Annual Report 2021/Fail fest: Wikimedia Northern Europe Meeting struggling to find its form
In this Fail fest we are focusing on experiences from a digital conference and workshop. The event was a continuation of two previous physical meetings where the social parts very much were in focus. One of the goals was to find new projects and areas to work with between the countries in northern Europe.
In mid-November 2021, we conducted an open digital workshop to resume contact with former Wikimedia Northern Europe participants. The meeting in 2020 was canceled due to the pandemic and this new start was an invitation to join a digital meeting with the opportunity to exchange information about current plans and projects.
Unfortunately, many of the previous participating affiliates did not have the time or opportunity to participate this year, so it was only three countries out of eight that were represented this time. We still wanted to carry out the event as it is relatively easy to have an open digital meeting
For two days we met for a couple hours for discussions and worked together on an idea that is about collecting 1,000 articles from each country that are considered of great interest to translate into several languages. The idea came from Wikimedia Eesti and participants from both Wikimedia Denmark and Wikimedia Sweden participated in the work. The work was a good way to find areas together where we need each other's help and have a common project with a lot of aspects.
Now that the restrictions are disappearing and the pandemic is calming down, maybe we can start planning a new meeting where we can see each other again and resume relations. It's something else to really meet together and the social part can often be a little better outside the digital world. An outcome of the event is that we continue to work on the project with 1,000 important articles and this can be connected with the upcoming Wikipedia Art Month in October 2022.