 Welcome to Wikiafrica Hour, where Africa's Wikimedians talk to, learn from and discuss with each other topics they choose. Each session is curated by African Wikimedians to expand Africa's open movement. Today's host is Cesslis Obanyaya. I welcome you to the Wikimena session of the Wikiafrica Hour. My name is Cesslis Obanyaya and like some of you know or some of you are yet to know, the Wikiafrica Hour is a monthly broadcast which was activated by the Wikiafrica movement in order to support the activities of the Wikiafrica movement and Wikimedians across Africa. Wikiafrica Hour intends to share current updates and highlights of Africa's Wikimedians activity to interact with guests and share questions of course from community members and then promote synergy within the Wikicommunity by discussing topics, projects, constraints, collaborations and opportunities. For us in Wikiafrica, it's about making sure that the Wikiawide movement is actually carrying along everybody, especially the African Wikimedians. Yes, there is a telegram group for African Wikimedians but that just sort of takes only a handful of African Wikimedians in terms of making sure they get the information and keep up to date with the communications from the Wikiawide movement. There is also the Wikia Endowment Conference but that happens once in a year. This is why the Wikiafrica Hour was initiated, a monthly gathering of African Wikimedians in order to make sure that there is current updates and information shared amongst the African Wikimedians towards of course being carried along in the Wikiawide movement. For this Wikimedian special edition, we are going to share with you some of the highlights from Wikiafrica Hour's first four episodes. In the first episode, we featured Katchel Maha, during which she expressed her hopes and the vision she has for Africa being of course much more integrated into the Wikiawide movement. Her brainchild, the 2030 movement strategy and of course the Universal Code of Conduct were some of the points where she mentioned that she really would like to see Africa being absorbed into these specific topics and being of course much more integrated. Enjoy these highlights from that episode. What can you say were the highlights of your tenor as the CEO of Wikimedia Foundation and the things you were probably most proud of? I think I'm really, really proud of the Universal Code of Conduct and the fact that we all worked together as a movement to get that through. I know it hasn't been easy and I know that it's required a lot of discussion and I know it's brought people who didn't always agree into some difficult conversations and dialogue. And much of that wasn't even, I wasn't often in this conversation, so that's really worked with the movement that's done together. The other piece that I feel really proud of is the strategic direction for 2030 and how that process of having conversations really not only got us to something that I think is an aspiration of strategic direction that really captures where we are as a movement right now talking about issues of knowledge equity, thinking about the essential infrastructure of free knowledge for the future, but was a way in which we were very intentional about ensuring that members of our community from every community, from every part of the world, from all different language groups were well represented in the conversation. And the ways in which I've seen that strength of representation turn into leadership of different communities at the global level. So we see African Wikimedians at every part of the conversation today in a way that we didn't five years ago, you know, and I think that that's true. I was talking to someone from Wikimedia Indonesia the other day, and it was the same observation I made to them was just thank you so much for all of the work that you did to really bring your community together because I don't think we could imagine the Wikimedia of the next five years without Africans and without East Asians at the table in conversation being very present in deciding how our future should be. And so I mean, I didn't do that work, you did that work, but I'm really, I certainly feel like the movement is a better place for that. Okay, throughout your tenure as a CEO of the Wikimedia Foundation, you've been visibly supportive of diversity and inclusion. The first Wikimedia to place in 2014 and a serve and an a suit and up your support for Africa's Wikimedians has been evident time and time again, but especially when you attended the Wikimedia in Ghana in 2017, the Wikimedia Endowment 2018 in Tunisia, and Wikimedia Cape Town in 2018. How was your experience? I mean, what are your memories for the time? So my biggest regret is that I didn't get to go to the last Wikimedia Endowment before the pandemic. You know, because and then because we rescheduled the one for Nigeria and then the pandemic happened. And so it's like, I'm like pain in my heart that I didn't get to go home. I mean, my experience, so I have to admit I came into Wikimedia a total Africa partisan. I had spent much time working with communities in different countries, different African countries in my previous jobs. And I just, I wanted to see out, you know, if I'm being selfish, I just wanted to have the opportunity to be able to work with African communities again. But but in reality, I'm getting what I really wanted was that the movement be better better represented in Africa and I wanted Africa to be better represented in the movement. And so I think my impression has been and has been borne out is that really one of the things that Wikimedia needed to do was to as a community and as a culture and specifically the Wikimedia Foundation was to work directly with African Wikimedians to understand what movement building in the African communities looks like and work with African Wikimedians who have been building movements for well before I joined Wikimedia Foundation. You know, and I think about the fact that Wikimedia Ghana has been around for quite some time, really in terms of Wikimedians being active and present and engaged, what the resources that they needed to continue to expand that work. We've seen this sort of the explosion of growth in, you know, Wikimedia Nigeria, the incredible rate of acceleration of user groups across the continent. So my impression has just been, you know, there is so much talent and so much enthusiasm and so much opportunity and so much future for Wikimedia in Africa and African Wikimedians in the movement as a whole. It's really about partnering with the broader movement. It's really about Wikimedia Foundation being having humility and understanding that Africans need to lead in this work. And it's about ensuring that Africans are represented in all of the work for the future. So I want to see, for example, like no excuses, I want to see Africans on the board of Wikimedia Foundation now now. Like, I want it. I want to see it. I think it is important. I want people to run for the next four elections and I want to see Africans elected to the board of the Wikimedia Foundation. That's it. Wow. That's the next priority, like now now. That's really, I mean, that's not impossible to happen. It's not impossible at all. Yeah. It will happen. Let's say you have a special chance to actually say something nice. What would you like to say to African Wikimedians having recognized all these threats that they possess that are really bound to the movement? So one of the things that struck me when we started doing movement strategy was that we did some research for like, where are babies going to be born in the next 20 years, you know? Wow. Well, it's the only thing you can really predict, right? You can't really predict the future, but you can count babies. And the population, the predictions for today's predictions predict that 40, I think it was 42% of the planet will be African by the end of this century. So what I would say to the African community is like, this is your moment. Wow. You know, you are the future of this planet. You are the future of this community. You are the future of this movement. And I want to see that like, let's lay the groundwork for that leadership. Let's ensure that you have the resources that you need. Let's be building movement leaders. And as I said, I want to see African Wikimedians on the board. I think it's incredibly important and not just African Wikimedians. I know I'm probably going to have Wikimedians from Africa listening today, but I also think it's Wikimedians from all of our emerging communities. It's time for your representation. It's really important. But it's a song. It's time for Africa. Like, yeah, it's time. If you had one message for Wikimedians around the world, what would it be? What I'm referring to is, for those who are watching, I wrote a goodbye. I mean, like, see y'all around the Wikis sort of letter last week and shared it. And I think that, you know, there were sort of a few messages in that, which was that one is that I do think that the work that the Wikimedia community has done and continues to do is absolutely remarkable. And it is one of the proudest things that I've ever had the opportunity to be a part of. And I will always measure any future work that I do and communities that I'm involved with by how they compare to the Wikimedia communities, because this is just one of the most special places that I think communities I've ever been in. Which is a call, I think, to this movement as well to continue to really push to be the best version of the movement, to be, as I said, a moment ago, as welcoming as possible to newcomers, to really see the expansion, hey, Cislas, I'm glad you're back. Thank you. No, nowhere. To see the expansion of the movement is something that makes us all stronger. To understand that we are, I think you know this, stewards of something that is truly special in the world, and that we have a multi-generational obligation to protect it and to advance our work over the years to come, to remain really steadfast in the values. I think it is, we have at times felt pulled in different directions as a movement, and one of the things that I believe is that in the last 20 years, when I joined the foundation in 2014, there was a little bit of a sense sometimes that maybe Wikimedia wasn't as interesting or exciting as other sites on the internet because it hadn't changed much. And today, in 2021, I think the reason that Wikimedia is so beloved and respected is because it hasn't changed much, because it's still very core to those original values of independence and integrity and openness. And so as much as I ask you as a movement to continue to evolve and welcome new people in and be welcoming and to grow globally and understand more broadly our conceptions of what knowledge is and can be, I would also say, don't put too far from those founding values because they're so important. Our colleague Kim Gill at the Wikimedia Foundation always would say that we're a movement with a foundation, not a foundation with a community and I think that that is true to who we are and I want to see this movement continue to lead and guide wherever the movement goes first or goes next. In the second episode, we thought of the need to explain the role of photographic plays within the Wikimedia context. And this led to us bringing in some resource persons from Wikilocks Earth, Ghana, Wikimedia pages wanting photos, and of course the Nojadam initiative and the commons photographers, precisely the Nigerian commons photographers. The aim for bringing the Wikilocks Earth was to highlight opportunities for photographers beyond of course the Wikilocks Africa photography context. There is also the Wikilocks Earth where we make sure that materials of photography and media are being brought from some very awesome sites in various countries. Let's say a resort, a reserve or a game reserve, precisely. And moving forward to the Wikipedia pages wanting photos, we felt the need to show how these photographs and media files are being used within the Wikimedia context. That was why we brought the program coordinator and the person of IC Colette today. And then moving to the Nojadam initiative, we aimed at highlighting the training in which photographers could participate. And the Nojadam initiative aims to make sure that the photography is highlighting experience, skills. And then it's a training ground for photographers. And then in bringing the person from the Nigerian commons photographers group, we hoped to achieve, which we did, to mention the house where photographers could actually meet each other, interact, communicate and maintain synergy. Of course there is the larger global commons photographers group. Enjoy these highlights from that episode. Now let's move on to the kind of training, actually, that are available for photographers. Wiki doesn't just expect you to go about taking photographs. You also have a window for trainings for photographers. Ladies and gentlemen, make welcome Minette from Nojadam. Minette, you are welcome once again. I love African Wikimedians. Probably don't know what the Nojadam initiative is about. How do you explain what Nojadam is all about to them? Good evening everyone. Yes, as I was saying, it's a project that was initiated by a street organization called White Internet. And the objective of the training is to train professional and non-professional photographers in Cameroon on what is the free culture all about, how to take good pictures. There was also a master class in photography in order to train the participant on how to take quality pictures and improve their skills in photography. And the third part of the project would be a photo exhibition that will take place in October. So that's a summary of what the Nojadam project is all about. So it's really about training the people who contribute to commands on how to get their skills to do better contributions. Is there a chance you would duplicate the Nojadam initiative across the Wiki community if the opportunity provides itself? Yes, yes. I think we will be working on it as the Wikimedians of Cameroon user group. I think we had a very good, the outcome of the project. I think it was a very good one. As for the Nojadam, I don't think there will be a second edition since the Wikimedians of Cameroon user group was not actually the organization initiating the project. But I think having a training like a photo training or a master class in photography along with a photographic project is really a concept that I think it will be a very good opportunity as the user group or even a user group from other African countries could actually replicate because sometimes when they see photo contests they always think, oh no, I can't participate because I'm not a professional photographer or I have just a mobile phone or I don't know how to take good pictures. But if we can add up to the workshops that we are having to promote, we are usually organizing to promote the competitions like Wikimedians of Africa If we can add up to that or like a training where we invite professional photographers to come and train our participants whether they have a professional camera or just their mobile phone to actually improve their skill to be able to take better photographs, better images. I think we can really improve the quality as well as the quantity of the images you are able to contribute in the various competitions that have been organized within the Wikimedia Commons framework. In general, can you give us an idea? What is the purpose of the Photographers User Group? Thank you very much for this question. Let me start by saying I have been a member of the Commons Photographers User Group for the International User Group for a while. For example, the Commons Photographers User Group is an international user group that brings together volunteers and editors from Wikimedia Commons all together around the world to make a contribution to Wikimedia Commons. So I just have that particular idea in mind that maybe we can be able to create a particular user group that will bring together users from Nigeria in such a way that they can be able to make contribution to Nigeria-related files into Wikimedia Commons. So the main purpose of the Nigerian Commons Photographers User Group is to engage new editors that is volunteers across Nigeria because from what I know, it's the majority of the editors and volunteers that are currently in the Wikimedia project. They usually use to make contribution to Wikipedia and Wikidata. So part of the purpose of this user group is to engage new members, new volunteers, new photographers across Nigeria in such a way that they can be able to make contribution to Wikimedia Commons. On the episode 3, we thought of the need to demystify the Wikimedia Foundation Board elections and for that reason we featured the facilitation team represented by Mahutong, Zita and Bashinda where they explained the election process to us with the aim of making sure that people aren't intimidated by the cumbersome process. And then we brought Florence Dobua and Maria Sefidari who these two women have of course shared the Wikimedia Foundation Board at some point and the aim was to get an insight into their lives, their experience, why they were on the Board. This also was to encourage women who hoped to run for the Board that it is possible for a woman to chair the Board and in the session they also explained how they were able to juggle between their personal lives, family, other things and the Wikimedia Foundation Board. We move forward to of course bring the three election candidates from Africa in the persons of Radar Kebush, Eliane Dominique and Eliane Scott. We of course didn't want them to just be people known from a distance in terms of the African Wikimedia Commons and since they were from Africa it was necessary to make sure they interfaced with the African community as much as possible and the session was awesome. You can bet they expressed their interest of course and the reasons behind their motivation to run and of course they mentioned what the aim to achieve should they be elected on the Board. Enjoy these highlights from that episode. You were the Wikimedia Foundation Board chair from October 2006 to July of 2008. Could you please tell us what it was like taking the mantle from Jimmy Wells? So what happened is and that's again I'm going back a little bit in history because the Board has changed a lot over the past 17 years or 18 years it has been operating. When I joined the Board there were only three people at that time so we jumped to five and the two first people elected were both women. Again I insist that women can be elected. At that time the Foundation was basically just a small envelope. It was only a collection of websites. It had a bank account which was nearly empty. It owned a bunch of URLs such as wikipedia.org, wikipedia.com as well and a few like this ones and other than that it was essentially it and it owned the servers. We had three or four servers at that time so it was yet there was no staff, there was no budget, there was no office, there was absolutely nothing. So of course this has changed quite a lot. What happened at that time is Jimmy Waze was the chairman by default and I think in his mind he probably thought he would be the chairman like forever. We didn't really discuss that much but he was the chairman and that was obvious it was going to be for a very long time. And what happened is that during my tenure during these four years the key elements to keep in mind is that this was the time where we grew up the most between 204 to 208. In 204 very few people knew about wikipedia. We didn't have many editors. We didn't have much visibility. We had some media articles from time to time but not very frequently and the growth, the main growth of wikipedia was around 206 to 207 and the problem is that as a foundation we really struggled to keep up with this growth. It was very hard for us to follow all the requirements, all the needs that this very fast growing environment was living. And Jimmy got very much requested in particular to talk to the press. So Jimmy was traveling all the time going to conferences, speaking to the press, he loved that and he did that very well. The problem is that in the meanwhile the operation, the activities on the board were not happening anymore. It was not his cup of tea to say it nicely and he didn't have the time anymore. So there was a moment where the board had to set up and say we need to find a solution and we need to actually move away and move this away from founder syndrome whatever and try to grow and now be aware that we need to expand the board and have a different process. And that's when they decided to point me chair. And at that time our main worry, we had several things to deal with. There was the worry of Jimmy which of course felt like maybe was stripped of something but we reassured him that he would be there forever like we love him. That's our Jimbo. And the second thing is that we feared as well the community reaction and the potential funder reaction and the press reaction thinking what's going to happen if Jimmy is kicked away. So we had to deal with that and it went fine. Everybody could see that we made it well. And the one thing we decided at that time and which is still ongoing at the moment is that we decided that the following chairs would always be community members. And I don't know and maybe Maria will tell me if they decided to change their mind but very visibly since then the only chair people we had were always community members. So that was just a growing process and we managed very well I think. I think with this said and this answer you've given us it would be nice to get a glimpse of Maria's thoughts or maybe the current realities of juggling the board chair fairs and other aspects of one's life. Maria could you help us? Of course. But first let me say hi to this lost hi Florence. Thanks for having me here. I will say that the advantage I had when I became the board chair was that I had had previously two years as vice chair. So in a sense I had had strong onboarding and visibility into what the role would entail. Especially with the second year being given more responsibilities so that the ramp wasn't as high as a normal board member becoming suddenly chair. And that helps. That helps a lot. I would say that there's three different moments during my tenure as a chair. Like the first year it's quite a thing to become the person that suddenly people go for answers. And you know when they bring you problems they're not your one of the new problems. Like they are high level problems. It's fortunately you got to have a lot of high level organization skills. I think this is really, really important and you have to be able to keep track of a million things. That's I think it's a requisite just for being interested but if you're the chair who needs to have visibility into most things that are happening, even more so. With the second year in which you are more used in a sense like you have a routine down. You get into the inertia of things. I think it was a very fun year in that sense in that we tackle really important topics. And then there's the third year. I call it the unexpected year, last year. At the beginning of the year. And then when I talk about a year I talk from one Wikimania to another Wikimania. I have already indicated I'm not going to continue as a board chair. I will not run in the next elections. Let's prepare for a transition. It was part of the board priorities for the year. All right. And we get to February and in the board meeting at February 2020. I also tell the board, you know, I need a maternity leave. I'm going to have a baby. It's a great opportunity as well for Natalia to become the acting chair, have more responsibilities. Ezra became an acting vice chair. So you have trustees that are stepping up that are going to get during this period in which nothing is going to happen until basically the Q4 meeting, the one that's about the annual plan. It's, you know, it's a good moment for people to start getting their hands dirty a little bit with more responsibility. What happens in March 2020? Then that scenario changes, right? Like there's a global pandemic. We have to close the office of the foundation extremely fast and start working from home. It's a very, very difficult moment. The foundation reaches out to the trustees whose terms about the spider says, look, we don't think we can do community elections now. We don't think we could even get community candidates. That could, like, everyone is being so affected. People are getting sick. People are dying. People are losing their loved ones. We're thinking about, you know, postponing for a year with the hope that then it might be in a better situation and we can get community participation and we can have, you know, strong, good candidates and a good election process. So we have this situation in which everything is abandoned. I am taking calls, even though I'm Matilda Dili, I still have, like, really burned into my mind having my newborn baby crying while I'm still in an important meeting trying to move things forward and help, right? And this is an expected year. We didn't have, I didn't have a plan for this year. So we have to come up with, you know, what are we going to work on this year? What are we going to do as our board priorities for the year? And, of course, within this frame of movement strategy that we already have, the movement recommendations, they came out in March of last year. So how can we keep moving forward without, you know, halting everything in this context in which it's extremely difficult, right? And so I'm very proud of the board because we were able to keep the trains running in a sense. The staff was wonderful, of course. Personally, I reached the end of the year very, very tired. And I know everyone else as well in the sense of everything went extremely online, right? Like the amount of free time you had, it just shrank so much, right? We had community conversations happening every weekend. We need to move forward. Things like movement strategy, for instance. And it was hard and we know without any in-person conferences and this is a movement that has learned to depend on in-person conference in order to move forward topics and reach consensus and make decisions. Having to figure out how do we move that online and have, for instance, global conversations. And then we started to figure finding all the challenges, right? Like time difference challenges. How do we make sure that everyone can participate? The language challenges. In a sense, this has been positive because it has forced us to make sure everything has to be available in at least 10 languages, in at least the major languages. And let's see if we can get people from other languages and we can make it happen. Child care, as Provence mentioned before, the conversations about child care. They were possible in some cases because that's another thing. This is a very international board. People are in different regions and the spread of the sickness or the availability of vaccines varies a lot. In my case, there was no child care available. You couldn't just... It was impossible during lockdown to get someone in your house, right? So I had to change how meetings happened. There was no possibility of having, you know, two or three-day meetings or five hours straight for three continuous days. If you have a baby or you have someone dependent on you, you just cannot do that. So we started experimenting with... For instance, let's have meetings in non-consecutive days. Let's have meetings that are like an hour and a half long or two hours long. Trying to adapt to the situation in ways that would reduce the burden on everyone at a time where everyone was trying desperately to do their best. It's been a really, really hard year to navigate. Of course, I know everyone understands that and in their own context has been through that, right? I'm hoping that we're going to get through it all together in movement as best as possible. As I said, I'm really proud of how the board has handled it. We've been moving forward with movement strategy. We've been moving forward with all the governance reform that came from the governance review that we did in my first year as chair. So in that sense, I'm happy, but I will admit, I think we all felt the burnout as well. How is devoting a huge amount of time to the movement for free, in quotes, going to benefit, let's say myself in the end if I decide to maybe run and maybe get elected. How is it going to benefit me? Not financially, but what do I get out of it? I mean, what benefits can one derive from being on the media foundation board? And one of the things I did when I was chairwoman was to actually establish what we have now and change over time, of course, but what was the first vision and mission and values of our movement. So as to make sure that board members are aligned with that and mostly the brand new staff members we hire are also understanding what is important to us and what is negotiable and what is not negotiable. And what do you mostly derive from being board member? Well, you have your hand in this. You can actually do that in a certain direction and that's such a satisfaction. All of us can do it as a regular member, but when you're a board member, you can do way more and that's the big thing. That's the reason why you stick there, even though you're super tired, as Maria was saying with the baby boy and the baby boy, when you see some blackness around me, it's that the baby boy is a big boy now. He's a 15-year-old guy and he's moving around. He's very unhappy because he wants to play with it. But yeah, that's the big thing. The power. Simply the power to move in the right direction. I heard you was a great political and it takes courage to announce your candidacy once again for the upcoming elections. What is your motivation? First of all, it takes a lot of courage and hesitation until the last minute. This election, for me, is like the last election. I'm supported by a great number of communities and people. And it is their confidence in me, that I meet for the second time to be here in the board. For me, it's really important to understand that a lot of people or a lot of communities support me to get into the board. Because the age of such a large global community requires a responsible person who will put in place mechanisms or will assist or help person who will put these mechanisms on the movement. So this is one of my motivations at this time. One could say you took your sweet time before announcing your candidacy. Why is that? And why is that you put your name forward? Thank you. The reason why I took a long time to think about to put my name forward for this position is because this is a very big responsibility to take on being a board member. It also requires that... So I did have a lot of people encouraging me, a lot of groups encouraging me, much like Rita. But the reason why I hesitated is because, like I said, a lot of encouragement, a lot of responsibility. But also it requires a lot of sacrifice. Florence already sort of mentioned that earlier, as did Maria, that it does require you to give up a lot of your volunteer sort of activities. So you've got to leave the board, you've got to leave a chapter position. You can't engage as easily with members of the foundation for very good reasons related to conflict of interest. And that has an impact on your volunteer activities and all the projects, certainly all the projects I'm involved in, especially trying to promote things like a stronger presence for African editors in the Wikipedia community, copyright advocacy, which is something I'm also very passionate about. That's one of the reasons why I was sort of hesitant. In terms of why I'm running and why I feel so passionate about it, there are essentially three reasons, but they all relate to community. So when people ask me, you know, what is Wikipedia? What is the Wikipedia movement? What is the free knowledge movement that we're a part of? For me, it's a community. Things like Wikipedia is sort of the result. Things like the Wikipedia platform, the technology is just the platform that we sort of make that happen. But it's really sort of the strength of the volunteer public benefit spirit of our community and strengthening that. Okay, thank you so much. The first question we have for you is you are putting up your name as a candidate for the first time. What motivated you to put up your name? D'accord. Donc pour moi, c'est important d'interpreter, comme vous l'avez dit à l'heure, le Conseil d'administration. Moi je ne viens pas dans un esprit de peut-être emmener à changer c'est qui existe déjà, ça dit à changer c'est qui est déjà fait par d'autres communautés. Je vais dire les autres membres du Conseil qui ont travaillé précédemment. Mais l'idée c'est d'apporter une, d'apporter de l'aide, d'apporter une plus-value pourquoi pas et dans la communauté, puisque la communauté est diversifiée et on a plusieurs compétences. Chaque personne selon son domaine de compétence peut apporter son aide. Donc pour moi aujourd'hui en intégrant le conseil d'administration, ce que moi je souhaiterais c'est que on puisse emmener la communauté en général à travailler plus à l'intégration des personnes par exemple qui ne comprennent pas la langue anglaise je vais dire. Je prends l'exemple sur ce cas-là parce que on est arrivés suite à mes différentes participations aux différentes activités du mouvement. Je suis ressortie avec un certain nombre de questionnements parce que je me disais que j'ai des idées à partager j'ai des choses à dire aux autres par rapport au débat qui est en cours parce que je peux comprendre tout le context de ce qu'on est en train de faire peut-être intervenir en anglais ce serait un peu difficile par exemple donc ça m'empêcherait de partager mes idées mais si on avait la possibilité par exemple de permettre aux personnes qui s'explinent dans les autres langues de pouvoir avoir une lucarne je ne sais pas pourquoi pas trouver la formation à faire en anglais pour pouvoir les intégrer davantage ou alors lors des réunions trouver les méthodes pour les interprétations pour pouvoir le permettre de s'expliquer davantage ce serait bon. Pour moi en fait c'était le fait qu'on a inclus l'option capacity building dans la stratégie 2030 c'était vraiment la bienvenue parce que pour moi il fallait travailler sur cet aspect spécifiquement pour pouvoir permettre à toutes les communautés d'être intégrées et d'apporter leurs idées dans le développement de la communauté on ne le fait pas ainsi on risque d'esclure un certain nombre de personnes qui certainement pourraient envoyer leurs idées pour l'évolution de la communauté donc pour moi en intégrant le conseil d'administration c'est de proposer des idées pour que ces communautés la puissent être davantage intégrées à travers le brisme des barrières linguistiques donc ça c'est de 1 2 d'apporter mon expérience en matière de communication à la communauté c'est vrai la communauté communique mais je pense qu'on pourrait améliorer la manière de communiquer de la communauté selon les communautés et envoyer les informations selon le langue de compréhension de chaque communauté je pense que je peux aider à apporter mes idées aux conseils des idées qui pourraient servir pour toute la communauté en quelques mots she is trying to build a community that would enhance or she is trying to make better the community that actually makes use of swift use of various languages so that whatever is being communicated will be generally interpreted and understood and then she hopes to foster a better capacity building for the Wikimedia for the Wikimedia communities across Africa and of course the Wikimedians across the world in an entirety so those are the two focuses that she is hoping that she could bring to light if elected on the board and on the fourth episode of the wiki Africa hour which held on 30th of July 2021 we featured the two great wiki events the Wikimedia 2021 and the Wikimediver where the co-organizing teams were brought to give us a background peep into their activities in terms of how these events are organized and how these events can benefit you and your work as a Wikimedia they did justice to that enjoy these highlights from that episode I couldn't agree less when you said that there was need to amplify the voice of Africa in quote on the global stage in terms of the global discussion what advice can you give any team or community by looking to organize some sort of pre-conference be it for Wikimedia or Wikimediver or some other wiki thing in the future so coming to your question which kind of advice do I have that you might want to organize again maybe pre-conference or similar kind of projects the one is that communication they should maintain communication within the participants or the communities that they need to involve that will be easier if the communities involved they do understand better what is the purpose the second thing is commitment if you see these things happening there is some way someone gonna be be very committed looking out ensuring that everything is going smoothly I think this is very important the third thing is the mindset of that we are learning this helps us to anyone who wants to attend these events to keep moving overcoming the fear or the stillness thing we are not ready feeling that we are ready for this helps to keep moving then the good team actually there will be a good option and a good thing to have have a good team of people who are active because sometimes some activities they need someone to be available the hours that are not convenient to others and the last two things is that they should keep synchronization with the WMOS team that is responsible for the particular grant because some of the advice can be helpful while they are moving along the plan and the last thing is the COVID-19 issue because the global now the global pandemic has been a challenge to most of the countries so before they decide what is the conference or any person gathering they should be considering about COVID-19 issues whether the situation allows them wikimena is awarded by the steric committee to my understanding what is the role of the steric committee and can anyone join and how is the location for these wikimena conferences chosen? So the steric committee has personally I think has a very major role of assuring that wikimania takes place so I think the main task of the steric committee is to make sure that every year we again organize wikimania of course there is the selection process that is really moving forward guarantee that this event will continue because it is important for the community the second aspect is to advocate for the role of the community so of course there are many partners there are many people involved in wikimania wikimania sorry my Italian pronunciation of it there are many people involved and of course there is continuous exchange with the wikimedia foundation that in the recent years has gained a major role also in facilitating the event and in supporting it on the other hand what is important about this event is really the initiative of the community the space that we can make for all the proposal and all the engagement of the community so guaranteeing that the community is at the center of wikimania is a part of our duty and the last aspect is also that the experience of the past nourish wikimania in the future so that we take advantage of those experiences that we learn one edition from the other so this is in general terms the role of the wikimania steering committee the members of the committee so you were asking so the people that compose the committee are normally people that organized previous wikimania or they had a major role in previous wikimania so we normally co-op them or there are people that propose themselves to join they can be also people very active in events in general we had proposal also throughout time of people that wanted to join in and they can bring experience they can provide obviously experience of the community and so they have been invited to join and nominated but in general is based on previous edition so the steering committee is really a role of legacy a role of continuity related to the previous events and lastly how we select the venues this year of course we went virtual for covid so we believe that is important to not put the community at risk so this is also a reason why an online event was the best solution but in general the first criteria is an unsaid criteria is to have wikimania around the world this has been a main topic for many years wikimania turning around we had edition in europe in latin america and africa in the united states in asia and right now we would love to have an event in asia so it's going to be the next venue latin america also will be another turn so we're waiting to go there i think this international movement is important is of course in europe every edition we look at when we used to have a bidding process so we used to have a competition let's say to host wikimania i was personally a lot against this competition because one of the problem that we faced throughout time is that you have a winner and the others they lose and sometimes they put a lot of effort so trying to find solution that may allow teams to work together like the idea of working with a network of asian country i think this is a better option but of course we also believe that wikimania should be a space in which communities can apply and can propose their ideas so i would like to invite you during this edition of wikimania traditionally we have a session focused on the future of wikimania so please join us there to discuss how we want wikimania to change how we want to be in the future and if you have a proposal please come and discuss it with the team to make sure that we make this event as more inclusive as possible and we allow people to propose their own ideas personally i think an event should change a little bit the world are not only an occasion to gather people but they can be a chance to transform things to be an engine of change a way of triggering changement in a location and i personally think that wikimania can have this power so when we take wikimania in a city it can give visibility to our topic of free knowledge and i really hope also the proposal will come from this and they take into account how fun and experimental i knew our event can be thank you hello jamen we are coming over to you you are on the program team i mean you are responsible for choosing through the litany of submissions i mean that sounds like a hillclimb task to do what does the process involve so first of all it's i mean it's a responsibility to be part of this committee of programming with my colleagues with Anna Ludovic and all the other volunteers i would like to say thanks to all the volunteers who helped us to select the session to be part of the program and it was not easy because we received many submissions we received more than 200 submissions many of them are very interesting and we had to select some because we have some limitations at the time so it was not easy an easy task to select the accepted sessions but we tried to select the maximum so we selected more than 170 sessions to be part of the program whether live or pre-recorded or on demand so also we tried when selecting the session to have diversified content, diversified topics, diversified also diversity in terms of gender of the presenters and also to respect the time zone of the presenter to allocate the session to the different time zones to make this wikimania accessible for all the wikimanias around the world as we said we wanted to make this wikimania the most accessible and the most inclusive one when is the wikimania happening when precisely because they have been some discussions about the possible dates when according to you and who is the team that is hosting this time to answer your question it's going to be a virtual event and it's a three day conference between the fifth and the seventh so as Joffrey said this is the place to be if you are interested in how the wikimedia movement is like in Africa in connecting with affiliates if you're interested in connecting with so many people that we have had the opportunity to reach out to and work with during the pandemic but also if you're in the diaspora what is special about this year what can we expect from the conference from the program itself we all know for a fact that the work of the movement and especially in Africa was affected by the situation that was presented by the COVID-19 pandemic but this situation also presented the opportunity for so many affiliates to train people that were beyond their geographical location so there were so many editors that were recruited and with the length of time and the kind of things that they've done they've evolved from just being editors to now being able to take on administrative roles but the challenge with that is beyond the trainings and beyond the opportunities that we offered as a collective people have been working in isolation so one of the main things in Dabba 2021 is going to be looking at and placing a lot of emphasis on is just the inclusion we want, we need to establish a sustainable dialogue with everybody that we've worked with in the last year in the light of the Wikimedia Scholarship so what will the Week in Dabba 2021 scholarship look like on a continent where there are of course not so many official user groups how are you going to encourage those who want to be part of the community but are not yet organized to be so yeah this is where the inclusion comes in so like I said we've worked with individuals and people and some organized groups in countries that actually have know how can I say established affiliates but then the numbers of the people that we've worked they are able to come and be collective to be reckoned with so the Wikimedia Scholarship one will be to primarily enable digital access to the proceedings but in addition to enabling digital access it will be able to allow those who have gotten the scholarship to be able to meet and interact with like-minded people in the community because the biggest challenge with that is we could say okay there is free registration and everybody will register for free but then having the access to the places or the things where they can meet people that have more impact than their training could actually afford so that is what the Scholarship for Wikimedia 2021 will primarily enable now I've given you the insights on why the Wikimedia in Africa precisely the persons of ILA and Florence thought of the need to activate this initiative of Wikimedia Africa now a broadcast that is aimed towards a better integration into the Wikibike movement of the African Wikimedia communities how can you be part of this awesome Wikiafrica our initiative first you can support by suggesting topics interesting projects guests if you wish the feature on the Wikiafrica our episodes if they are individuals maybe you can't reach but you know that having them on the platform would be beneficial to the movement please just go to the Wikiafrica our meta page under the suggestion platform and put their names there and we would do the work to get them on the platform if you have some current updates news you think we should feature to keep everybody embrace of communication please go to our newsroom section on the Wikiafrica our meta page and put it up there and then you can also support by subscribing to the Wikiafrica YouTube channel so that you can keep tabs on all topics that are discussed thank you for participating in our Wikimedia session I look forward to seeing suggestions of topics and guests up to December 2022 even yes we would like to have it that way up and of course we look forward to seeing you on the Wikiafrica our episodes in the future thank you so much once again I remain Seslas Ovanaya your host this episode of Wikiafrica was hosted by Seslas Ovanaya let us know what topics you want to discuss next month on the same channels subscribe to the Wikiafrica YouTube channel