A milestone for me: Wikimania 2024 Katowice (Day 1)

Everyone can have milestones in their lives. For me, Wikimania 2024 Katowice is a milestone. I would like to share with you my experiences at Wikimania 2024 Katowice, which took place between 7-10 August 2024.

Preparation steps

I was a speaker in two joint presentations at this year’s Wikimania. One of them was a “Wikimedia Friendship between Japan, Malaysia and Turkey” presentation with Taufik and Eugene Ormandy, who I met at last year’s Wikimania and who are the winners of the Wikimedian of the Year and Newcomer of the Year awards. The other one was a presentation on the CEE Youth Group, the youth group of the CEE region, called “CEE Youth Group: a successful youth organisation within the movement”, which I presented together with Mari and Nikos.

And before the first day of the conference, when I arrived in Katowice, I don’t know why, but I didn’t feel tired at all. So I met my Wikimedian friend Eugene Ormandy, with whom I had started the Wikimedia Japan-Türkiye Friendship Project, and Wadakuramon, and we met outside at a cafe.

I did it!

The opening ceremony on the first day was a milestone for me, as I gave the title of this article. In my 10th year in the Wikimedia movement, which I first started to take part in in 2014, I was honored by Jimmy Wales, co-founder of Wikipedia, with the Media Contributor of the Year award, one of the Wikimedian of the Year awards.

I want to convey my feelings to you as follows. First of all, I am very happy and excited to have been deemed worthy of this award. Being honored in this way for my design work that I have done for many events, projects and other different areas has motivated me even more. By the way, I’m actually a little surprised. Because at the award ceremony at the opening of Wikimania 2023 Singapore, I promised myself that I would receive this award next year. And yes, it happened as expected. I won the Media Contributor of the Year award at the Wikimedian of the Year awards.

I was also honored by what Jimmy Wales said about me at the award ceremony:

This year we celebrate a person who’s been a champion in supporting communities through creating unique visual designs for their Wikimedia events, campaigns and projects. They use graphic design to help Wikimedia communities communicate their culture, history and identity. Their creations are not only about helping others promote their Wikimedia work but also to do it in a visual language that captures and explains who they are. This person is from CEE region but their impact goes far beyond a single region.

– Jimmy Wales, Wikimania 2024 Katowice opening ceremony, August 7, 2024

Then Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska, who was officiating the ceremony, said that she knew that this work contained elements of communities that were linked to culture, and that it was important for me to explain it through graphic design, and she asked me to explain it. That’s how I explained it briefly:

Graphic design is very important for me, include objects from the cultures of the communities in my works… I designed some stickers of Central Asian Turkic culture, such as Dombıra and Yurt, which belong to our common history. For the first time, I also designed two cute mascots for the conference. The male mascot wore a traditional Kyrgyz hat, while the female mascot wore traditional Turkish clothes. Seeing the participants having fun taking photos with these mascots in the conference area made me very happy and I felt that I was able to successfully promote the local culture.

– Y. Caner Özyayıkçı (Kurmanbek), Wikimania 2024 Katowice opening ceremony, August 7, 2024

You can read more about Wikimedians of the Year 2024 in the Diff article below:

Meet the Wikimedians of the Year 2024

After the opening ceremony, I attended several sessions and I would like to tell you a little bit about some of them.

Preserving Stories, Preserving Identity: Wiki Loves Folklore Unveiled by Tiven2240

The session covered the history of Wiki Loves Folklore. Started in 2019 under the name Wiki Loves Love, the contest has now taken its current form. I realized that it was quite easy to enter the contest and I learned something very interesting. There was a writing part of the contest called “Feminism and Folklore“. In this part, they focus on folk culture and gender gap. In the 5 years since the contest was first organized, a total of 37,854 articles have been created. The country with the highest number of submissions was India.

My opinion: I think we should definitely organize the Türkiye section of this contest in the future. It will give us a lot of content about Türkiye.

Media education, libraries and schools – Czech experience by Pavel Bednařík, Klára Joklová, and Lucie Schubert

This session, organized by Wikimedia Czech Republic (WMCZ), was one of the most interesting sessions for me. Because there are various activities in Türkiye where we aim to help new people learn about Wikimedia projects, especially Wikipedia.

During the session, I learned that WMCZ has 3 main programs: “Educational Programs”, “Programs for Community” and “Programs for Partnerships”. The part that interested me here was media training education. Because in the presentation it was mentioned that Wikimedia projects are a great tool for media education. The media education project includes trainings and workshops for future librarians at universities in Prague and Brno. It also includes a education program, a portal and a handbook with 5 activities for teachers. (I am interested in Wiki education with a handbook, maybe we can make a Wiki education handbook in the future.) After the presentation, we also experienced this education process with a little test. (In their own words, we became students for 10 minutes :))

My cycling and Wikipedia journey (from images on Commons to riding bicycle to Katowice) by Toni Ristovski

How does it sound for a Wikimedian to cycle thousands of kilometers (1100 km) to Wikimania? Since 2010, Toni Ristovski, who joined Wikipedia in 2010 and has been cycling since 2015, cycled from Skopje to Katowice in 6 days for Wikimania 2024.

At the beginning of his presentation, he says that TV series and writing articles about cycling on Wikipedia led him to buy his first bicycle. Initially, he says, he didn’t upload the photos he took while riding his bike to Commons. However, he heard about Wikiexpeditions at the Wikimedia CEE Meeting 2012 Belgard. After 2 years, he planned to organize a local Wikiexpeditions event in Macedonia. During these trips, he photographed many churches, villages, lakes and waterfalls and uploaded them to Commons. However, Toni talked about the importance of finding models to make a proper expedition; the route, people, places, roles and materials.

At the end, Toni has a message for us:

If you are outdoor person, combine Wikipedia with your hobby

Toni Ristovski, My cycling and Wikipedia journey (from images on Commons to riding bicycle to Katowice) presentation, August 7, 2024

Meetup of Central Asian Wikimedians

At the Meetup of Central Asian Wikimedians, a gathering of Wikimedians in and interested in Central Asia, we heard about current work in the region from Wikimedians in the region. We also exchanged ideas about the events and activities that took place.

Here is my first exciting day at Wikimania 2024 Katowice. See you in the second day’s post!