Wikimania 2022 is a major conference scheduled to occur on August 2022. how did I not know about this until thirty seconds ago?
See link below. I received word of this ONLY because of an incidental reply that I received, to an idea that I posted at Village Pump, on the Miscellaneous tab! something needs to change drastically here. how was no one aware of this?
I am not blaming the organizers for this wonderful event. however for me, this signifies the major gaps in communication, which our community should somehow find some way to address positively! I am continually open to any ideas and comments on this. thanks!
I do truly appreciate your helpful reply above. just to be clear, I don’t mean I didn’t know about the 2022 conference.
I mean I had never heard about the Wikimania conference. at all. in any venue. actually, not only had I never heard of it, I had never known it even existed.
our need for great transparency, communication, greater interchange, and greater inclusiveness, as illustrated by this, is great, acute, real, significant, and immediate.
I see the Discourse platform used in this forum as one of the only platforms or apps which has some genuine effectiveness. I look forward to further discussions, collaboration and communication, and development of ideas, as time goes on. thanks.
Usually there’s a CentralNotice banner for Wikimania during registration. There’s been dissemination of information to affiliates, mailing lists, etc., related to proposals for Wikimania sessions and scholarships. As we get closer to registration and the event, more methods will be used to drive awareness.
Unfortunately there’s a rather limited spectrum of options for informing people about things through MediaWiki, with large gaps between levels of effectiveness (and, correlatively, the possibility to over-contact people). I.e., not much between a village pump message and a CentralNotice or mass user talk page message. Hopefully, work towards movement communications insights on the Foundation side can help create a sort of central place (a front door, one might say) to learn about Wikimedia Foundation-involved activities, and make it easier to contact specific teams and learn about what they do for the community.
This is certainly something that can occur on the community side, as well. WM News is used for community events as well as Foundation ones, and it can definitely be expanded in use. And though it may take some work to setup and maintain it, there’s definitely the possibility to develop a Meta-Wiki portal-type page.