Wikimedia Hackathon 2023/Participate

The Wikimedia Hackathon takes place on May 19-21, 2023 in Athens, Greece. Most of the event will take place onsite, but the opening and closing session will be broadcasted online. Local communities are also welcome to organize pre-hackathon events or meetups. On this page you can find information about how to attend, the venue, travel, accommodation, and scholarships.

The event attendance is free of charge. Participants are expected to take care of their own travel and accommodation, unless they received a scholarship or support from within their organization (e.g. staff of WMF or other affiliates).

Masks and COVID-19 self-tests will be available onsite, but their use will not be mandatory.

Registration
Registration is required to attend the onsite Wikimedia Hackathon in Athens. The registration form closes on May 15th. For last-minute registration for the onsite event, please contact hackathon@wikimedia.org.

The information that you provide while filling out this form will not be shared publicly and will only be accessed by the Hackathon coordination team (WMF staff). If you apply for a scholarship, the data will also be shared with the scholarship committee (see below). The registration and scholarship application form runs with Pretix, an open source third-party service, which may subject it to additional terms. For more information on privacy and data-handling, see the privacy statement.

Online participation
The Wikimedia Hackathon 2023 is primarily an onsite event, and we couldn't enable full remote participation. However, there are various possibilities for people attending remotely to work on projects and interact with other participants:

Work on tasks: The tasks distribution and tracking takes place on Phabricator. Feel free to indicate that you are working on a task or to ask questions directly in Phabricator comments.

Interact with participants: The Hackathon social channels (IRC, Telegram, etc.) will be very active during the event, and the remote attendees are welcome to join these channels, talk about their projects and asks, and ask questions to the many technical contributors who are present on these channels.

Project presentations: The opening session (including project presentations) and the closing sessions (including showcase) will be broadcasted on [ https://www.youtube.com/user/watchmediawiki Mediawiki's Youtube channel]. However, it will not be possible for remote attendees to participate in these sessions. Remote participants are invited to present their projects on the Hackathon social channels instead.

Program and workshops: The onsite items of the program will not be recorded nor broadcasted online. However, notes will be taken on Etherpad documents, and the speakers will share their slides on Wikimedia Commons if any. If you are particularly interested in a session, feel free to contact the speaker so they can send you more information.

Scholarships
In order to support the technical community and to increase diversity among participants, the Wikimedia Foundation runs a scholarship program that will support a selection of technical contributors to allow them to attend the onsite event by taking care of their travel and accommodation.

The scholarship application phase ended on January 14th, it is not possible to apply for a WMF scholarship anymore.

Recipients will be notified at the latest on February 1st so they can proceed with travel booking and visa requests if needed.

The scholarship program aims to support engaged members of the technical community. We will prioritize people who have been contributing to the technical environment of the Wikimedia projects for at least one year. Contributors from underrepresented communities are especially encouraged to submit a scholarship application.

The scholarship committee is composed of Léa Lacroix, Srishti Sethi , Ariel Glenn and Marios Magioladitis , and they will review scholarship applications and rank participants based on the following criteria:


 * Active involvement in technical projects in Wikimedia's ecosystem
 * Plans and projects for the Hackathon
 * Geographic/Gender diversity

Please note that full time Wikimedia staff members are not eligible for a scholarship. If you’re WMF staff, please refer to the internal selection process or talk to your manager regarding your attendance.

Wikimedia affiliates may run their own scholarship process in order to support members of their community to attend the hackathon. Details on scholarships that may be provided by Wikimedia affiliates will be added here when more information is available.
 * [https://lists.wikimedia.org/hyperkitty/list/vereinat-l@lists.wikimedia.org/thread/6S2Q2INNN3UXGMXUA263GEKT65NPYTPT/ Wikimedia Österreich ran a scholarship process] that was open until January 9th.

Target audience
The 2023 edition of the Wikimedia Hackathon will focus on bringing together people who already contributed to technical aspects of the Wikimedia projects, who know how to find their way on the technical ecosystem, and who are able to work or collaborate on projects rather autonomously.

This is a change to the previous “one-size-fits-all” model. There are multiple reasons why we want to try something new, based on lessons learned from previous Wikimedia Hackathons and other tech events and workshops:


 * Hosting an event that allows already active and regular technical contributors to connect, work with each other, learn new things and have very specific technical discussions, while also onboarding people new to Wikimedia and/or development to get started has been quite a big stretch.
 * Wikimedia’s technical ecosystem spans many different technical areas and has endless options to contribute and to learn. We need a space where our existing technical community across skills, interests and expertise can come together to connect, hack, and learn from each other.
 * Workshops and smaller events designed around specific skills and technical areas seem to be a better way to help people get started. For example, regular local tech meetups, initiatives like Small Wiki Toolkits, newcomer focused tech sessions at Wikimania, local or regional conferences with a tech track, or a local hackathon for newcomers with focus on a specific field.
 * The international Wikimedia Hackathon isn’t best suited to onboard and build up new local technical communities - it’s a venue to bring people from all over the world together, who might act as bridges to their local communities.

Other events in the Wikimedia Movement are targeted at newcomers: people who are new to Wikimedia and/or development are welcome to attend Wikimania 2023, where technical sessions will take place, or other newcomers-friendly events. (Please add more to the list).

Practically, we are welcoming all participants up to the maximum capacity of the venue, and for the scholarship selection process, we require applicants to demonstrate that they have been active on technical projects for at least one year. The program will include a project matching session during the opening, and introductions to various tools and projects, but we will not run a mentoring program for newcomers. Participants are expected to be able to propose or join projects and to start hacking autonomously.