WikiConference North America 2019

November 8–11



You were invited to Cambridge, Massachusetts to join Wikipedia and Wikimedia enthusiasts for the annual continental conference.





#WikiConferenceNA

Boston skyline by King of Hearts (CC BY-SA 4.0)

WikiConference North America is the annual conference of Wikimedia enthusiasts and volunteers from throughout North America, including the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The 2019 conference took place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 8–11. Wikipedia, -media, -data, and -cite enthusiasts joined for a long weekend of collaboration and discovery.

Our main host is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This year's theme is reliability / credibility

is Participation in conference activities includes compliance with our friendly space policy .

. Conference activities and fun facts -- events, awards, sockpuppet-making workshops

and fun facts -- events, awards, sockpuppet-making workshops Participate remotely with our live streams of the three main rooms, and associated chat channel.

of the three main rooms, and associated chat channel. View our photos.

Conference overview

View the full schedule for more details and sessions. Details were subject to change.

Friday (November 8)

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Culture Crawl Day – explore local museums and cultural institutions while editing Wikipedia and learning about Wikimedia projects

Location : Museum of Fine Arts, as well as cultural institutions in downtown Boston and Cambridge

: Museum of Fine Arts, as well as cultural institutions in downtown Boston and Cambridge Time : 9:00am-5:00pm

: 9:00am-5:00pm Events : Participants visited local museums and cultural institutions for free backstage tours, edit-a-thons, and more. 4+ training sessions were held around GLAM and Wikidata. It kicked off our conference-long hackathon, challenging participants to tackle problems around information reliability.

: Friday night reception: Waterworks Museum, Downtown Boston

Saturday, Sunday, & Monday (November 9–11)

View of Stata Center from Vassar street

Three full days of presentations, panels, discussions, workshops, poster sessions, and lightning talks

Location : MIT's Stata Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus; 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge MA 02139, link to map

: MIT's Stata Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus; 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge MA 02139, link to map Time : Saturday: 9:00am–5:30pm Sunday: 10:00am–5:00pm Monday times to be announced.

: Events : Saturday and Sunday: Participants joined sessions on themes including credibility and reliability; education with Wikimedia projects; news and current events; citations and sourcing; relationship building & support; inclusion & diversity; editor recruitment and retention; tech & tools; and harassment, civility, & safety. Monday was a reliability summit + conclusion of the hackathon, providing a deep-dive into issues surrounding reliability of information.

: Saturday night reception: MIT Museum, Cambridge

WikiCred

Following the conference, WikiConference North America worked with the Credibility Coalition, MisinfoCon, and Hacks/Hackers to launch the WikiCred microgrants program. These grants are made available for projects related to strengthening credibility and reliability in the Wikimedia space and beyond, and are made possible through the generous support of Craig Newmark Philanthropies, Facebook, and Microsoft.

This initiative offers microgrants ranging between $250 and $10,000 to individuals and teams to create and pilot projects on supporting credibility on the internet using Wikimedia and lessons from the Wikimedia community. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis. The first deadline to receive funding is April 6th.





Organization

The conference was organized by a team of volunteer Wikimedians from all over North America. THANK YOU to our volunteers, reviewers and team. Volunteers simply filled out our volunteer form and added their names to the wiki.





2019 steering committee:

Andrew Lih

Kevin Payravi

Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight

2019 core planning team:

Wikimedia community Andrew Lih Jackie Koerner Josh Lim Kevin Payravi Maria Rimmel Phoebe Ayers Richard Knipel Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight Sam Klein Sarah Schwettmann

Credibility Coalition Connie Moon Sehat Jennifer 8. Lee















Culture Crawl Partners







History

Our previous events had unique themes and were located in different cities: New York City (2014), Washington D.C. (2015), San Diego (2016), Montreal (2017), and Columbus, OH (2018).

WikiConference North America User Group was formed in 2016 after that year's conference. It is a recognized Affiliate by the Wikimedia Foundation. The purpose of the User Group is to assure that the experiences gained at one conference are shared with future year conference organizers. The mission of the User Group includes coordinating the planning and hosting of events under our purview. Additionally, the User Group documents best practices and shares lessons learned with other Wikimedia communities planning and hosting conferences and similar events.