Last October in New York City, I did something I hadn't done in more than a decade of editing: I met other editors in person, at WikiConference North America. There, I presented in front of what felt like 100 people and made a lot of connections. This year, however, I had no presentation in mind and was conflicted about returning. I asked myself: "What's the point in going to a conference if I have nothing to say?" I ultimately decided to give WikiConference another chance, and I am so incredibly glad that I did - And I hope I can convince you to give it a chance too!

The first day of WikiConference is traditionally a Culture Crawl, where editors from the local community help run small group tours and outings around the host city. This year's events included outings to the Art Gallery of Alberta, tours of the Alberta Legislature, watching short films at Metro Cinema Edmonton, and even learning to curl! While my own flight arrived too late for me to take advantage of any of these events, I loved seeing everybody's photos in the group chat. Thankfully, I made it just in time to grab a late lunch with another attendee at Nara Katsu in downtown Edmonton before checking into my hotel, meeting my roommate, and unwinding after a long day of travel.

Friday opened with a fascinating keynote speech by a user from the far north of Canada, where both sources and other editors are hard to find. After the keynote, participants were free to split off for the rest of the conference, where there were often three or four talks or activities happening simultaneously in different rooms. In one room, a volunteer with WikiClub Toronto gave advice on running in-person events ranging from informal coffee chats to Wikimedia photowalks powered by WikiShootMe. In another, speakers from the WMF Readers team showcased a new "semantic search" experience, while later in the day, a group of WMF engineers gave a breakdown of how the WMF is dealing with the increase in AI scrapers and how they are implementing AI-powered review systems into their processes. I was also intrigued by hearing the Abstract Wikipedia team speak candidly about the challenges they were facing in creating a fully workable user-facing project.

My favorite talk of the day came at the end, when Figureskatingfan spoke about "Wikipedia, Alysa Liu, and Me." In this talk, she spoke about the importance of finding joy in editing, drawing a comparison to American figure skater Alysa Liu, who famously retired from competitive skating in 2022 and only returned after falling in love with new styles of dance. Figureskatingfan said that many editors could learn a lesson from Alysa Liu and take advantage of the freedom to log off and change directions. As one might be able to tell from looking at my own contribution history, which runs from ballot measures to state legislators to recently released novels, I wholeheartedly agree. After this talk ended, my social battery had been fully drained, so I skipped the many group dinners that had been planned in favor of an early night.

The second day of the conference opened with a new keynote, where Dr. Stacy Allison-Cassin posed a question to the audience: "How have land and language shaped you?" She then challenged us to interrogate the assumptions that we as editors often hold about knowledge. She pointed out that Wikipedia's logo, a globe with missing pieces waiting to be filled, treats knowledge as a sum to complete, tracing that instinct for completion to the origins of encyclopedias in the Age of Enlightenment and the colonial project of "gathering everything under the sun." She also questioned the conventional wisdom that distance from a subject creates neutrality, arguing that an overreliance on secondary sources can result in bias from those sources seeping into Wikipedia articles.

The highlight of the day, however, was the Wikimedia Foundation's annual "Seat at the Table" event where WMF Board members and staff engage in breakout discussions with members of the community. This year, CPTO Selena Deckelmann was joined by appointed trustee Kathy Collins and elected trustee Michał Buczyński, along with staff from around the Foundation. In her opening remarks, Deckelmann pointed to some of the challenges facing the Wikimedia movement today: Hardware prices that are up 300%, human pageviews that have fallen by 8%, and review systems struggling to keep up with AI slop. After her remarks, the group split into three tables - One focused on supporting contributors, one on the reuse of Wikimedia content across the internet, and one focused on structural and governance challenges (I only participated in the first group, so I can't speak to the discussions that happened elsewhere in the room). At my table, staff answered questions about a wide range of topics. I was surprised to learn that not only is readership falling across the board, but that Google is pushing machine-translated versions of English Wikipedia over foreign-language versions, meaning that small projects have been hit especially hard. Many editors requested more data on what type of editors drop off after a few edits and what mentorship interventions work, with there being clear consensus among participants that it needs to be easier to guide new editors towards the "right" kind of edits. What stayed with me from this session was how open every staff member was, and how eager they were to engage with members of the community. It was, at least for me, a very healthy reminder that online discourse is often not indicative of real life and that fundamentally, we're all on the same team.

After a variety of other sessions, including a crash course in both today's featured article and featured article review, I joined a group of other editors for dinner at a local Chinese restaurant, where much laughter was shared.

The final day of the conference was a bit shorter than the first two, with all the events wrapping up by 2PM. This gave participants ample time to explore the city and take advantage of everything that Edmonton has to offer. I was able to snag tickets to a screening of Fjord at the Edmonton International Film Festival (spoiler alert: I liked it!). Before that, though, I attended several fascinating discussions. In one, members of the WMF social media team discussed their new social media strategy, which is to partner with creators. They explained that since launching this strategy, shares on WMF socials have grown by over 1,000%, and they shared some tips with affiliates looking to expand their own social media presence: skip excessive branding of posts, hook video viewers early, and place the narrative payoff early in posts and videos. I also sat in on the ArbCom Q&A, where both former and current arbitrators answered questions about the arbitration process. I was amazed to learn that new arbitrators join almost a dozen mailing lists, four wikis, multiple instant-messaging groups, and participate in monthly calls with the WMF for support.

And, of course, there are the many talks that I just didn't have time to attend during the weekend. Chief among those was the unconference, which was held over multiple days and featured impromptu talks from dozens of editors. There was also a series of foreign-language talks with live translation powered by Interprefy, multiple workshops on UX design and tech development, and an all-day edit-a-thon focused on Canadian STEM.

If all of that sounds like a good time to you already, great! WikiConference North America, like many Wikimedia events, offers a large number of scholarships to help participants attend. These scholarships cover travel and a hotel room for all nights of the conference, which is a sizable expense for many of us in this economy. In exchange, recipients owe a couple of hours of volunteering during the conference itself, doing things like facilitating Q&A or manning the information desk. The application process only took me about twenty minutes and consisted of some basic demographic information and some short-answer essay questions describing my involvement in the Wikimedia movement, both online and offline. If your first thought when reading that was "I don't think I'm qualified to receive a scholarship," don't worry - I thought the same thing, but the scholarship committee considers both your existing contributions and what you might gain from attending the conference. There are also significantly more scholarship recipients than I was expecting - There is a real effort from the organizers to make the event as accessible as possible!

But maybe you're not convinced about the value of meeting other editors in person. I will say that it was a treat to get to put faces to so many usernames that I constantly see on-wiki (OhanaUnited, Sky Harbor, and theleekycauldron, to name a few), but it was also very rewarding to sit down with people working on incredibly unique projects and share ideas. I learned about Wikimedia LGBT+'s featured article's initiative directly from their executive director, Bisi Alimi, was convinced to join WikiPortraits by Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight and Jennifer 8. Lee, and was encouraged to take initiative in creating my own meetups by Z1720 (Boston-area editors, join me on November 14th!). Having conversations with all these people reiterated my love for this movement (and, as Dr. Nicole Schwitter found, might just make you a better editor).

So all of this is to say - I had a great time at WikiConference North America, and I hope to see a lot of new faces next year (wherever that may be).