Wikimedia Hackathon 2023/Satellite events

Local communities are welcome to organize pre-hackathon events, watch-parties or meetups in their region in the duration of the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023. On this page, you will find the list of events and how to get involved in a satellite event.

Wiki Workshop 2023: developer track, online, May 11
The organizing committee of Wiki Workshop 2023 is happy to invite you to the developer track session. The goal of this session is to create a deliberate and effective bridge between the Wikimedia research and developer communities to foster collaborations in the form of project proposals that might be developed during the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023.


 * When: May 11 (tentatively scheduled from 12:00-19:00 UTC)
 * Where: Online on Zoom
 * More information: https://wikiworkshop.org/2023

The developer track will consist of 75-minute sessions within Wiki Workshop 2023. Wikimedia developers, some of whom will be attending the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023, will lead conversations in breakout rooms on the following challenges:


 * Web2Cit: Improving citation metadata on Wikimedia projects (Leads: Diegodlh, Nidia Hernández)
 * NLP in low resourced languages (Lead: Neechalkaran)
 * ProofreadPage: Expanding OCR capabilities in Wikisource (Lead: Sohom_Datta)

Wikimedia researchers and developers with expertise in the topics of a given challenge will be welcome to join the corresponding room to contribute in the conversation with their knowledge and ideas. The organizing committee will design and provide facilitation services for each breakout room. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to the chairs of the Wiki Workshop 2023 developer track: Pablo (WMF) and Scann.

Wikimedia Hackathon Local Meetup Accra 2023: local meetup, in-person, May 27
The African Wikimedia Technical Community is happy to invite you to the Wikimedia Hackathon Local Meetup Accra 2023. The goal of this year's local meetup is to bring together technical writers,code creators and maintainers from Ghana to contribute technically to the local meetup of the upcoming Wikimedia Hackathon 2023. We are looking forward to have 85% contributions for visual documentation of Wikimedia tools and technical areas across wikimedia projects, 10% maintainance and improvement on Wikimedia technical areas and 5% for the creation of new wikimedia tools to enhance the user experience on Wikimedia projects.


 * When: May 27, time 10:00 UTC to 15:00 UTC (Pre-hackathon: May 13, time: 10:00 UTC to 14:00 UTC)
 * Where: DocuPro, Accra Digital Center, Accra, Ghana
 * More information: Wikimedia Hackathon Local Meetup Accra 2023

This local meetup will consist of two sessions which the pre-hackathon session will be a training session and the local meetup will be a hack session for participants to contribute to wikimedia technical areas. Newcomers with the required technical skills are welcome to join the pre-hackathon and the main local meetup.

The organizing committee will design and provide facilitation services for each breakout groups. If you have any questions or comments, please reach out to Joris Darlington Quarshie or DaSupremo.

Pre Wikimedia Hackathon in Stockholm, Sweden, May 15
A couple of volunteers, along with Wikimedia Sverige is planning to organise a pre hackathon workshop in Stockholm, Sweden. The aim is to bring together stakeholders and developers in and around Stockholm to connect and capture ideas from stakeholders to hack on during the main hackathon, and setup MediaWiki and other necessary software. This is a great opportunity to catch up on changes since the last on-site hackathon in 2020. Measurable outcomes include 1-3 ideas to hack on during the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023, and developers who have set up local environments to hack on MediaWiki and its extensions using the setup documentation.


 * When: May 15, 15:00 to 21:00 UTC+02:00 (Stockholm, Sweden)
 * Where: Stockholm, Sweden. [Conference room 4 at Norrsken House, Wikimedia Sverige]
 * More information: Application for a pre Wikimedia hackathon in Stockholm, Sweden
 * RSVP via Facebook event or Wiki meetup
 * Tracked on

Newcomers in and around Stockholm are welcome. Please reach out to the organising team via our Telegram channel here. Main contacts are mw:01tonythomas ,Eric Luth, Axel Pettersson

Ionian Wikithon 2023 in Corfu, Greece, May-June 2023
The Wikimedia Community User Group Greece and the Networks, Multimedia and Security Systems Laboratory (NMSLAB) of the Department of Informatics of the Ionian University are happy to invite you to the Ionian Wikithon 2023, the 2nd Ionian Wikithon.

The main scope of this event is to reach out to new developers and turn them into regular contributors as well as to strengthen the wikimedia community of the Ionian University. We welcome developers, humanists and academics to attend. Specifically we aim to:


 * 1) recruit new editors inviting them to participate in a local Wikimedia pre-hackathon workshop
 * 2) prepape students of the Ionian University to participate and attend the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023
 * 3) train existing and new editors in a)the Wikimedia Phabricator, b)the SPARQL query language and Wikidata Query Service and c)the PAWS/Jupyter notebooks for Python beginners
 * 4) invite volunteers and participants of the Wikimedia Hachathon 2023 to disseminate and share knowledge, ideas and experiences from this global event to the local community of the Ionian University.
 * When: May-June 2023 (view calendar for specific dates)
 * Where: Corfu, Greece [Department of Informatics, Ionian University]
 * More information: Ionian Wikithon 2023

This local meetup will consist of two main sessions, a pre-hackathon workshop and a dissemination event of Wkimedia Hackathon 2023, and will be both training and hacking events. Newcomers are welcome. Main contacts are: Marios Magioladitis, Eleni.Christopoulou.

What is a satellite event and how to organize one?


A satellite event is an event organized autonomously by a group of people in the duration of the Wikimedia Hackathon 2023. It shares the purpose of the hackathon: brings the global technical community together to connect, hack, run technical discussions and explore new ideas.

Satellite events can take place at different moments in time:


 * before the main event (typically, pre-hackathon events can be onboarding sessions, training and workshops for people who newly joined the Wikimedia projects or the technical community)
 * during the main event (to encourage people to work on projects in parallel and to interact online with technical contributors who are attending the in-person event in Athens)
 * after the main event (for example, folks who attended the event in Athens can share their experience with their local community, show what they did or learned. It can also be a follow-up event to keep working on projects initiated during the hackathon)

Satellite events can take place in any region of the world, but also online. Organizing a satellite event together with your local community or user group can support people who are new to the technical aspects of the Wikimedia movement and need onboarding, and offer an alternative to people who cannot join the in-person event in Athens.

If you are looking for ideas of event formats, or examples of events, you can look at the list of meetups organized during the online Hackathon in 2022.

Checklist to organize a satellite event
Are you enthusiastic about organizing a satellite event? Here’s a list of things to keep in mind:


 * Don’t do this all on your own! Reach out to your local chapter or user group, start discussions, create a group of people to work together on organizing the event
 * Define the frame of the event: What are the main goals? What is the target audience? How is it related to the Wikimedia Hackathon’s purpose? How will your event connect with the main event or other satellite events?
 * Define the logistics aspects of the event: Where will it take place? When, and for how long? How many people do you expect? What will they need to join and contribute? What would be the content of the event (program, activities)?
 * Define and reach out to the people you will need to run the event: do you need people with specific skills? Speakers or facilitators? Helpers for the logistics aspects? We encourage you to look for these people within your local community and support people looking to gather some experience in facilitation, event organization, etc.
 * We strongly encourage you to find a local partner to help you with the logistics of the event: depending on the context, you can reach out to a local university, library or hackerspace.
 * Plan the expenses needed for the event, and ask for funding if needed (if you want to apply for Rapid Fund maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation, the deadlines are March 20 and May 5, see more information in the section below)
 * Communicate about the event: create a section below to add the event to the list, create a sub-page if you need more space to add the schedule, participants list, etc. Reach out to your local tech communities on their favorite channels and the general hackathon channels, to let people know that the event will be happening.

If you want to exchange with people who are interested in the hackathon or other satellite events organizers, feel free to use the hackathon channels. If you have specific questions for the hackathon organizing team, feel free to write at hackathon@wikimedia.org.

How to get funding to organize an event?
If you need funding to organize a hackathon satellite event, you can apply to the Rapid Fund program maintained by the Wikimedia Foundation. The usual eligibility criteria apply, please check them before applying.

The Rapid Fund program is organized in rounds. Depending on when your event takes place and when you need confirmation of the funding and transfer of the funds, you should keep the related deadline in mind.

In order to have enough time to receive feedback on your application as soon as possible, and to integrate improvements if needed, we strongly recommend you to apply as soon as you can and to not wait until the deadline day!


 * If your event takes place in April, May or June 2023, you should apply until March 20:
 * Deadline to apply for funding: March 20
 * Approvals: April 14-19
 * Disbursements: April 19-29
 * If your event takes place in July 2023 or after, you also have the possibility to apply until May 5:
 * Deadline to apply for funding: May 5
 * Approvals: June 1-6
 * Disbursements: June 7-16

The application for Rapid Fund takes place on the platform Fluxx. You can find more information about the application process and examples of the expenses that can be funded.

The regional program officers and the evaluation team will be particularly attentive to the following aspects of your application:
 * You joined or formed a group of people that have prior experience in organizing events. Additionally, you reach out to a formal organization for support (user group or chapter, local partner)
 * Your team includes at least one person who attended a hackathon before and who knows how technical events in the Wikimedia movement work
 * Your team include people with technical skills who can help participants, mentor newcomers, or facilitate workshops
 * Your project is focused on the technical aspects of the Wikimedia projects, for example: developing scripts, bots or other tools, contributing to the codebase of Mediawiki and its extensions, reusing data on third-party tools, etc.
 * Your project has a connection with the main hackathon event or other satellite events
 * Your application includes realistic ideas of format, program, facilitators, and location for the event
 * Your application includes a description of the target audience of the event and how you plan to encourage your local community to participate

If you have any questions regarding the funding process or your funding application, you can reach out to your local program officer or join one of the Rapid Fund conversation hours.