 Hi everyone. Salam, greetings, a warm welcome to you, wherever you are. Good morning from Toronto. My name is Mehdat and it's my pleasure to be here with all of you today to celebrate awesome Wikimedians around the world. I see many of you watching on YouTube and on feed loop and for whoever is watching later, big welcome to you and thank you so much for being here. Hi everyone. Salam, greetings. You know, Fibiair has famously said it's not Wikimania if people are infranzically looking for Jimmy. So I wonder where he is today because he's not here. Jimmy, wherever you are, we're ready. Okay wait, I have an email from Jimmy guys. Let's see. This is awkward. This is the first time I'm emailing you this year. Okay, okay, that's that's not the right one. Oh, I have another email. Maybe he's here. Wait, it's Andreas Kobe looking for the Wikimedia Accounting Convention. Okay, not him either. Jimmy. Hello. Hey Jimmy, how are you? I'm great. How are you? It's um, I had the right link finally. I'm glad, I'm glad. I'm so happy we're here once again. We're starting to reconnect with each other, including if you didn't catch today's announcement next year's Wikimania in Singapore. It's today is the final day of Wikimania and we're all so happy to be here. Jimmy, I think we've learned a lot as a movement during the pandemic. How do you feel about reconnecting once again in person, including some upcoming events like Wikirabia, the CEE meeting in Daba, French and German wiki conventions and more? Oh, well, I mean, it's really exciting. I'm very excited for us to get back to meeting in person. I mean, what's interesting about Wikipedia and Wikimedians and how we work is we do, we work from home. We do all the key heavy lifting, just typically as a hobby, sitting, working on our own computers, but these meetings, the live meetings, have such an incredible role to play in the serendipity of sharing ideas and making friends in a different kind of way. Obviously, you can make friends online, but it's really wonderful to sit together in person and share a meal and so forth. And obviously, it helps in many ways to reduce conflict because it's quite easy online to sort of have a conflict with a person who, if you met them in person, you would both realize, oh, actually, you know, it was the online thing that was making us have a conflict. So I think it's really important, really exciting, really fun. And actually, Singapore, when I first, you know, heard that, I thought, oh, gosh, you know, it's so hot. It's going to be so hot in Singapore. I actually checked. Today, it's actually hotter here in London than it is in Singapore. So who knows what the weather's going to hold in the future. Absolutely, and I can't wait for the ECAP community to host the Wikimedia movement. Jimmy, COVID was a big topic last year, a major topic that impacted the world. Of course, it also impacted our movement. How do you think we have, now that it's almost feeling like we're coming out of the pandemic, how do you feel like our movement has really stood, has stood its ground? Yeah, I mean, it's been really heartwarming. It's really an incredible thing to see. You know, I meet a lot of people and one of the things that people, they sort of realized it and it was like for the first time they realized that they believed something, which is that Wikipedia would be a good place to go for information about COVID. You know, there was all this misinformation, disinformation online. I mean, I personally sort of, sort of almost yelled citation needed at some people in a school WhatsApp group and people on the WhatsApp group were talking about using onions, boiling onions in your kitchen to cure COVID and I said, this is ridiculous, please go read the Wikipedia entry. I hadn't even looked at the Wikipedia entry, but I knew it would not say that. And a lot of people really came to understand through this that, oh actually Wikipedia is the place that you can go and you can generally trust it and it's quite good and there's really good people behind it who are trying to make things right. And so a lot of people then asked me, what did you have to do different? How did you deal with this differently? And I said, you know what, actually it's what we've always done. It's, you know, principles of verifiability, you know, all of the processes and the community discussions and the chewing on things and reliable sources and so forth. We've always been doing this and so when we face a new challenge, obviously our existing principles are the right principles to start with. Absolutely and through countless crises that really showed us how resilient they are. Another major topic this year was and still is the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which really impacted so many community members and fellow humans in Ukraine. We had great coverage from Ukraine over Wikimedia and some wonderful sessions. Six months later, it's unfortunately still raging on. It has also had a negative impact on individuals and groups in the movement and also in Russia and Belarus and in diaspora. It has also spread misinformation about Wikimedia and other trustworthy sources of information and even threatened access to free knowledge. How do you think our movement has faced such crises and challenges in the past, you know, 22 years? Well, you know, it's interesting because I do feel that the current times are in some ways worse than we have faced in the past around these kinds of issues. It's been really rare throughout the years for Wikimedians to be arrested for the crime of being a Wikimedia. I mean, it's just kind of unheard of and new ground and it really disturbs me greatly. I remember many years ago, I was once given an award and sort of the text of the award said I was a hero and I, in my acceptance speech, I said, look, I'm not a hero. I'm just a guy who types on his computer a lot. But every Wikipedian, every Wikimedian who's working in a conflict zone or in any place where speaking simple and psychopedic truth can lead to arrest or prison time, those people are the heroes and that's really something I think everyone in the movement can feel, particularly those of us who are fortunate enough to live in a place where, you know, this isn't a concern and we are able to just research and write and nobody's going to bother us for doing it and so forth. So, you know, through the years, I think one of the ways the movement has dealt with this is actually by staying principled, staying true to the truth, which means that governments around the world know that you can't just sort of order Wikipedia to be edited to suit what you want and have that magically happen. And I think that actually reduces the amount of attempts to improperly and use pressure to change Wikipedia. But these are serious times and, you know, I think the people who are out there doing everything they can to keep Wikipedia high quality and neutral in conflict zones, it's just incredible to make. Really, really incredible people. Truly, and our movement has made up a lot of incredible people. Thank you, Jimmy. We're really blessed to have such awesome community members and volunteers really from all walks of life contributing to the projects. Speaking of amazing Wikimediands, I feel like it was just last year when we were hosting these events again. Shall we take a quick look? Yeah. Amazing. So, last year, Jimmy, for the first time we expanded the award to have multiple categories. What were some of your favorites? Oh, well, I mean, having multiple categories was probably long overdue because as soon as we did it, it clicked in my mind. It just made a lot of sense because, you know, we have so many different types of contributors who are doing different things that are all key to the movement. So, tech contributor, media contributor, and so forth. And, you know, I just think those categories are, you know, something that we might not have been able to recognize those people if we only had one award per year, but they're really important. Absolutely. And, you know, last year's award saw winners from profiles and regions of the world we had never had before. The top winner was an emergency room doctor that has also contributed a great deal of information to Arabic Wikipedia and elsewhere, including COVID-19 coverage. We also had Dr. Neta Hussein. Jimmy, I'm convinced Neta and Allah have more than 24 hours in their genes. Yeah, you know, it's interesting how, you know, when we've got these traditional principles and everything is clicking along and everything is, you know, sort of a point, and then a crisis happened, something like COVID happened, and then people really rise to the challenge. They somehow managed to have careers and still make thoughtful contributions and thousands of edits. You know, it's really, it's amazing to me. I don't know how people get edit so much. I'm a very slow editor myself. It's truly incredible. And last year we also had three winners from South Asia, really a first for the awards. We got to celebrate tech, we got to celebrate photography in distinct categories of their own. Jimmy, have you been photographing butterflies since Ananya's win last year? You know, no I haven't, but you know what? I told the story about photographing butterflies and giving award last year to my younger children and they were very, very interested. So they're not really old enough yet to contribute text and edit Wikipedia, but they love the idea of contributing photos. So we started a project at home to use an app to identify and photograph all the plants in our garden. We haven't uploaded anything yet, but we will. But I think for me that's one of the great things about recognizing different categories is certain people may say, oh I'm not the right person, like I don't know how to really, I don't feel confident in my writing skills, I'm not that interested in looking up sources and so forth. But I actually am a good photographer and that's the way I can contribute. And that could be maybe younger people or it could be just people who have photography as a hobby. So I think identifying all these different types of people is really wonderful. Truly, I couldn't agree more. And we also got to celebrate Carmen Alcazar last year, a true legend in the movement. Jimmy, I know you love small projects. Last year we had our first winner from Southeast Asia, Karma Chichawati. This was also the first time we celebrated a newcomer. What is the importance of celebrating newcomers to you? Well, actually what I would like to talk about now is small projects. What I love about small projects is that the original vision for Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet. And that means that the smaller project, the smaller language projects, are of utmost importance. And they're really hard. They're hard to find people to build them in there. Those communities face huge obstacles. In many cases, there aren't that many sources in their own language. So they have to deal with that and so on and so forth. There's so much to be done there. And it's really crucial for that original vision of every single person on the planet, having free access to the sum of all human knowledge. So that's really great. I can talk more about newcomers, but let's get to that a little bit later. Yes, absolutely. And actually in honor of last year's Newcomer of the Year from a small project for Balinese Wikipedia, we have an awesome performance for all of you from Indonesia to kickstart the Wikimedia of the Year 2022 awards. Enjoy. We are so happy to be here today and to share some of our cultural knowledge with you. We are performing an art show which will describe the wonderful Indonesia. Wikimediance, Janji, by Yuyun Arfa. The audio is in the other feed already. That was a gift from Wikimedia Indonesia in celebration of last year's first awardee from Southeast Asia. The group is called Yuyun Arfa and there's another performance by them at the very end of the show. Jimmy, did you enjoy that? Oh yeah, it was fantastic. I'm definitely going to have to watch it again because for us, the people watching probably don't realize we can't actually hear the audio on its own. So I was watching and it's fascinating. So now I'm eager to go and watch the full performance. I've watched it so many times and every time I'm still impressed. Welcome back everyone. Thank you so much. Kicking off the 2022 Wikimedia of the Year awards. Jimmy, they say a picture is worth a thousand words. Do you agree? Yeah, I definitely do agree. And I've talked a fair amount today about photography and how it can inspire different people to join the movement. But there's also about media contributions as outreach and how that can enrich the movement. So not things being put into Wikipedia, but things about Wikipedia and about our movement. And that's particularly true because in the past, the main way that people accessed the internet generally was go to a search engine, Google typically type in whatever you're thinking about and then you get pages back. And obviously Wikipedia gets huge traffic that way. But lots of people are living different ways and they're coming to the internet in different ways and interacting in different ways. And so that sort of information seeking and engagement is changing. And I think that's really important. And I think as a movement, we should think about that. I don't think we should turn Wikipedia into TikTok, but I think we should think about how do we reach people where they live, so to speak. Absolutely. And there's no doubt that our projects are vast. You know, Jimmy, I've always been curious how deep Wikipedia does go. Do you know? I don't know, but let's find out. So I like made it during COVID quarantine early on, like maybe early April 2020. And no, I wouldn't have ever called myself a Wikipedia then. I had done a few one-off edits. Like if I saw something that was wrong and bothered me, I had changed things. And I remember I added to lists sometimes, just like small edits here and there. I didn't have an account. I just was aware of Wikipedia and I would definitely call myself at the time like a Wikipedia enthusiast. But then, yeah, I started the account. It's like similar to Cool Freaks Wikipedia Club on Facebook. So I'm definitely not the sole pioneer of collecting fun Wikipedia articles in any way. And I still feel like every day I learn something new about the Wikimedia global movement or history or just something. And I'm flabbergasted by how much I don't know because there's so many little corners of the project that I have never encountered. I'm trying to think. Like there's a way to make knowledge graphs on Wikidata. I had never seen it before. It's so fun. I was on a call with somebody and he was showing me the visualization of the Kardashian family tree, which is so silly. But I was like, are you kidding me? This is a Wikimedia thing. I'm just always learning things. So this is a very roundabout answer. I'm sorry. If you're doing word-for-word quotes, I'm going to sound like I'm making no sense. Hello. Hello. Someone has joined you. Surprise. I think part of the future of the movement is outreach to young people. So obviously Instagram, TikTok, that sort of thing. But also getting out, for me, one of the important things about Wikipedia is of course full, very serious business. But it should be fun as well. And sort of that lighthearted, very, very dry Wikipedia humor when people allow it is fantastic. And you're highlighting that. And I think it might actually get people to come and think about contributing who might otherwise just think, oh, that's like a really dry, geeky activity to go like, oh, actually, it can be kind of quirky and interesting. From the short list, I have selected you as media contributor of the year for your obviously the very active depths of Wikipedia channel, using TikTok, Instagram to get out the word about Wikipedia. It actually says here in the written thing, I wouldn't have written it this way, but I kind of like it, to preach the gospel of Wikipedia. Just rather amusing. Hallelujah. Did you think in two years you would end up here on a surprise call with Jimmy Wales? No, not at all. Not at all. I was in my bedroom, like in the college, in my college bedroom, just like, ha, this is funny, post, post, so. Wow. I think when I started it, I did not expect very much at all. I thought maybe it would be a little bit funny. Maybe it would keep me and my friends entertained. And I thought maybe in some crazy world, it would become a popular meme page. And to me, popular, my standards were like, oh, it would be crazy if I got 5,000 followers, which is a lot, but now it's at, you know. Hi, my name is Annie Rowerda. I run the depths of Wikipedia account on Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok. And I'm so honored to be at Wikimania this year. Wikipedia, on English alone, has 6.6 million articles. So, of course, some of them are absolutely hilarious. When I was quarantined in 2020, I started reading Wikipedia more, I started editing more, and then I started collecting my favorite weird articles that I stumbled upon. List of classical music concerts with an unruly audience response, or list of sexually active popes, or list of people who have lived in airports. I started the depths of Wikipedia Instagram account in 2020, and since then, it's grown to a million followers. I started the TikTok, which has 600,000 followers, or nope, I'm getting them mixed up. TikTok has 110,000, Twitter has 600,000. Needless to say, it's kind of a lot, and I've gotten some media coverage as well. I am so excited to have this massive platform, and I have used it to recruit more editors to the site, hopefully in sustainable, good ways. I've hosted editathons with Wikimedia in New York City, I have one coming up at the Smithsonian in October. You should come. I generally just try to talk about editing and remind people that this massive, free-floating body of knowledge was written by people just like them. I've also written about Wikipedia, beyond the, this thing is weird genre. This encyclopedia can make you laugh, it can make you cry, it can make you wonder, it can make you smile. It's got everything you could ever want to know, non-traditional bagpipe usage, fictional worms, islands and lakes, islands in lakes on islands, islands in lakes on islands in lakes, on islands in lakes. I know, of course, that Wikipedia is not here for humor, but I do think that those little moments of eccentricity show readers that this site was written by people like them. I like this quote from an article about the history of encyclopedias that ran in the Atlantic, and it was also featured in the signpost last year. Accuracy, of course, can better be won by a committee armed with computers than by a single intelligence, but while accuracy binds the trust between the reader and contributor, eccentricity and elegance and surprise are the singular qualities that make learning and inviting transaction, and they're not qualities we associate with committees. So thank you for the award. I am so honored. It's been great to meet so many of you at various conventions over the past few years, and at the Wikibar in Berlin, which, if you didn't know, is a public space for people to work on open source projects. I just went for the first time a little bit ago. So you have projects. I have a platform. Let's keep working together, and thank you so much. Bye. Thank you so much, Annie. Congratulations. Jimmy, I think Annie has mastered the This Thing is Weird genre. I've never personally lived in an airport, but I do have a favorite island in a lake on an island in a lake, and that is Treasure Island in Manitoulin Island in Canada. Jimmy, do you have a favorite list of lists? You know, it's funny because I recently, I don't know, a month or so ago, I met Annie. We had breakfast in London. She happened to be traveling through London, and we met up, and I told her I was going backcountry camping on Isle Royale, and then she started talking about this. And in fact, on Isle Royale, there was, it's a fascinating story. I've been, this is my fourth trip, the previous three trips, I would talk about this to my children, who I take, the Moose Boulder, which would have been the largest known island in a lake on an island in a lake, on an island in a lake, because it's this Isle Royale experience, got lakes on it. It turns out, and I found this from Wikipedia, that in 2020 it was reported to be a hoax. Someone actually went there to check, probably not a Wikipedia, but it had been reported in sources, and so Wikipedia used to say that it was, and so now it's turned to be a hoax. So that kind of stuff, like that's, it's so cool, because just think about how obscure is that, and that someone in 2020, when it was reported to be a fake, actually went into Wikipedia, found where it said that, and fixed that, even though it's this incredibly trivial little detail, it's amazing. I love it. I'm always impressed by how meticulous our community members are. Once again, congratulations, Annie. Thank you for sharing the magic of our projects with the world. Jimmy, the next category, I'm also really excited about, first year premiered last year, and that's the tech contributor of the year. Why do you think it's important to bring attention to the tech community? Well, I think this is just incredibly important, and it's sort of obvious why it's important, just because Wikipedia is a website, and therefore there's technology, and it needs to be fast, it needs to be efficient, it needs to be up to date, the user interface needs to be great, all of those things are incredibly important. Everybody knows that, but also a lot of it is kind of, it's behind the scenes for most people, we don't necessarily see it, we don't necessarily understand what's going on, it's just some sort of magic behind the scenes, and if we can bring attention to these people, that's incredibly powerful. In fact, I don't even know if you know this murder, but long before Wikimedia, before we started doing Wikimedia of the year awards, I actually created, I made a day, Magnus Mansk a day, for Magnus, who had completely sort of rewritten, well, actually using a database, and it was like a great miracle, and just did it because, you know, he thought it needed to be done, which is like why a lot of things happen in Wikipedia. So I think we should highlight and celebrate the volunteers who get involved in the technical matters, it's really incredible. Absolutely, and getting it done, I think is a big model for the tech community. Let's see this year's winner. I'd actually been running a private media Wikimedia instance for multiple years, like before actually starting to contribute, but I got involved in contributing on Google's code in event, which was like Google's event to introduce teenagers to open source, and I got involved that way and been here for a couple of years after that. I think they were like really nice, so if you made mistakes, doesn't matter, people will help you, but again, hard to get people to review and judge because there's so much to do, and so little people, I think the work that the growth team is doing on making it easier, like the structured link tools and everything like that, can make doing the first contributions easy, and I think people will get more involved after that when they see how easy it is. Hello, I have a guest. Hi there. Hi, Tavi, I don't know if you've met before. I'm... I think we have an audience. I'm from Wikipedia. Great to meet you. Are you in Finland? Yes. Great, fantastic. There are loads of people who do great work, contributing to MediaWiki, running bots and tools and things, but actually toiling away on infrastructure that most people don't even see or know about, but which is obviously, like in a way, the most important thing is incredibly valuable and I'm incredibly appreciative of it. This year, I have chosen you as a tech contributor of the year, so congratulations. When I saw you, I thought you looked pretty young, but reading all this stuff, I thought, oh, he's probably going to be late 20s outworking a big tech job or something like that. I'm sure you will be. So if you ever need a recommendation or something to put on a resume, this will probably help. Thanks. Well, there you have it, Tavi. You can have me as a reference on your resume. Congratulations. How do you feel? Not at all. Very happy. Amazing. You know, Tavi, you said so much, so much to do, so little people. I'm sure the tech community and staff can relate to that. Do you feel? Yeah, you know, as I said, it's just, it's a great thing and it's often unsung. I mean, the editing community admires and honors editors. The tech community admires and honors tech contributors, but we don't always cross the lines all that much and sort of making sure that the tech volunteers are recognized as great heroes by the wider editing community seems really important to me. So that's great. Congratulations, Tavi. What will you say to your classmates when you go back to your last year of high school? This week. Not sure yet. Well, big congratulations to you and thank you so much. Jimmy, last year, folks asked us if we could celebrate affiliates as well as individuals. Well, this year, we have a new initiative from the Wikimedia Affiliations Committee, AFCOM, to set a future precedent for inter-affiliate exchange and capacity development. What do you think? Yeah. I mean, the impact of the affiliates movement is enormous. And, you know, the idea really is so in line with the general idea of Wikim, decentralization and so forth. We all know very well that the Wikipedia content and all of the Wikimedia content is written in a very distributed manner by people all around the world. And yet, not everything can be done in a pure Wikiway. You need to have an existing organization and some staff are getting certain things done and so forth. The idea of top down managing all of that out of California doesn't really make sense. What does make sense is all these affiliates. And now we have different types of affiliates, including traditional chapters and then more thematic organizations and so forth. And that's, that's incredibly powerful. And so spotlighting great affiliates is makes a lot of sense. Absolutely. Tabi, I don't know if you can see the chat, but you're getting a lot of love and people are so impressed by how young you are. Okay. For this next category, the affiliate spotlight. Thank you, Jimmy. I fully agree. And actually, Camelia and Jeffrey will tell us a little bit about this new addition. There are two categories this year that they are piloting. If you were wondering what happens when you randomly join an affiliates team meeting, this is it. Hi, I'm Camelia. And I'm Jeffrey. And we're from AFCOM. Welcome to Wikimania 2022 award ceremony. In 2022, AFCOM started a new initiative about affiliate spotlight. And this new award has two categories, partnerships and governance. The vision behind this is to initiate affiliate mentorship by providing capacity development support to affiliates across the movement. So, yeah, so we're not quite sure what to expect. So I think, yeah, let's look at many of them. But yeah, because there's supposed to be like, what merit is supposed to be here. So, I mean, I'm happy to talk more about the weather. I have to, firstly, apologise. There's a lot of noises off today because I've got two brand new kittens. I'm trapped in my son's bedroom with them because they needed some attention. They are like the cutest wee things. I don't know if you can see them. But yeah, so I shall try and keep myself muted quite a lot of the time. But hi, I don't know all of the guests. I don't think I'm Lucy. I'm the executive director of Wikimedia UK. And this is our usual fortnightly staff meeting, but with some extra special guests. Hello. Hi, Jimmy. Hello. Hello. Surprise. Hi. I'm sure you're all boiling because I am. Jimmy, it's like 17 degrees in Scotland, so no. Oh, dear. Well, it's boiling down south, I can tell you. Very hot. You're going to look quite red. Yeah, it's weird. It's because of my window. It's being there. I think it's a really important milestone for the movement to actually recognise governance work. We've been talking about improving our governance all across and have been taking some steps, but I think this is going to be a memorable milestone that is going to encourage the type of change that we want to see. You know, I'm a big fan of your chapter, have been for years now. And I can't think of a better chapter to kind of start us off with this work. So congratulations. Well done, all. And looking forward to continuing following the amazing work that you're all doing in the UK. To Wikimedia UK, for the outstanding work that they've done to diversify their board of directors and take seriously the question of knowledge equity, not just in programming, but in examining how representative their own leadership is. This piece on diversifying leadership is something I've heard talked about as important for years in many spaces, but in the little sliver of the Wikimedia movement that my personal exposure has brought me in contact with, haven't seen any other group that takes this so seriously in-house. It would be great to recognise them for this and encourage others to follow suit. Anything I say is on behalf of the whole team and of course the board. But I'm particularly proud of this because we have been really wanting to foreground diversity and to look at what that means for ourselves as an organisation, as a staff team, as a leadership, as a board, and not just in terms of our program delivery and our partnership work. And that's been something we've really focused on over the last couple of years. And I am really proud of the fact that we do have a really diverse group of trustees who are bringing their different backgrounds and knowledge and perspectives to bear on how do we get the summable knowledge to everybody in the world. So I'm really, really proud. Thank you very much indeed. I'm totally blown away and surprised. I'm totally distracted by the two kittens tearing up the son's room. But this is really, really lovely. So thank you very much indeed. I don't know if anyone else from the team wants to add something here. I think there's a kind of lot of sort of gratitude or congratulations needed for people who aren't necessarily here to kind of get us to this point. And that's really what I want to say. Big congratulations to Wikimedia UK. Daria, have the kittens been managed? It's a process. You know, you have to work on governance of kittens and organisations. And I swear our team meetings are normally much more organised and better governed. It's just we were ambushed by this award and it turned a little more chaotic than normal. Yes. Well, big congratulations to you from all of us. Thank you. Go ahead. Sorry. I was going to say a few words, but please go first. Oh, yeah, I was just going to say two things. One, this did turn out to be sort of a Wikimedia cuteness association event because of the kittens. But also I just wanted to be clear that the quote or what I was saying when I was sort of announcing the word, that was actually a quote from one of the people who nominated. I suspect, Murdad, there's going to be several of those. I was just concerned that someone thought I might have lifted their words and not given credit. I have no idea who wrote that. But what's, I think, important about it is those are the words not from me. They're from someone who really thought that Wikimedia UK should recognise for this. Anyway, go ahead. Sorry. So maybe like now that we were able to kind of marinate in this award and had a bit more time to reflect, I wanted to say a few words on accepting this award on behalf of Wikimedia UK. So just to say I'm Darian, Director of Programs at Wikimedia UK and we are a sizeable affiliate and a UK charity with long movement history. And that bigger affiliate size means that we have capacity to work on governance. But it also means that being bigger means that those systems are really important because it's not just one person looking after everything. And for me, governance means a lot of big concepts like accountability, integrity, compliance. But essentially it's about making sure that the organisation is run well and that whatever it does speaks to the overall purpose and the vision of the organisation. And for Wikimedia UK, that's a more informed, democratic and equitable society through open knowledge. The equity piece has been really important to us. We've worked on diverse content and underrepresented content in programs for many years but recently have been focusing on bringing it across the organisation and thinking how, as an organisation, we can speak to the equity, diversity and inclusion principles. So we have a framework and an action plan that we're working on. There's many actions that we need to be looking after and working on. Like one example would be that trustees and staff have objectives to model inclusivity or that we monitor staff, trustee and volunteer leader diversity and kind of map it across against the characteristics of the UK society to check whether we are representative of the people that we are here to serve. So maybe just one last point. I think governance is a process. It's a bit like maintaining a house. There's always something to do. So we're excited about this recognition but it's just a note for us to keep on working on it and also learning from others. When we created our equity framework, we looked to organisations like whose knowledge are in feminism or Afro crowd who work on things like knowledge justice and we got inspiration from that. So thank you to them as well. Happy to share with others about what we've learned so far, what we worked on. So please feel free to get in touch with somebody, anybody at Wikimedia UK and we'll be happy to share what we've learned so far about working on governance. Thank you. Thank you so much, Daria. I know having worked with you in different forums and the question you always ask is who is not sitting at the table and I've always appreciated that. We also have a note of thank you from Lucy, the Executive Director of Wikimedia UK who's on transit right now and she's sharing her love. Thank you so much, Daria. And so in case you were wondering not just Zoom bombing one affiliates meeting was fun, we did it twice. Enjoy. We are today doing an equity workshop. Hi. Hi. Sorry, excuse me for budding in. This is Jimmy. Hello, everyone. Jimmy Wells, founder of Wikimedia. And I decided to just pop in to surprise you all and to say hello. Hello, Art and Feminism. So into this initiative we identified Art and Feminism as the winner of the category of ambassadorship and partnership. So we are so glad because we know how what working on gender issues means in our movement. So I'm sorry. I'm sorry for this because it's your work. It's really important. It's your commitment and it's all you are doing for this movement. So I'm so glad to take this, to give you this winner, this celebration, this recognition. Too often the work of the organizer and trainer is not celebrated in the movement. I'm going to add my own words here. We do celebrate the editors. We celebrate different aspects of the movement but we don't often enough celebrate the people who are organizing and bringing things to bear and so on and so forth. For me personally, I've been on a campaign for many years that Wikipedia is for everyone. And so when we realize that aspects of Wikipedia and the Wikimedia movement are not as diverse as they should be. We're missing pieces of knowledge. We need interesting, awesome, incredible people from different walks of life who come to things with a different mindset, a different ideas. And that is exactly what you guys are doing. And I really appreciate it and just wanted to congratulate you and thank you for all your incredible work. My name is Karen Wasecki. My pronouns are she and her and I have the honor and privilege of being Executive Director of Art and Feminism. Art and Feminism builds a community of activists that is committed to closing information gaps related to gender, feminism, and art, beginning with Wikipedia. We're honored and excited to be recognized for this new award. We love collaborating with passionate information activists that share our vision and values. We'll be celebrating 10 years next year and invite you to join us in this important work. And with that, I want to pass the mic to some of the tremendous members of our community. Thank you again. How better to say it than the very simple, you know, sort of the original vision for Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet. And that means every single person. So it's for all of us and we need everybody to help us. So I really, really appreciate and love aspects of the movement that are really thinking about that everybody piece. Hi, welcome. In the ground, I'll say I'm Araba. My name is Sadek Shihabi from Tama Ligana. I am the West African language coordinator at Art and Feminism and I work to support West Africa Indigenous language communities. How are we? We love it. We love it. We love it. We love it. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Hi, Kira. Hi. Surprise. Thank you. So excited to be here, to be celebrating the work of Art and Feminism and really the community of information activists from around the world. We're so, so honored to be receiving this recognition. It's well deserved. It's well deserved. Thank you so much. It's well deserved. And I can put a lovely message from your global ambassadors. It really, it takes a global community to do this work. And we're really, really, we're honored to have you contribute to our projects. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. If I could just say a little bit more again, like kind of like Daria just having the opportunity to reflect after a little bit of a surprise drop-in meeting on an equity workshop we had. I can just want to say a little bit more if that's okay with y'all. Okay, great. Please, wait. Thank you. Thank you. Again, I'm so grateful to be accepting this award on behalf of Art and Feminism community. It's an honor to be part of the class of 2022 honorees. I'm particularly excited about the DEI work of Book Media UK. So, shout out to y'all. I really think that they're exemplifying that this work isn't just about margins and really requires us all to be intentional about equity. And what I think this award means for Art and Feminism, and I'm so grateful for it, is much like what Jimmy said, is that it's recognizing how important the role of community organizing is within our movement. It was earlier this year that former Kastin member Victoria Duranina said that the Edecount is really a blunt tool of measuring contributions in the movement. And just really excited that the work of Art and Feminism is intentional about community building and organizing, and that we're able to celebrate this with you. In a nutshell, if you're not super familiar, we strongly believe that people in their communities know their communities best. So, myself, based in Baltimore, Maryland, in the U.S., I have no real business telling an organizer in Uruguay how to organize their event. But we do have a Latin America regional ambassador, Paula Dominguez-Font, who has that expertise and knowledge for that community. And this award really belongs to those ambassadors and network organizers of Art and Feminism. And I want to just take a moment to name them specifically. So, Alison Bates, Anthony B Diaz, Paula Dominguez-Font, Hadavi Gandhi, Richard Neipol, Amanda Meeks, Jessie Me, Jason Oliver, Athena Petsu, Sophie Reverty, Siddique Shahabadouf, Sophia Staghoff, Dominique Elaine Yau, Dita Ursula Zage. I also want to recognize the Art and Feminism Leadership Team, Nina Yaboya, Melissa Tamani, Amber Beerson, and Mohamed Sada Abdule, and then lastly, our board, Sarah Gonzalez, Nana Osekofi, and Kerry Cotton Williams. Additionally, shout out to the hundreds of organizers and attendees around the globe that are part of the Art and Feminism community. This award celebrates you. It's through their collective effort that so far in 2022, we've had Art and Feminism events in over 27 languages around the globe, and through the power of WikiData and the leadership of Mohamed Sada Abdule, we have this really cool map that I'm going to put, I don't know, can I do a screen share with that? I don't know if I can do that. I have no idea. Oh, I think you froze. Kerry, I think chat might be easier. Oh, there we go. Great. I feel we've got her map. I lost her, and I think she was better than the map. Oh, I'm back. Sorry. But again, I just want to say thank you. Art and Feminism is actually celebrating 10 years next year. So if our work and values resonate with you, please consider this an invitation to join us. And thank you again. Thank you so much, Kerry. And from all the love I'm seeing in the chat, I think this is really a global moment. I also, just as a small little side note, I love the use of y'all. So I grew up in Alabama and y'all, we said y'all all the time. And then when I left the south, it was kind of considered low and southern, and I didn't want to sound that way. So I started saying you guys, and in the context of the Art and Feminism award, saying you guys, which I heard myself do, is not nearly as good as y'all. I think we should bring back y'all as a gender neutral, plural of you. So I like that. I agree. All you all folks, all great options. Great. Thank you, Jimmy. Congratulations, Daria, Ankara, Art and Feminism. We meet at UK, but also before that, Annie Rauwerda, media contributor of the year and Tavi, for tech contributor of the year. Big congratulations to you all. We are at the mid-May mark of the awards, at least this year's award ceremony. Don't worry. We won't go over time. Well, we have a wonderful performance for you. Please enjoy. Al-Funoon Dance Trip. Hi, everyone, and greetings from Palestine. Marhaba, all of you. Salamat from Palestine. We hope you're enjoying Wikipedia. We are excited to be here with you, celebrating the comedians of the year. Al-Funoon Palestinian Dance Trip and we're happy to have you here with us today and to share some of our cultural knowledge with you. Ashira is a multimedia production that presents a contemporary visual story, employing sound, body, images, and it takes the audience on a journey and it's an emotional journey of love, defiance, resistance and hope. Did you enjoy that, Jimmy? I've got the sound working for us now, so that was really fantastic. That was amazing. Congratulations, Al-Funoon, and thank you for sharing your magic with us. I can't even imagine how many hours of rehearsal you had to do. You know, movement, dance, music can transcend artificial geopolitical boundaries, kind of like knowledge. Jimmy, we started this category last year and it's been so well received. Why do you think it's important to recognize newcomers? Yeah, so this is why I delayed, I didn't want to talk about newcomers earlier because I do be talking about it here and it's so important. If we just think about the day-to-day work in the Wikipedia world and you think about trying to come into that work, so we have a lot of jargon. There's a lot of things to learn, a lot of the right way of doing things, the wrong way of doing things, how to challenge things if you think they're wrong and how to successfully make change and so forth. And we also have within the movement a lot of old friendships, a lot of people who've been working together for years and years and years. And it's actually quite easy to forget about newcomers and how important newcomers can be and to really welcome them and greet them and help them along. And so I think it's important to recognize some of the great newcomers, people who've come to the movement, done incredible work over a relatively short period of time, to remind ourselves that that potential is out there in so many people. And so that person who comes and makes one interesting edit to a page, if you go and you thank them, they may blossom. They may say, oh, wow, this is great. These are nice people. I want to do more of this. And they could become as great as the newcomers who we recognize. Absolutely. And it goes a long way to show how the community behind the scenes is so important in building the projects. And so without further ado, this year's newcomer of the year. Hey, who's that? Can you hear me? Hello. Let's do it. Hi there. It's Jimmy Wales. Very good. As you may know, one of the great joys of what I get to do is handout awards every year. And it's such a it's a great honor to meet some of the really fantastic and amazing volunteers we have throughout the movement. And one of the awards is the Newcomer of the Year Award, which I am awarding to you, Dr. Oss Adler. You know, one of the great, I would say, values in our movement is honesty with each other, except when it comes to tricking people into coming to get an award. Congratulations. Thank you for all your incredible work and your and your leadership, which inspires other people to do incredible work. So it's just incredibly meaningful. It's always been, for me, it's really so, you know, the original vision of Wikipedia is a free encyclopedia for every single person on the planet. And getting more contributions and more contributors from the African continent is just incredibly important. Like, it's just like, that is the future. That is what the dream is all about. And you're a leader in that. So thank you. My name is Karajah Isouf. I'm the organizer of Group Nigeria. And we've got a surprise set up for both of you. So I got you to be here for us today. Come along, let's go. It's a great honor to me to be here. Thank you for your work. I think I have a lot of experience with this competition and this is really one of the greatest opportunities that we've had. So I think, you know, all the people that came out really, really, really excited and you know, you're all in the best place today. And I think I have the best opportunity to be here. It's really so, you know, the original vision of the media is a free and sacred media for every single person on the planet. And getting more contributions and more contributors from the African continent is just incredibly important. Like, it's just that that is the future, that is what the dream is all about. And you're a leader in that. So thank you. Sincerely, it never came to me as a surprise. We know fully well what she's been doing within the Nigerian community and also in the library world across the globe. She's a superwoman. I'm very happy that Dr Inkem got this award of the new come-of-the-year, which made her the media newcomer of the year award. And that's because I think that she has done a whole lot, you know, way for the community. I just learned today that she joined the community in 2020. In my mind, I thought that she actually joined a whole lot, a whole lot longer. And that's, that shows the extent of the work that she has done. It's exciting, like very, very, very exciting to see Dr Inkem winning the new come-of-the-year African India of the year 2022 award. I could see her as the stabilizing point within the movement. Dr Inkem is such a bridge-beater. She's someone that has been able to over the last few years, the last short few years, been able to do the whole lot that you would think she has been in the movement for the last 10 years. Having her come on board brings it closer to home. So now Nigerians can actually aim and hope to win this award. You see her tweeting with vibe and to put the icing on the cake. And I was told, when I was discussing, she said, well, I'm a grandma. And I said, ah! She has been able to create a bridge between Liberians in Africa and the Wikimedia project. And this is something amazing that we've been trying to unlock for a while. And she has been able to give that bridge. And so for me, I'm super excited. So I think that it's very good for her, not just for her, but also for the Nigerian community and the African community at large. I really want to thank the Wikimedia movement for giving her this award. I still love what's to express how I really feel. Because is that awesome thing that, hey, all of these people that started this new thing along with you, the ones you know and the ones you don't know. But they are saying that you stand out. I want to say thank you to Jimmy and the people that are behind this. I want to express my appreciation. I don't know the criteria that we are used, but I'm grateful. Dr. Ankem, congratulations. I think you're celebrating with people. Who's there behind you? So again, thank you for everything. Thank you. Like they said in Nigeria, it takes a community to bring up a child. So it takes all of these people, the people that brought me to the door. Thank you so much. Congratulations, Dr. Ankem. What will you tell your grandkids? How will you inspire them to contribute? I think the feed has frozen. Anyway, big, big congratulations to Dr. Ankem and everyone in Nigeria. You could feel the celebratory moment. How did you feel, Jimmy? I mean, I felt like I want to be in the room. I want to visit. So I'm glad the world is starting to open back up a little bit. Well, Dr. Ankem's feed has frozen, but I think looking at the chat, she's being celebrated from all over the world. Big congratulations. Thank you all. Jimmy, I really like the next category. Honorable mention. It is usually reserved for people that may not qualify for the other awards throughout the time, throughout since the beginning. And a few times, like last year, it has gone to exceptional community members who may already have a lot of public exposure. For example, Dr. Jess Wade, Carmen Alcazar, Dr. Neta Hussain. This year, we have a lot of public exposure. Dr. Jess Wade, Carmen Alcazar, Dr. Neta Hussain. This year, the honorable mention is an affiliate lead and one of the most nominated people in our movement. And this award is not only for her amazing leadership, but actually for everything else that she does in between in her volunteer capacity and on her own time. Jimmy, why do you think it's important to have this category of honorable mention? And especially this year's winner. Yeah, well, I mean, you know, the category has always been, it was, I would say, it's one of the, as far as I know, the earliest sort of not Wikipedia in the year, Wikipedia in the year category. And it was the beginnings of sort of recognizing that there are all kinds of people in the movement who can be honored for all kinds of things. And in particular, I mean, what's interesting as well is affiliate leads, you know, it wouldn't normally be, would not ordinarily get an award. We normally, it's all for volunteer work. But they're really important. And it's really an incredible thing. And so doing the honorable mention is the right answer. The truth is, when you're an affiliate lead, yes, you have your job, but the great affiliate leads typically are pouring in huge amounts of personal time, volunteer hours or kind of a variety of projects. It's a pretty demanding thing. And we want to honor that. Absolutely. And let's see this year's winner. Yeah. Hello. No, it's my friend. Hello, it's me, Jimmy. Hi. Are you sure it should be here? Yeah, I think so. I'm here to surprise you, Anna Torres. Me? Yes. For your selection as honorable mention of Wikimedia of the Year. No. And it's for really, your work as executive director of, you know, Wikimedia Argentina, that's great. But really it's also for how you go above and beyond to help others and ensure the entire region can thrive. I just wanted to read a couple of the nomination notes, because I thought they were very, very sweet. She's been, she's even dedicated her personal and volunteer time way beyond her working hours to us, the Latam community. She's dedicated that same energy to other big movement processes and projects like the 2030 movement strategy process. She's been engaged on that on a personal level, just like any other Wikimedia volunteer. So I believe that Anna is an example of dedication and full engagement to our movement. And I would love to see that hardworking being recognized. We thought, oh, you must, you must be recognized and you must get a cake. I have nothing to do with the cake, of course, but I'm always happy to see cake. Thank you so much. I don't know what to say. I mean, I'm super surprised. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. I mean, this moment means a lot to me. Annie, I'm happy. I'm very happy with this news. I've been thinking for years, how is it that Anna is not a Wikimedia volunteer of the year? Really, I don't find anyone in this movement that deserves this award as much as you, that works as much as you, that guides, that helps, that brings people, always pushing them to fulfill their goals, seeing how it can be done. I'm sure that anyone from the Native American region who asks about you will say the same thing. Anna is always willing, always patient, always supports us from love, from affection, with a lot of understanding. And always with smiles. I don't know, I'm really happy. This is a recognition to all your work. It's a recognition. It's a way that we have from the Wikimedia movement to tell you that we love you a lot, that you're very valuable, that we don't deserve you. It makes me very excited to see your face now that you're given the award, that you're on a video call, but we'll have time to celebrate it. I'm really happy. Thank you very much for all your effort. Thank you very much for everything you do, all the time, even during Christmas, for this movement, really. Congratulations. Congratulations, Anna. I'm already crying. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Jimmy, Anna was wondering, do you get that often? Are you sure you should be here in this meeting? Does that happen? I think that was the first time, actually, although people's reaction is often sort of confusion as to oh, that's the guy I saw on the banner, you know? What's he doing here? Yeah. Anna, you said the movement means the world to you, but looking at the chat and all the nominations, I think it's quite obvious that you mean the world to the movement. Congratulations. How do you feel today? I'm still in shock. I've been in shock since Jimmy appeared on the screen. I'm super honored and yes, I don't know what to say. I have some few words to say in Spanish, but yes, I'm honored to be here. Yes, very happy. Go ahead. Okay. Buenas tardes, buenos días, también. A todos, todas y todas. En primer lugar, quiero dar las gracias. Para mí es uno no recibir esta mención y estoy muy emocionada solo con pensar que hay gente de este movimiento que ha considerado que era una buena idea darme un reconocimiento a mí. Llegué al movimiento hace nueve años. Lo recuerdo muy, muy bien porque era un otoño bastante frío en Buenos Aires en 2014 y también recuerdo cómo me acogió la comunidad latinoamericana impulsándome a seguir hacia adelante. Siempre me decían que todo iba a estar bien y repetían como un mantra esto de Ana, el movimiento Wikimedia es justamente esto, ¿no? Trabajar juntos y caminar juntos y a la par. Así que hoy me gustaría que todas las personas que estamos acá recordemos el orgullo que significa también pertenecer al movimiento Wikimedia donde la comunidad lo es todo y donde la comunidad es el motor del cambio. Voy a dar algunos ejemplos. Recuerdo cuando nos dijeron que por ser, que las mujeres no queríamos formar parte de Wikimedia, ¿no? Me acuerdo que nos dijeron que las mujeres no quieren formar parte de Wikimedia y tampoco las personas LGBT más querían formar parte de Wikimedia y nuestra reacción a eso fue unirnos en una red global de sororidad para gritar más que nunca, nunca más Wikimedia sin nosotras. O recuerdo cuando nos dijeron hacer una estrategia al movimiento de manera colaborativa iba a ser algo súper complicado y en cambio superamos barreras lingüísticas y zonas horarias y también días de familia y vacaciones con el fin de garantizar que esta estrategia quedara a manos de la comunidad y que el futuro fuera definido por la comunidad y no me quiero olvidar de momentos tan claves como por ejemplo cuando sucedieron los estallidos sociales en Latinoamérica o cuando la pandemia en nuestra región y nos convertimos más que nunca en una red de apoyo, construimos nuevos espacios de conocimiento, de compartir recursos y nunca nos faltó una palabra de aliento. Podía haber un millón de ejemplos más pero al final todo se reduce a que sin bien todo esto parece muy simple es muy extraordinario, significa trabajar juntos, juntas, juntes vernos como pares definirnos como mejores socios para aportar independientemente de donde estemos al bien común. Nosotros, ustedes, yo misma también a través de cientos de iniciativas lo que hacemos es defender derechos humanos tan fundamentales como la educación la cultura o el acceso a la información. Igualmente no quiero dejar de decir esto todavía tenemos un montón de desafíos en el movimiento Wikimedia como un putle enorme donde cada comunidad es la pieza necesaria y fundamental, sin la cual no podemos trabajar pero aún nos falta muchas piezas y muchas voces. Tenemos que seguir trabajando con las comunidades del subglobal para que se sientan representadas en nuestros proyectos, que los proyectos representen su historia, que representen sus saberes, que representen lo que ellas quieren representar en nuestros proyectos y también todas aquellas voces históricamente acalladas que los proyectos Wikimedia sean un lugar donde estar, donde pertenecer y donde participar. No quiero dejar pasar tampoco de dar las gracias más allá de la comunidad este es un agradecimiento extensivo al equipo de Wikimedia Argentina del que estoy muy orgullosa y también de todos los directores y directoras que me han acompañado en el proceso, espero que este reconocimiento también lo sientan como propio por mi parte yo voy a intentar seguir poniendo un granito de arena para que el movimiento sea un movimiento más descentralizado, un movimiento más justo, más diverso con comunidades fuertes y sostenibles del que nos podamos sentir muy orgullosos y orgullosas en el futuro espero y voy a poner todo de mi parte para estar a la altura y les agradezco muchísimo este honor, muchas gracias muchas gracias a ti thank you so much Anna really, thank you for everything you do for your community but also for the entire movement gracias thank you so the next category is also another new one, Jimmy last year people loved it, it was called the 20th year honoree but we couldn't keep counting numbers so Jimmy tell us about the wikimedia laureate category and what you find exciting about it well so the wikimedia laureate category as you say it's an outgrowth of what we did last year which was at the time we were thinking a one-off 20th anniversary special to recognize somebody who had been around for a very long time but then it was such a great concept because obviously recognizing someone who's done amazing work in the last year or two is great but there are also people who have been with the movement for many many many many years over a decade two decades in some cases and so I just thought this is actually a great award and in a way it allows me to go back and recognize people who probably should have been wikipedia of the year at some point in the past but who for whatever reason didn't ever quite get there and so I think it's a great one amazing well this year we're celebrating two wikimedia laureates they're both pillars of our movement whether organizing wikimanias to countless contributions and the many many hats they were in the movement and actually for the past two years we've brought wikimania online to celebrate two who have had so much support for wikimania Jimmy last year we celebrated Lodewijk in the first rendition of this award he was famously sitting in front of a gas station photo and you said wiki loves gas stations this year though Jimmy am I sensing swans swans yes I hear they flock together yes I think usually about once a month or so shall we see I think this is a great accomplishment that we've had to have a specific internship just for wikipedia and wikimedia work so the interns that we have are certainly familiar with wikipedia I'm sure they've used it in their studies throughout their lives and to be able to contribute to wikipedia is pretty amazing to see Hi Kelly Hi Rosie Hi Kelly Hi Rose Hi Kevin Hi Kevin Hi Jimmy I somehow had the wrong link so I was waiting in this room Andrew how are you good how are you doing as you know having done two wikimania or two I would say one of my favorite things is giving out the awards I've selected you this year for wikimedia laureate of the year which is like the lifetime achievement award and I've got some so congratulations this is my favorite one yes Andrew Lee wikimedia laureate Andrew is a veteran wikimedean he's attended every wikimemia he's the first person citation needed that's what I love about this one to teach wikipedia at the university level he wrote a book about wikipedia for multiple institutions involved with the juncture of wikipedia with the data with the comments Andrew is one of the this is a different one I love this one too Andrew is one of those people that somehow manages to help groups move from complaining to action from talking to doing which is absolutely huge but congratulations oh thanks so much I'm humbled very humbled I'm enjoying the group that Rosie and Emily and everyone else is part of more than more than happy to be part of that plan yeah I mean you're a freaking legend so it's long overdue actually this is really more like okay like who should have been awarded at some point in time but we were just the absolute legends in the community for a very long time welcome to the club you rock you all rock thank you I'm always appreciated how can message Andrew at 4 in the morning and he'll somehow respond every time great congratulations Kevin was talking about 4am and now again it's tomorrow your time thank you for being with us so late Jimmy how do you feel about this this year as wikimedia laureate it's great it's really fantastic I mean I think I always think of Andrew as a real fixture of wikimedia not just because he's been so many times he's often sort of moderated panel sessions and he learned very early on that if somebody wants to ask a question of the board he would stay firmly in grip of the mic to help prevent people from just making a speech and I think he's the one who first taught me that idea but yeah Andrew you've been around forever and thank you so much oh thanks so much Jimmy and you know as a conference planner it's driving me nuts that were over time so I'll keep it brief and short it was an honor it's such a humbling honor I was completely surprised when you jumped in our our conference call that I was thinking that I was recording a message for our interns at the Smithsonian but actually it was a ruse but you know it's been such an honor to work with this community and I think everyone understands that it's not just about individuals it's about the community of folks that you work with whether it's affiliates institutions single editors groups of editors it's amazing what this community has done and I think that's what has attracted us all to this the inclusion and the ability to help write you know the world's best and the most amazing compilation of knowledge that we've ever seen and you know just two things jump out at me is one you know I started as a course of study when I was a researcher and that is based out here in Asia for the first six years of being a Wikimedia and I was based in Asia and that was always been a passion of mine is to bring more Asia contributions and Asian contributors into the fold whether it's having Wikimedia in 2007 in Taiwan or having meetups out here or training librarians in Kuala Lumpur where I am right now it's something I'm passionate about also in recent years more about bringing more women's biographies into the Wikimedia movement so you know it's been such a great thing to work with folks like Rosie Stevenson Goodnight and Emily Temple Wood who really just moved the needle on the gender gap and also just so many folks that you've introduced today and the Torah has been a complete pleasure to work with Anna over the last few years and you know we stay for the people to do and thanks so much to Jimmy and Merda and you've been instrumental as well in keeping this whole shit moving forward and it's been an honor to work with all these folks Thank you so much Andrew and thank you for weathering many storms with this movement it really is appreciated and taking a note from Andrew's book of event management I do apologize we are a little bit over time but we have two more categories left and for the next session it will begin as soon as this one ends thank you again for being with us today Jimmy we have one more Wikimedia laureate and our next winner is also a legend Yeah definitely I know we're supposed to be very super serious and super worthy we're all about our good work and writing Wikipedia and so forth but we also like to have fun and for me one of the most fun times in the whole of the Wikimedia era was the beach party in Haifa in Wikimedia Who could it be? Let's see Last year I instituted a new award it was then called the 20th anniversary award but now it's renamed to Wikimedia Laureate this is an award reserved for those contributors who have been involved in the Wikimedia movement for a very long time in a way it's even more prestigious than Wikimedia of the year because it is dedicated to a sustained contribution that has impacted literally millions of people's lives in a positive way today he's written over 8600 articles in Hebrew Wikipedia which is more than 2% of the entire Hebrew Wikipedia he has uploaded more than 37,000 images to Wikimedia comments he's in his 11th round of 100 Wikidays which I believe is a world record and Jory is a member of the Wikimedia Committee and was the instigator and the general manager of Wikimedia 2011 Israel in Haifa perhaps this is what he had in mind with that first editor famous Mayor of Haifa back in 2004 and what a great Wikimedia that was I'll never forget dancing on the beach I was trying to imagine how many thousand media wiki tables you have edited over the years as part of the Wikimedia program it is many, many thousand and and everything else that you have done all of the edits all of the committee work all of the emails and all of the joy that you bring to Wikimedia into Wikimedia thank you for all of your contributions and congratulations there are congratulations on being recognized today you've made so many Wikimanias so much better apart from all the serious discussions the thing you know I think you always brought so much happiness to the cause I hope your headphones are working today so that you can hear all the amazing credit you're getting well deserved congratulations congratulations thank you Doror Doror congratulations I see people are celebrating behind you but I think you are mute thank you message okay it comes in and out I got the message from Jimmy during the Hebrew Wikipedia 19th birthday and it was I was very surprised and it was really moving I was almost crying and I do relate for things many of you said I'm also a mature photographer and I did upload 1,000 images to commons but I still have a waiting list of more than 200,000 images that need to be uploaded and it will take time probably whenever I am upset with something I go and write an article it's like the battery on the iPhone that charges every article is about 30 to 40% charging I started with 100 Wikidays which is during that time I got 3,590 so congratulations Doror yes congratulations thank you so much Doror your audio cut out but I can see from the video that people are celebrating you thank you so much thank you so much for just being such an inspiration and maybe we need an uploadathon for those 200,000 images thank you so much everyone for being with us we have the final category congratulations to all the winners Doror, Andrew, Anna Dr. Nkem, Tavi, Annie thank you so much for everything that you've done and what an incredible celebration today but now for the final award of the day the Wikimedian of the year herself Jimmy can you believe it's over how did you feel this year oh it's fantastic it's a great slate obviously this process has changed a lot over the years going from me spending a couple weeks before Wikimedian digging around on the Wikis thinking and asking around and so forth to now really a global nomination process Murdad I can't give you an award but I would give you co-host of the year award if I could you've been invaluable in terms of corralling me and organizing all of this it's incredible so now it's it's going to be a really big thing and I'm really excited about it and here we are, Jerome Roll indeed and I'm actually excited to share that this is the first time we have a winner from Latin America for the title of Wikimedian of the year and so without further ado Hello it's Jimmy oh surprise surprise how are you I'm fine I'm a little nervous now oh don't be nervous it's all good well as you probably know every year I give out a series of awards I give out a series of awards for different kinds of favorable positive activity in the movement but there's one award that's really the big one and I'm happy to let you know that I've selected you as Wikimedian of the year for this year what what yes let me read some of the some of the wonderful nominations that you got she's always she's always highlighting the work of people she collaborates with she's kind and caring and she's always open to learning those are all like fantastic Wikipedia values I think her leadership has been key for the growth of the user group and active participation of other women in the community which is something as you know is something very near and dear to my heart is bringing in more women just by Wikipedia another one she's a remarkable advocate Wikimedian movement and open knowledge and then you know for me this is probably the best one of all Olga is such a nice and fun person they represent the best of our community so all of your work has had impact on all kinds of people both in Bolivia but actually throughout the movement as people particularly throughout the Spanish speaking communities look up to you and admire you as do I and so congratulations you are the Wikimedian of the year as we say these days thank you I am very excited and I'm very surprised and here to speak of the Wikimedia Wikipedia program and now I'm very successful and I don't have words and I'm happy because I think the women in the movement they are working so hard and I'm a small part of this group of women that are trying to change the movement and give more space to everyone all the world I have no I'm going to speak this part in Spanish because otherwise it won't understand very well congratulations thank you and the truth is that it is a great joy because in Bolivia we have been working a lot to incorporate these lines of work work in a more open way so that there is always more diversity of our movement and that the movement is always the vanguard of the way in which the knowledge can be built that light that gives new ideas that go let's say reflecting around the internet also the reflections that are in our community I think they are useful to other communities that build the internet sometimes the discussions and the discussions in our community are very enriching we are still learning a lot in my country for example we are still learning a lot of ourselves and it is something that I like a lot about the community that we can always discuss and also reflect and it is what we are also pointing to in the daily life of people to improve the way in which we can all share what we learn I didn't even imagine this so I'm still like in a shock I'm very surprised and well thank you very much people that that that has been that has decided to share with us the joy that has been to build the community of Bolivia and work on this pilot project I'm so happy because I chose this year to work more to have a work more structured and we are working to take more a big challenge to our community and I'm very happy I'm not going to say everything I want but thank you very much and for the surprise I think it is one of the most surprising things that I have received this year and maybe a lot in a long time thank you and this is for you you believed me you believed me 100% say I hope this doesn't damage the trust that you have in me Olga or she'll expect a surprise every time you connect now you need to just give her something big Olga can't overcome this No, she has left it very high and thank you for being there to see if you can make it Olga I'm very happy that you are the wikimedist of the year I think it is the first time in the history of this award that a Latin American woman is recognized with the highest award I feel that it is a great step that we have taken as a wikimedia movement to understand that there are different realities to recognize the work that many times puts us more to women and Latin American women I really feel that this recognition that we are understanding that there are different realities that there are different complexities in our countries, in our communities and that we are working very hard to get ahead I am very happy that you have this award I am very happy that the community has chosen you many congratulations Olga congratulations thank you so much what do you have to say Olga are you able to hear us I can hear you well big big congratulations to you congratulations how do you feel what do you have to say I think most of the things that I wanted to say are already in the video I am still very surprised Olga, can you hear us yes, you can hear me yes I can hear you well here around is a lot of people a lot of congratulations Olga we had a meeting so well they are around here without knowing what was going on until now that I gave them the things that I wanted to say are already in the video I am still very surprised I think you can hear us I would also like to thank that at the moment it is much more open and I am happy and this is a nice opportunity to thank everyone's work of each person that makes a small edition and well the strategy has also shown that now we can we can invite everyone to continue transforming Wikipedia so that we can make a movement even more diverse now we are working with more Bolivia languages with some indigenous languages and well we believe that now we can tell the people that it can be part of our movement and that the movement is open to many more changes and that they are welcome to transform and continue transforming Wikipedia and all the Wiki projects I want to thank all the wonderful people who have seen this event and well the reality of the final message everyone who wants to see us can edit Wikipedia and change how it is being built with free knowledge all the voices are welcome with a lot of heart and well here we are waiting to dialogue, to discuss and to continue building some projects that lead to transformation on the internet much more diverse much more democratic we listen to everyone and we listen to everyone and we are willing to change I think that's enough and a big hug to everyone again and a big big congratulations congratulations all winners I do apologize for having gone over time this is truly an award and you know people are having a good time when this happens thank you for joining us for the week meeting of the year 2022 keep the party going great sessions following this but also we have Kari Yoki in the networking tent I know I'll be there and that's it Jimmy how do you feel fantastic thank you thank you and congratulations to all the winners Annie, Duvour Olga Andrew, Anna, Tavi all of you congratulations and Kim lost her connection but we'll splice her in the group photo thank you all so much great congratulations take care everyone enjoy the last day of Wikimedia