on Wikipedia. Participants also explored the development of new tech tools aimed at reducing the gender gap, as well as other potential solutions.
• Trust & Safety (T&S) Product: The sessions presented about ongoing research and work by their team in improving blocks on Wikimedia projects and limiting collateral effects, as well as developments in temporary accounts.
• Future of MediaWiki: The session presented on the future of support for MediaWiki core infrastructure. They discussed the ongoing work by the Foundation to ensure a more sustainable future for MediaWiki, including a variety of platform improvements and encouraging more staff and volunteers to become familiar with and contribute to MediaWiki. 

And this is just the beginning! There are three more days to come of learning, discussing, and meeting fellow contributors and friends. We also made the news in The Economist and many other media outlets. See the full Wikimania schedule for specifics!