Wikipedia:Meetup/San Francisco/Wikipedia Day 2016

The Wikipedia 15th Birthday Bash / San Francisco was a free celebration organized by volunteers, and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. We opened and closed with informal conversation and celebration, with several presentations in between.

Rosiestep was the event's facilitator and emcee, and various volunteers produced the sessions listed below.



Lightning talks

 * Video
 * Why my favorite contributions to Wikipedia are bots by Staeiou
 * Lila Tretikov (Wikimedia Executive Director)
 * The Wikimedia Movement: An Overview by GVarnum-WMF
 * Using Wikipedia to look up legal issues and court cases by Jrogers (WMF)
 * #100wikidays and why you should let it eat your life by Ijon
 * How to transition Wikipedia from the growth mode to the maintainership mode? by Mitar
 * Wikipedia saved me!: a layoff, a new job, and my first article by scenography
 * Rich content in Wikipedia - Making it interactive with visualizations by Yurik (remote presentation from Russia)
 * Wikisonnets: I accidentally a poem: collaborative sonnets by CassieTarakajian (remote presentation from New York City)

Wikipedia's content gender gap
, with via Google Hangouts. Overview of WikiWomen's User Group, Women in Red, WikiProject Women scientists, WikiProject Women's health, Wikipedian in Residence @ West Virginia University, and how to apply for grants which address content gender gap.
 * Video



Stories from the weird old days

 * Video
 * Stories from the weird old days (2001–2003ish), when the chaotic experiment of an amateur encyclopedia had a lot less structure.

As Wikipedians, we need to learn more about the early experiences of editors—to see Wikipedia as part of history, with its own cultural context and its own stories, instead of somehow outside of history as the sum of human knowledge. 15 years is enough time to start forgetting the beginning; we need to get much better at collecting and telling our history as editors. Slides with speaking notes. Links discussed, for easy clicking: History of Wikipedia, The Wikipedia Revolution, nostalgia.wikipedia.org (browsable copy of Wikipedia from December 2001), Everything2, h2g2, mailing list discussion of the gender gap in January 2002, List of Wikipedians in order of arrival/2001.

Panel: The impact of 15 years of Wikipedia
Pete Forsyth moderated a panel discussion on the significance of 15 years of Wikipedia, and the coming 15 years. Panelists:
 * Video
 * Social justice activist Uncle Bobby
 * Open education expert Cathy Casserly
 * Collaboration expert Eugene Eric Kim
 * Journalist Jenny Manrique



Party time, birthday cake
4:30PM to 5:30PM



Reactions and artifacts

 * Other celebrations of this occasion around the world: see Wikipedia 15
 * Looking for something that was here before? The pre-event version of this page is here: /Archive

Videos

 * Lightning talks (YouTube version)
 * Wikipedia's Content Gender Gap (YouTube version)
 * Stories from the Weird Old Days (YouTube version)
 * The Impact of 15 Years of Wikipedia (YouTube version) See also the interviews with each panelist:
 * Uncle Bobby
 * Cathy Casserly
 * Eugene Eric Kim
 * All panelist interviews as a YouTube playlist

Blog posts and social media

 * Reflections on Wikipedia 15 by photographer, Wikipedian, and social justice commentator Funcrunch
 * Twitter profile: @Wikipedia_15
 * Twitter hashtag: #Wikipedia15