Hi all,

Earlier this year when we decided to cancel Wikimania 2020, many of us werehopeful that we would be able to postpone it a year to 2021. I was lookingforward to connecting with all of you in Bangkok in August for our firstever Wikimania in Southeast Asia.

However, as we look forward, in spite of promising developments in vaccineresearch it seems unlikely that we will all be able to travel freely andconvene together by August 2021. Over the past several months, theWikimedia Foundation Events team has been meeting with the WikimaniaSteering Committee[1] and the ESEAP Core Organizing Team (East, South EastAsia and Pacific regions)[2] to discuss how we can move forward withWikimania in 2021. Together, these stakeholders have decided that nextyear’s Wikimania will be a virtual event. Instead of being hosted by theESEAP Core Organizing Team, this virtual Wikimania will be hosted by awider group of community members. Since there still is a strong wish tohost Wikimania in the future from the ESEAP team, they will remain thehosts for the next in-person edition of Wikimania.

For many of us, hearing that we won’t be gathering in person at Wikimaniain 2021 is disappointing news. But I am encouraged by the success andcreativity of all of the recent virtual movement events, from regionalevents like itWikiCon to the Wiki 20 event in Asia Pacific event tocelebrate Wikipedia’s 20th birthday and the Movement Strategy GlobalConversations held in December. I have gotten to hear from more of you overthe past months than I could have imagined at the beginning of thispandemic. As always, Wikimedians have adapted and found new ways to connectwith each other.

We believe that this new virtual format will create opportunities for morepeople within our movement to be involved in putting together a movementevent than ever before. We will further build on the collaborative, openprocess for creating a Wikimania program that we started during Wikimaniain Sweden last year. Since this is our first virtual Wikimania, we willalso be able to learn from this experience and hopefully include optionsfor virtual participation in future in-person Wikimanias as well. Wikimania2021 may not happen as any of us initially imagined, but it will still bean opportunity for celebration, especially as Wikimania 2021 will happenduring Wikipedia’s 20th birthday year.

We welcome ideas for this virtual Wikimania and in January, we plan toshare more information about how you can get involved in the planningprocess. We will also be able to share more information in the comingmonths about what this means in terms of invitations, submitting sessionsand scholarships. In the meantime, please share your thoughts, ideas andsuggestions with the Wikimania Steering Committee on Meta[3].

As a movement, we value those opportunities to connect together in person,and look forward to when we can all gather in person again. Until then,stay safe and take care!

Janeen Uzzell, on behalf of the

- ESEAP Core Organizing Team

- Wikimania Steering Committee

- Wikimedia Foundation Events Team

[1]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_Committee

[2]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/ESEAP_Hub

[3]https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_2021

Attachments:

• attachment.htm (text/html — 11.0 KB)