Wikidata:Twelfth Birthday/Run an event
Are you interested in organizing an event for Wikidata's 12th birthday? This is the right place to start.
Get started
The Wikidata distributed event is a decentralized event where all local groups, organizations or community members around the world can organise their own event!
The birthday celebration events are typically taking place from mid-September to mid-November, with a focus on the month of October, and particularly October 29th, the anniversary date of Wikidata. These events can be organized specially to celebrate Wikidata's birthday, but you can also dedicate one or several of your regular events (meetup, livestream, editing sessions...) to Wikidata's 12th birthday.
We are hoping to see many decentralized, autonomous and local events taking place in 2024 to celebrate Wikidata's birthday. Here are a few ways to get something started in your community:
- talk to people around you, for example in your WikiProject or local affiliate, and start thinking about what you could do for Wikidata's 12th birthday
- get inspiration from previous events and formats (see list below), but don't hesitate to innovate and think of new formats!
- join the Wikidata Events Telegram group to interact with other event organizers
- share your ideas, suggestions and wishes on the talk page or on the Telegram group
- <connect with your local ecosystem: libraries, universities, hackerspaces... who could support you with providing space or infrastructure
- check our help pages to learn more about how you can organize an event: how to schedule an event, visual and communication kit, how to get funding for your event
Ideas of birthday events
The main goals of Wikidata birthday events are:
- celebrate the achievements of volunteers with your local community
- share knowledge among your local community: encourage people to share what they know about Wikidata and its related tools
- onboard new people: introduce new people to Wikidata!
Examples of online and onsite events:
- Birthday celebration meetup with your local community
- Introduction to Wikidata for beginners
- Editing session or editing campaign on a specific topic
- Hackathon to reuse data from Wikidata
- Translathon to improve the labels of Wikidata in your language
- Kick-off a Wikidata section in your user group
- Give an introduction to Wikidata to a local partner (university, library...)
- Wikibase install-party
- Talk show about Wikidata in your language
- Livestream: editing Wikidata & demoing tools
- Livestream: SPARQL introduction
To get ideas and inspiration, you can have a look at what happened in the previous years:
- 2023 (11th birthday): hybrid WikidataCon organized by Wikimedia Deutschland and the Wikidata Taiwan community, with also distributed events
- 2022 (10th birthday): many distributed events all around the world
- 2021 (9th birthday): online WikidataCon organized by Wikimedia Deutschland and Wiki Movimento Brasil, preconference Transbordados, and various other side events
- 2020 (8th birthday): several online, onsite, and hybrid gatherings, including a 24-hours online meetup
- 2019 (7th birthday): WikidataCon in Berlin, and other events organized by local groups
- 2018 (6th birthday): more than 30 events organized by local communities all around the world!
- 2017 (5th birthday): first WikidataCon in Berlin
- Earlier: 4th birthday, 3rd birthday, 2nd birthday, 1st birthday
Connect with organizers
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There are many people interested in Wikidata events or working on their own event for the birthday. In order to get answers to your questions and get inspiration from others, feel free to join the dedicated Telegram group Wikidata events or to use the talk page.
If you have general questions about Wikimedia Deutschland’s microgrant program, the frame of the Wikidata birthday, how to enter an event in the calendar, or how to connect with organizers, feel free to contact Lea Lacroix (WMDE) at lea.lacroix_ext@wikimedia.de.
If you have questions about Wikimedia Foundation’s Rapid Fund program, about the eligibility criteria or the activities that can be funded, or about an application that you sent through Fluxx, please contact your Regional Program Officer.
We are also offering calls for organizers during which you can exchange ideas with other organizers and ask questions to the project coordinator and to one of the program officers. The calls take place in this Jitsi room, lasting for 20 to 50 min. Everyone is welcome to join!
Upcoming organizers calls
- July 29th at 14:00 UTC on Jitsi (with a focus on the microgrant application process)
- August 8th at 18:00 CEST: onsite discussion at Wikimania during the Wikidata meetup (onsite only)
- August 28th at 18:00 UTC on Jitsi (with a focus on the microgrant application process)
- September 11th at 08:00 UTC on Jitsi
- September 11th at 18:00 UTC on Jitsi
- October 9th at 08:00 UTC on Jitsi
- October 9th at 18:00 UTC on Jitsi
Other resources
- Documentation page for remote events in the Wikimedia movement
- Events organized in some places during the year: Wikidata:Events
- How to organize a Wikidata workshop
- How to organize an editathon
- How to organize a hackathon
- Wikidata Training