In our last Viquitrobada, hold at our head quarters in Casa Orlandai, Barcelona, we had time for different activities. It’s the most important meeting of Catalan speaking community members and the goal of this edition was internal, to strengthen ties between people and also to introduce the Wikimedia Hackathon that will be held in Barcelona on 18-20th May.
We started with a presentation which summarized the key points of the year and Amical’s vision and later on we tried a new dynamics: viquicadires (wikichairs), a mix of worldcafe and speed-dating to help people to know each other and talk about Wikipedia and Movement issues. We chose the number of 3 people to avoid “incomfortable pairs” and to respect lower voices, because in each group one person could stay silent and dialogue still flourished. We limited the number to encourage deeper conversation, impossible in big groups where social roles arise and can block some people.
After that we have the training time, with an special workshop devoted to take the most of visual editor and a bots session. These were paired with a brainstorming group to empower Hackathon program and project presentations, so each volunteer who wanted could explain where is he or she working at.
On Sunday it took place the traditional community gathering day, with spaces devoted to debate topics related to online edition and community issues. We chatted about the new main page of Wikipedia, the influence of current affairs in edition, the need to change some things in our feature article’s process, the next step of Wikidata integration (specially in our Infoboxes project), how to deal with vandals or the wanted increase of readers. It was the opportunity to update some internal tracks to people who are not in the first line and there were several proposals started.
Besides the official sessions we have enough time to talk during meals, rest time and before each round. We made new members for Amical and we continued the process of taking care of our most precious resource: our community, as it was valued in some writings from participants.
Text by: User:Barcelona