 Isaac, Isaac from Zambia, Isaac from Zambia, is he in the room? Isaac from Zambia, please come forward. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. This is about half of the Cape Town youth choir. The other half are making their way back to Cape Town from wherever they live in the country because this was school and university holidays the past few weeks. The first song was a sutu song. Hionnolo fatso means we give you a blessing. It's an enormous privilege to be able to sing here. Wikimedia, Wikipedia, we are in awe of the work that you do. So thank you for being a blessing and we welcome you with a blessing. Our next song is called Gessiponono. It's also a traditional piece that basically says my heart belongs in this country. And I hope you all leave your hearts behind and come again and again afterwards. We have a song called Emlanjan, which is a composition or a folk song, traditional song. Based on the story of the Hebrew exiles, they were exiled to Babylon and they were sitting next to it by the waters of Babylon. It's not the Boney M version by the way, by the waters of Babylon. And the story behind the song is actually that because you'll see it's very joyous, it's not sad. It's that you find your joy in yourself and not in your circumstances. Thank you ladies and gentlemen. It's a huge honor to be here. So thank you very much for that. Our final song is a prayer for peace. The zulu word for peace is ukutula. Ukutula. And in the song, we say, In this world of problems, of troubles, Linganzi, the nenez, and then ukutula isindiso, ukubonga. You'll see through the actions, all those key words, what the meaning of each one of them is. And the soloist in the song is Chlumelumarepola. I'm going to try and keep this brief and quick. So I suppose you'll excuse the brevity. And now I'd like to introduce someone who really deserves no introduction in a space like this. Someone who has done so much to bring us all together. Co-founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wells. Where we've been and what we're accomplishing. And a part of this is the first sad duty is the in-memorium section. I'm sorry the clicker doesn't seem to be working either. So we have lost some friends since the last wikimania in our various communities. Some of them are not known so well outside their own communities, all of them have made contributions to our joint mission. They're remembered in their communities in the ways that each community has chosen to commemorate its deceased contributors. And we cannot presume to do justice to their memory and their contributions. But some of the colleagues we've lost this past year were also active internationally and will be known to the international community of attendees of this conference. So I just have some words of remembrance and love to their cherished memory. And we'll just go a few a handful of these people next please. Is this not working? So we started here with Austin Hare. Many of you who have been involved in wikimania over the years would know Austin very well. He was an American wikimian who lived in the Netherlands. He helped to organize many of the earliest wikimanias. And he's a core part of many organizing committees going way back. We have Gangadhar Badani, an Indian wikipedia on English. He was passionately contributing since 2005. He published his autobiography a few years ago entitled... Sorry. Yeah, I'm sorry. Can you just click it for me? Sorry. He published his autobiography a few years ago entitled Choice in Chaos, a wikipedia's autobiography. And then we have Ray Santone from British Columbia. He attended the first 10 wikimanias. He passed away in 2016, but unfortunately I overlooked him last year which is a real tragedy because Ray was a friend and a friend to many others and a real fixture on the movement. And so we remember him now. Next slide. Now we go to Sabrish from the Malayalam community, a founder of schoolwiki.in for schoolchildren from Kerala, India. Next we have Craig Franklin. Irish Australian and former Australian chapter president. Long time wikipedia member of the ombudsman commission. Next we have Christof Machoki, user Halibut who passed away in the beginning of the year. He was a passionate wikipedia and worked as a spokesperson for wikimedia Polska. The Polish chapter is actually fundraising to help his children since he's passed and they've got a table outside his understanding. I want to make a contribution in his memory. That would be a good place to do that. Next slide. And I'm not going to read through all of these. These are just some names that were given to me by various people in the community over the years. They are all fantastic wikipedians who we lost this year. And of course the sad thing about doing a thing like this is that I'm going to miss some people. I'm going to miss many more. You all know how wiki works. It's simply decentralized and so I can't know what everything is going on. But let's just have a moment to reflect and think about our friends and colleagues who are no longer with us. Okay. Next slide. Okay. Well, we'll try to turn to a more cheerful note. First I'm going to start off. Every year I do a countdown and I'm going to skip a few years this time because this is the 14th wikimedia. And so I'd like to see people stand up. Everyone who has been to 14 wikimanias. Can we get those people to stand up? So we've got Andrew Lee, James Forester. Who am I missing? Oh, SJ. SJ unfortunately had to go home already. And then me. So there's four of us left. These guys are younger than me. So at some point they'll be doing the in memoriam for me. Okay. So now we go to the next slide. We're going to skip a few years. How many of you have been to at least 10 wikimanias? So some of you may want to just see Delphine here in the front. Phoebe in the back. Yes, lots of friends here. Next slide. How many have been to five wikimanias? At least five. At least five. Oh, wow. Catherine getting to be a veteran now. Next slide. How many people have been to at least two wikimanias? Fantastic. And now instead of having the entire room stand up, I'm going to ask all of you to sit down. And I want to see everybody who this is your first wikimania. So the next slide. Yeah, next slide will be one. And then the next slide. So I'm just going to recognize a few achievements. I don't have a lot of time because we need to get to the group photo. And so there were a lot of group achievements. A lot of things I wanted to cover, but I only had to select just a few. If we can go to the next slide, we'll go through some milestone numbers. Now just click these one at a time. Oh, one at a time. We have to clap. Two million articles in French wikipedia. Okay, next one. One million articles in both Chinese and Portuguese wikipedia. Next slide. 100,000 articles in Welsh wikipedia. For me, this one is one of the interesting ones. Some of you, some of the old timers from Germany will remember, I was in Germany the night that we passed 100,000 entries in German wikipedia. And that was recognized at the time. That's a huge encyclopedia. And the interesting thing about Welsh is like many of the other languages that are very successful. There is an argument that no one actually needs a Welsh encyclopedia. There are virtually no people. I tried to find a number for how many people speak only Welsh. And the answer I found was very close to zero. But that doesn't matter. What matters is in your mother tongue, you want knowledge in your mother tongue. And so Welsh wikipedia is very important. There are many languages like this where, yes, of course, people speak a more regional language, but it's their language that matters. And so it's really exciting to see that. And so now we'll go to one more, a local one. 1,000 articles in German wikipedia. Which I believe just happened this week. And so that's pretty fantastic. Okay, next slide. So just a few milestones from Africa. And we can go through these kind of quickly. In fact, you can just put them all up. 50% increase in affiliates since 2014. We have wiki fan club Nigeria. Four wiki clubs, 300 members. The Africa wiki media developers project. Since six countries, 20 active developers. And wiki women 2018, a series of editons to address gender gap. And they've expanded it to a number of different countries. So these are all exciting things that are happening right here in Africa. Next slide. So now I just want to say a few words about something that's really important to me. Every year I try to pick out a particular theme, whether it's kindness to newcomers or biographies or software developments. And this year I just want to speak very briefly about the importance of public policy. If we can go to the next slide. This just within the last several weeks, we've had a major success in Europe. There was this European copyright directive. Next. This was a comprehensive modernization of copyright law in Europe, but with some major flaws. It was a really long piece of work. And most of it was really good. Next. But we opposed Article 11 and Article 13. If you don't know anything about this, go Google it. It's not worth talking about right now. But also what was missing was an important set of things about positive steps for free culture, not just things that are steps backwards. So things like freedom of panorama is something that we would really like to see in European copyright law. And so we objected at these things. But who listens to little old Wikipedia-ians? I mean, we're just a bunch of geeks, quiet, shy people on our computers. Play. Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. Don't make me angry. You wouldn't like me when I'm angry. This of course is the famous line from the credible Hulk. You've probably heard of the incredible Hulk. This is the credible Hulk. You wouldn't like me angry because I always back up my rage with facts and documented sources. So this is a humorous way to say it. But the truth is this is one of the reasons why we're effective. People can understand that the Wikipedia-ians aren't after some kind of financial gain. When we object to something, we have a good solid reason for doing it. And parliamentarians tend to listen if they hear our voice. If we go again, so thank you. I've got a few words to say. Oh, thank you here. Oh, dear. I have to remember someone else's computer password. This is not my computer. Here she comes. I'm so sorry. Oh, she's very good at this. Okay. Right. So I want to thank all of us who advocated in many different ways in a short period of time. We only really found out we needed to do something very quickly to get the European Parliament to reject a draft copyright directive that if it becomes law, would lead to very significant expansion of copyrighted material that we strongly believe should be freely available. What we were fighting against is a law that, for example, will require most platforms to filter out anything that could be copyrightable up front or pay licenses for even referencing such material and linking to it. And so the fight is not over. Next slide. We can just click. There's another vote in September. So this vote was only to say, let's have a proper debate in Parliament. But the good news is, Demi here, who's our lead person in Brussels, they're listening to us. And this is good. But let me just put this. This is just one fight. Let me just put this into a broader context if we go ahead here. Public policy worldwide can either enhance or threaten the public's right to share freely. And our vision of making the sum of all human knowledge freely accessible to all humans cannot be accomplished without advocating against policies, actions, and laws that restrict free access and free speech. So it's really important that we do this. And I'm a big fan of us taking a stronger, more muscular public policy stance from the Wikimedia Foundation, from the communities. But one of the things that's really important is that we act in a coordinated and organized way. That we remember that our strength, the strength that causes people to listen to us, is that people know that the Wikipedians are rooted deeply in facts. And so we need to be really careful with all our pronouncements that we're completely factually accurate. We need to distinguish ourselves from the commercial players and all the other people who generally have an axe to grind that results in money in their pocket, whereas our axe to grind is freedom of access to knowledge for the public. So again, thank you very much. Next slide. So time for the Wikimedia of the Year Award. And I've got some, a very special guest here. We have last year's winner, Felix Narty, who's gonna come on stage with me. Yeah, those of you who were here last year will remember he wasn't in attendance, so I had some fun. And the previous, one of the previous year's winner, Emily, and I gave him a surprise Skype call and told him on Skype and it was a great video. But he is here with us this year. He's gonna talk now a little bit about his experiences at Wikimedia of the Year. Good day fellow Wikipedians and invited guests. All too soon, the ketting has been drawn and the purpose of this gathering has been achieved. I'm in a room filled with friends and colleagues with diverse backgrounds and cultures from around the world who have attended the fascinating sessions and contributed in so many ways to make this conference truly amazing. It has been an intensive week which has strengthened our networks, created new connections and laid down strategic goals yet to be accomplished for betterment of our movement. The past year has been tremendous, the sense of appreciation and the opportunity to represent my country and continent for the honorary award was humbling. Before the award, I just thought of myself as a young man who was passionate about the voice of my people and was willing to go any length of creating awareness about Wikipedia in my country and wherever I could have it reached. The movement is growing and spontaneously adapting to our differences. This only gives me hope that we will someday attain the true global movement that we envisage. I will entreat us all to take part in the movement strategy process and ensure that every voice is heard in order to form a movement that we will be proud of as a movement in a few years to come. Now, being a Wikipedia of the year was a humbling experience. The joy and honor that the entire continent felt for this award reminded me of the true spirit of Africa, which is Ubuntu. Widened my network, scope and opportunities to even do my work better. Inspired my colleagues on the continent that we have not been forgotten. Our work is significant in this movement and we are recognized. These experiences I will cherish for a very long time but I completely think that it will be meaningless if we really missed a point. We have to realize that each and every of us has been given a voice and we must appreciate the intervention of Wikipedia to share all unrepresented and marginalized knowledge to ensure a fair representation of the world. Thanks to all organizers of Wikimedia 2018 and thanks for the selection committee for choosing Africa. It's significant and an eye-opener to our people. Africans from afar and near who have come or watched online are inspired to add their voice. I wish to share that the Wikimedia movement is not one that I have just given to but also learned from. So this is to you on the fence thinking is it worth volunteering my time? Well, I would say it's your responsibility to tell your story because nobody can tell your story better than yourself. My heartfelt appreciation goes to Jimmy Wells and his team for granting me this opportunity. I feel honored and much appreciated to have received this award and of course on behalf of Africa as well. We did it. However, I always say to myself the result of hard work is more hard work. So I am not stopping. There's more to come from me. The world needs free knowledge and I'm not blowing the candle out. Let's live here with the bond of brotherliness and spirit to marry our differences because that's what makes us stronger. Long live Wikimedians and selfless volunteers. Long live the open movement. Long live the chief of Wakanda. I announced the winner of Wikimedia in a year this year if we can just click forward. The winner this year is Farhad Fadkulin. Farhad is an energetically community organizing among Russia's minority language communities going far and wide beyond his native Tatar. He's also fluent in English, a fact that has finally established a bridge between those communities and the wider movement after years of isolation. He's community minded, helpful, friendly, and truly dedicated to both our mission and to diversity. Okay, so congratulations to Farhad. He is unfortunately not here with us. But he'll be here next year. If we go to the next slide, some honorable mentions. Jess Wade started a year-long effort to put underrepresented scientists and engineers on Wikipedia. More than halfway through the project, she's generating huge positive response on Twitter and elsewhere. And then Nahid Sultan, who is here with us and how he can come forward. Nahid is not only the driving power behind the success of Wikimedia Bangladesh, a highly successful chapter that thrives under difficult circumstances like legislation that makes it almost impossible to get funding. He's also serving the global community as a steward and OTRS member. In addition, he co-manages several social media accounts for the Wikimedia movement, for example, Facebook, Wikimedia Commons, successfully. Nahid is a living example of the Wikimedia ideals, working tirelessly to help out not only his local community grow through open sharing of knowledge, but helping people around the globe to connect and learn from each other. Is Nahid here? Well, come on up. Come, come. I was afraid to have gone home or something. Thank you. Congratulations. Okay, well, this is all I've got, and now I think we're moving on to Catherine. Is that right? To do some thank yous or something? Anyway, I'm done. Thank you. All right. Thanks, everyone. I am here to thank you all for being here and thank those who have made this conference possible. I know that your hands are already tired from clapping, so stretch them out because you're about to do some more. We could go to the next slide. Or do I have the slides? Okay. First, I want a big round of applause for Wikimedia South Africa. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Douglas Scott. Peter Southwood. Raymond Ellis. Bobby Shabangu. Duming Bane. Rousseau Van Royen. David Richfield. Conrad Lubser. Ian Gafillion. Michael Graf. Jesse Apubu Moodley. Ayla Flood. Leba Bosch. And Andy Rabagliati. Stand up if you're here. Thank you for making this possible in this incredible space and in this incredible city and country. And then I also want to thank the amazing program committee. You two are also going to stand up. Our co-chairs, Liam Wyatt, Emna Mizuni, Felix Narty, Ahmed El-Orosi, Eddie Avila, Mohamed Bashunda, Carolyn Becker, Kelly Foster, Rob Fernandez, Nurembi Chaudhry Hassif, Neta Hussain, Sam Oyele, Benoit Prior, Kiro Simonowski, Leila Zia, Deb Tankersley, Mfosello, Dumy Ndubane, and Mike Peel. If you are here, stand up. You did an amazing job. The foundation team who helped make this possible behind the scenes, Brendan Campbell, Maria Cruz, Rachel Farrand, Aaron Lacey, Emerald Ross, Irene Tate, Luis Wo, Ellie Young, and the travel staff, Karen and Doreen, and Aaron, thank you so much for getting everyone here safe and sound. Those of us who don't know everyone's names are Hotel and AV staff who've made all of this possible. They have been absolutely wonderful. They have broken down this room and put it back together more times than I can count. And they've made it possible for us to be looking at the screen today. Can we go back a slide? Sorry. Just back one slide. It does work. Well, thank you because you've made it work. So thank these folks. These are amazing. Conference teams, thanks to all of you who came here early and did double duty on Wikimania. It has been a long week, but you have made it amazing and worthwhile and enriching for all of us. So for those who brought people together ahead of time for learning days and to decolonize the internet and much, much more for the hackathons, all of this, thank you. All right. I told you to get your hands ready. We're almost there. The Scholarship Committee, you make this possible in the way that we want it to be possible by helping bring people to this event that wouldn't otherwise be here. Thank you for reading through literally hundreds of applications. So, slash me, der Hexer. Banfield, yes. Dongodong, Jamie Tubers, Margot, Margot, Marta, Pigazzini, Mervat Salman, Papashu, Rosie Step, Venus Lee, Violetova, and Tova, thank you so much for making this possible. Now, none of this would be possible without the volunteers who actually make this event come together. You may have seen them in their red shirts around throughout the course of the last couple days. If our volunteers could please stand up and be recognized for putting in the time and the effort to make this come together. And if we could give them a big round of applause. And of course, thank you so much to our sponsors and supporters. I'm not going to thank the foundation on my, you know, because it's kind of funny, but Wikimedia South Africa, Google Design and Daba, WikiHow, the University of Cape Town, the Get to Institute, and Cape Town and the Western Caves Convention Bureau. Thanks for making this possible. Thanks for making us feel welcomed. You guys have been great. Thank you, Catherine. And now I'd like to introduce someone, or rather a group of people, who are going to be very important to the future of Wikimania. John Anderson and Team Sweden. Let's see if this worked. I was told it would work. Perfect. So thank you, everybody. And my name is John Anderson, and I'm the Executive Director at Wikimedia Sweden. Me and my team here, we've been traveling here to Cape Town to look, listen, and learn to see how to best organize at Wikimedia. And it has been quite a lesson. It's been so interesting and we had great fun. And I know you've been applauding quite a bit already, but I would really like to stress that we really want to thank again the Bank again, all those South African chapter, and the great conference team at Wikimedia Foundation and the program committee, and all of the great volunteers that has made us such a success. So once again, I would like to bring your hands together for a little bit of an applause for these great people. But now I would like to turn our focus to next year, when I hope all of you will be coming to Stockholm in Sweden. So in fact, me and my team here, Sara, Andrea, and Axel, we would like to bring you across the globe, to the other side of the globe, some 10,000 kilometers from here, up north to Stockholm in August 2019. You're among the first people here to know about that it's going to take place in Stockholm. And we will be making an official announcement about it when we're back here from Cape Town. This will in fact be the most Northern Wikimedia ever. And I would like to give all of you a few tips and pointers that what you will experience. This will be the 15th Wikimedia, and we hope that we will be able to bring a few new things. So one thing that you should know is that Sweden has few people. I mean, very few people. So I'm really not kidding. I mean, we have a country that's much bigger than Germany, for example, but we only have 10 million people living there. Sweden is a super liberal country when it comes to the rights of LGBTQI people. That is, of course, the rights of people with different sexual orientation. And some of you might have attended the Wikimedia Diversity Conference that we hosted last year, or perhaps you took part in one of the many Wikigap events that were organized across the globe together with other Wikimedia affiliates at 50 different embassies, at Swedish embassies across the globe. So this is how we look at it. This is part of our ongoing work as a chapter to increase diversity. And we really want to make sure that all of you feel very, very welcome when you come to Stockholm in Sweden, whoever you are. Sweden is home to the second-largest amount of unicorns per capita. Yeah, I'm talking, of course, about the privately held start-ups that has a value of over one billion US dollars. So in fact, only Silicon Valley has a higher percentage. Companies such as Skype, Spotify, Klarna, Mojang and King, they've all been founded in Sweden. And there are literally thousands of tech companies scattered all across Stockholm in the greatest Stockholm area. And we, of course, hope that we will be able to bring a lot of these companies on board, both at the Hackathon at the Wikimedia. But, of course, not all companies in Sweden produce great things. We are also the world-leading nation in the production of sous-treming that is fermented herring. This is literally rotten fish that people eat. It has been compared to chemical weapons and a lot of other not-so-nice stuff. I still remember back when I was in high school and a group of kids thought it was a great fun, a real joke, to put a can of opened sous-treming into the ventilation shaft. The high school that I was going at was close for two days after. You have to get rid of that smell. So if you decide that you want to bring some of this delicacy home with you when you visit Sweden, you may be too surprised your family and friends. Then please check with your airlines because not all airline companies will allow you to bring it online. They're actually abandoned. But there are some things, of course, that you might want to try when you come and visit Sweden. We, of course, have the Swedish meatballs, and you can find them in IKEA close to you if you cannot come to Stockholm, that is, of course. And, of course, nowadays, you can also get the delicious vegetarian option. We still call them meatballs. Another important color in the institution in Sweden is the fika. It's fika. A fika, that's really a small pulse from whatever you're doing. You take a break. You get a lot of coffee. You get a small treat. Maybe a sweet cinnamon bun, which we call kanelbulle. And you sit down and talk to your friends and family. This image is from 1916 when they were having a proper fika. As I said, they're... I keep clicking twice. As I said, there are not that many people in Sweden, and most are gathered in a few cities. Stockholm was founded 766 years ago, and it's where we will be hosting Wikimana in 2019. It is the capital, and it's the biggest city in the country with over 2 million people in the metropolitan area. The city is built on 14 different islands, so you always have water close by. We have kind of an ongoing east-side, west-side kind of battle between Stockholm and the city of Gothenburg about who has the best archipelago. So if you have the chance, do take the ferry out and visit it. You might also have heard about Stockholm in the connection to the Nobel Prize. The Nobel banquet takes place in the blue hole inside of this building, the city hall. This is a place that we celebrate knowledge and incredible minds, and we hope that we will be able to bring all of you there for a little party. So fingers crossed that we will have our application for it accepted. In Sweden, you can ignore a lot of public work. For example, each of the subway station is really a massive artwork. Wikimedia Sweden, we love these artworks and we have tried very hard to show them to the world and bring knowledge about them. However, as some of you might know, we ran into a little bit of an issue with this and we were sued by a copyright society and we lost last year in the Supreme Court, Sweden, which means there's kind of problems now to putting up works of art online. But we're working very, very hard to try to change that and we hope in the future we will be able to get more of these images up online. The city is very well connected when it comes to public transportation and all the public transport is accessible for people with disabilities, as are all of the public institutions and public venues. Stockholm is a city really filled with research and we have two large universities there. We will be having Wikimedia on the campus at Stockholm University. This university was founded in 1878 and has around 70,000 students. Sorry again. In the main hall at the university, that's probably called Aula Magna. We will have the keynotes and some of the other programmatic activities. We want the conference Wikimedia in Stockholm to really focus on a future of free knowledge and how we can engage in society. And we want to work on a theme that reflects that. We want to have a theme that allows us to communicate efficiently about all the great work that affiliates and partners and volunteers are doing. And we want to get attention from the potential partners, the media and the general public outside of the Wikimedia movement. So we will let this a little bit of a cliffhanger. We will let you know more about what the theme will be in the coming months. We intend to work in partnership with affiliates in Northern Europe and beyond and together with Wikimedia Foundation of course to develop a really strong conference. We hope that this model where we bring together other affiliates is something that can be repeated afterwards in other future Wikimanias. We will have a specific focus to document our efforts, especially when we try a few new things. Our hope is by working together with affiliates and by involving different partners, we will be able to organize events all across the city, together with the partners and by really like a hub of a real Wikimedia week. So we can get more visibility, engage more partners and create a lasting legacy. And with that I would like to say thank you for your time and we very much look forward hosting you in Stockholm next year. Thank you so much. Yes, it is on. You remember from the welcoming ceremony, one of the things we wanted to achieve at this year's Wikimania was to really give people a great sense of what they want to take home from this year's Wikimania. And in order to help that process at the welcoming ceremony we invited Bravesh Patal to do a little exercise with us. I would like now to invite Bravesh Patal above to come up and complete that. Above. So me and Douglas worked on a final question. We've just heard the next Wikimanias in Sweden. So this question's before Sweden, but after the party. So somewhere between those two points. And the question is very simply, oh it started, Wikimania 2018, what have I learned and what will I do? And I've got three steps for you and I'll share them first and you'll have five to ten minutes. So step one, stand up. Step two, talk to someone next to you, behind you, around you about what you've learned and what you'll do. And then step three, some people have already skipped the other two. Write something in there beyond goats and dragons. Yeah. So stand up, talk to each other. What have I learned? What will I do? And then type something in. Over to you. Whoa, that's very loud. Sorry, if you could please take your seats. If you could please take your seats. Okay. We have one more announcement, a very special announcement before we end off today. I would like to invite Asaf to give an address on behalf of the Wikipedia Acuteness Association. Asaf. Thank you very much. Famously cute. Before I go into the state of the cuteness, I'll use this stage to tell you one of my favorite bits this Wikimania was meeting the editor from Zambia. I hope one day he will be an editor from Zambia. But right now he is the editor from Zambia. He's made thousands of edits on Wikipedia from a mobile phone. But starting today, he will have a laptop. Courtesy. That is if he finds me. So please see me after class. This is courtesy of an anonymous donor. I won't tell you his name. I'll just give you the hint. He is the most widely read author on medicine on the planet. So with that out of the way, let's get right to the state of the cuteness. And thank you to the program committee for allowing this. This was born last night and crowdsourced wiki style. State of the cuteness. The cuteness association for those encountering it for the first time has something of a pedigree. It started in 2012 at Wikimania in Washington, D.C. The founding meeting had four attendees. The language of the meeting was French. In 2013 the association came up with this adorable logo. This is the first time I've seen it. But lest you think this is all fun and games, cuteness is a serious thing. There are cuteness studies out there. I won't walk you through the whole thing in the interest of time, but the slides will be shared. And these are of course references. Those clickable links. Cuteness fosters intercultural exchange. It is interestingly both global and culture specific. Cuteness promotes human empathy and social interaction. And cuteness helps to generate more free knowledge. Because cute stimuli can positively influence your productivity on and off the wiki. Editing, coding, and other related activities. See also the learning pattern on spreading cuteness. It's on meta. So as we've established cuteness is serious business. So serious in fact that as this t-shirt reminds us life is full of choices. Beer or more beer. And yes, or very fine South African wine right here in Cape Town. Wuzzy may or may not have a problem. And some photos of representation of the Cuteness Association at events at Wikimania in Mexico City. Other Wikimanias. CEE meeting. Hackathons. You can see the increasing diversity. Train the trainer in India. Now you wake up. WikidataCon. Yes you can. Wikidata Workshop in India with Alkes the Wikidata Moose. He's a project-specific cuteness. He has some cute dances. Cute tiny planet from last year's Wikimania. In general cuteness has grown in popularity to the point that we are sometimes having to deal with paparazzi. And the Cuteness Association has gradually worked more and more closely with executives and with the Board of Trustees whom as you know the Cuteness Association is there to help starting with not actually starting with Kristoff this clicker. There is a rhythm to this joke and could you just move one slide forward please over there. Yes please. One slide. No one slide not two. Well the Cuteness Association has been supporting Jan Bart there is an actual slide between that and Kristoff. And also Kristoff as chair the Cuteness the Cuteness Association has been supporting Jimmy as Jimmy and finally Catherine who as you all know is our executive director. I told you there was a rhythm to that joke. Cuteness is involved with the strategy process of course if you want a cute future we need cute representation in the movement strategy process the core team of the strategy process has invited the Wikimedia Cuteness Association to appoint QTs to observe and advise all nine groups of the strategy process and we are proud to see the Cuteness Association expanding and diversifying here's some Celtic cuteness for you celebrating the Welsh Wikipedia achievement and yes more diversity of course not just in geography but in species medium fabric etc and yes last year we thought we had achieved Cuteness overload in Montreal but it is technically possible the QTs are not so big on stats and now Shachal Kankunczyk and Wazi the Owl some owl will demonstrate to you some more cuteness values physically solidarity peer support finally some fresh cuteness from the last 72 hours a cute consultation cuteness in cheese and a cute panel with Wikipedia as the t-shirt announces yes please yes and last but not least cute support has been extended to Douglas Ian Scott lead organizer of this conference thank you very much Douglas and the QTs were able to transform Douglas through their embrace from this to this in conclusion Wikimania Cape Town is cuteness approved thank you and Kosi be cute to each other see you in Stockholm and one announcement before we break up just want to remind you all to that the bus to leave the closing party will leave from here at 8.30 do not be there at 8.30 be there at 6.30 and please remember to bring your tickets you'll find that there are attached two free drink coupons so you definitely don't want to forget your tickets without saying anymore I would like to declare this Wikimania now over I do actually have one more important announcement the photograph the group photograph it will be happening here right now on the stage so if you want to stand up and slowly make your way to the stage I'm going to ask if you can please stand no further away from the stage than the edges of the screens here on either side no further away than the edge of the screens please