WikiConference North America 2019
November 8-11
You're 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 will take place in Cambridge, Massachusetts, November 8-11. Join Wikipedia, -media, -data, and -cite enthusiasts for a long weekend of collaboration and discovery.
- Our main host is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
- This year's theme is reliability / credibility
- Participation in conference activities includes compliance with our friendly space policy.
- Scholarship Applications: Closed
- Programming Submissions: Closed (add ideas to our unconference)
- Register here: Early bird registration is available until October 13, 2019
Conference overview
View of Stata Center from Vassar street
- This is a draft; details are subject to change. A full schedule is coming soon.
- Friday, November 8
- Culture Crawl Day - explore local museums and cultural institutions while editing Wikipedia and learning about Wikimedia projects
- Location: Museum of Fine Arts and Cultural institutions in downtown Boston and Cambridge
- Participants will visit local museums and cultural institutions for free backstage tours, edit-a-thons, and more.
- Training sessions around GLAM and Wikidata.
- Kickoff to our conference-long hackathon, challenging participants to ideate and come up with solutions for problems around information reliability.
- Friday night reception: Downtown Boston
- Saturday + Sunday, November 9 - 10
- Two full days of presentations, panels, discussions, workshops and lightning talks
- Location: MIT's Stata Center, Massachusetts Institute of Technology campus; 32 Vassar Street, Cambridge MA 02139, link to map
- Participants will be able to join 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.
- Saturday: 9:00am-5:30pm; Sunday: 10:00am-5:00pm; with a Saturday evening reception in downtown Boston.
- Monday, November 11
- A reliability summit and hackathon, providing a deep-dive into issues surrounding reliability of information.
- Location: MIT's Stata Center
- The summit will bring together participants from the Wikimedia Movement, the credibility space, and external organizations to discuss the biggest challenges being faced. Bring projects to work on and issues to discuss. Participants will also be able to join workshops on tools related to information reliability.
Organization
Team
The conference is organized by a team of volunteer Wikimedians from all over North America. THANK YOU to our volunteers, reviewers and team. To help out, fill out our volunteer form and add your name to the wiki.
2019 conference 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
WCNA conference steering committee:
- Andrew Lih
- Kevin Payravi
- Rosie Stephenson-Goodnight
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.
WCUSA 2015, Washington D.C.
WCUSA 2014, New York City
