Wikipedia talk:Wikipedia Day

Reflections on the 2011 celebration
For 2011, the 10-year anniversary, everyone celebrated this birthday as documented at ten.wikipedia.org.

That was the biggest event to date with the most community groups around the world organizing to participate. The 10-year anniversary established that Wikipedia's birthday was an occasion to celebrate, even if many groups do not have the volunteer labor to host an event every year.

Despite the lack of volunteer labor to host events, people from every community enjoy going to the events when they happen. The social context of this is that the Wikimedia community in general has a labor bottleneck for being dependent on community organization. We have a great cause that excites people. Lots of other nonprofit organizations and activist causes have the inverse problem - they have staffing and funding for events, but trouble drawing people to their cause to participate. Wikimedia projects in general have lots of people who want to participate, but we struggle to reserve the rooms, get sponsorship for coffee and cookies, and actually get volunteers to host the events.

In 2011 there was a significant Wikimedia Foundation staff investment which assisted many volunteers in the administrative side of hosting their events, including by mailing out stickers, helping to post events on that event website, and doing on-wiki advertising. Before and since then volunteers have managed these things as best they could. If we lowered the barrier to organizing these events then I think more people would attend an annual Wikipedia celebration.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  15:36, 5 November 2018 (UTC)

Solicited participation in the United States in Wikimedia US mailing list

 * host Wikipedia Day + Public Domain party in Jan	2019, request funds NOW!...

 Blue Rasberry  (talk)  22:47, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Applied for Wikimedia Foundation grant - seeking comment and support
See
 * meta:Grants:Project/Public Domain Day event toolkit

Since March 2018 I have been Wikimedian in Residence (meta:Wikimedians in Residence Exchange Network) at the University of Virginia. Among other things I organize collaborations with the library. Some notes on my projects are at meta:University of Virginia and WP:UVA.

In the above proposal I am assisting some librarians, researchers, and our copyright lawyer in requesting US$15,000 from the Wikimedia Foundation in the November 2018 call for projects as described at meta:Grants:Project. With this money the library would, in summer 2019, develop a tool kit and event package for more libraries to celebrate Public Domain Day and to incorporate Wikimedia engagement into their program. We will be hosting a Public Domain Day event of our own with Wikimedia engagement in January 2019 to get experience before starting the grant funded project. I am posting here because I want to connect the concept and commemoration of the January 15 Wikipedia Day with the 1 January Public Domain Day.

If anyone can sign to support then I appreciate that. If anyone has comments of any kind please post to the talk page. Thanks.  Blue Rasberry  (talk)  23:32, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Riverside
Anyone want to meet up to celebrate in Riverside, California? Benjamin (talk) 08:30, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

Happy birthday!
Happy birthday to you dear Wikipedia, I wish you sucsess and long life! Ohangar (talk) 13:43, 15 January 2019 (UTC)

20th birthday celebration in January 2021?
How far in advance are events usually planned? Is there a bigger meetup organization/structure with whom we can/do collaborate? Would be great to plan a big set of events for Wikipedia's 20th birthday (big milestone!) —Shrinkydinks (talk) 23:22, 13 June 2020 (UTC)
 * Time to start planning now! If you have suggestions of what to do then post here. I am helping to plan with some wiki community organizations.  Blue Rasberry   (talk)  19:35, 24 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Canberra, Australian Capital Territory