App. Now, the keynote speakers at the third annual wikiconference, held in october in san diego, including the Wikimedia Foundation executive director. This is one hour 10 minutes. Right . All right, hi my name is katherine maher. The Wikimedia Foundation is a Nonprofit Foundation that host s and supports wikipedia and other free knowledge project. We are proud to work with many global organizations, the many global organizations and partners that support the community of wikimedians and the projects. I am so excited to be here for the third annual wiki conference in the United States, and the first ever wikiconference north america. It is amazing to see how our community continues to grow and reach beyond our own borders every day. It is my first time at a wikiconference in the United States, and i cannot say how excited i am to be in san diego. It is my vote we do more events here already. I want to thank our incredible conference organizers for putting together this event. This weekend, there are more than 300 individuals in attendance from 16 different affiliates. Again, for those of us who are lam is one of my favorite acronyms in our movement. It stands for galleries, libraries, archives, and movements. Im happy to be holding this event in the ballpark. Yesterday, we had a culture crawl in balboa park, learning about san diegos heritage as a center for rich and public institutionspublic and spaces, bicultural influences and learning, and what of my own personal favorite, san diego is the center for craft beer. I attended an event for their annual fundraiser. For those of you who have not been to san diego for, this before, this institution is 20 years in the making and only opened its doors a few years ofk thanks to the dedication san diegans. When i heard about the theme of this conference, i might have done a little bit of a dance. I was so excited to learn that we are going to be talking about inclusivity, community building, and sharing knowledge. I think inclusivity is at the heart of the promise of what the wikimedia. Im going to talk about why i think it is so incredibly important to fulfilling our vision. Before i do that, i want to acknowledge how far it is we have come. As you heard earlier today, we are in our 15th year, so happy birthday to an incredible idea. Wikipedia started 15 years ago as a small, volunteer driven website, a free encyclopedia, and today, we are so much more. The wikimedia projects are used by millions of people every day, nearly half a billion every month from all over the world. We are a community with roots on every continent. Truly every continent. I want to give a shout out to the arctic women scientists. We speak hundreds of languages, represent dozens of cultures and backgrounds, and have partners in the educational cultural the educational, cultural, scientific, and government institutions around the world. We are integrated into places and experiences all over in ways we are probably not aware of. We are so integral and essential in the way knowledge is created and shared today, i dont think it is a stretch to say we have honestly changed the world. But we are not perfect. And that is part of what makes us us. Our vision is a world in which every human can freely share in the sum of all knowledge, and we dont just promise inclusivity with that they meant. Statement. It is the heart of what we do, for all knowledge. From my belief, inclusivity is not just an aspiration but a necessity. The only way to achieve our vision is to involve and welcome all people. We need representation of your voices and our shared voices so together, we can create something greater than the sum of all of our parts. By now, we know we have further to go to achieve that. Never mind all of the worlds knowledge, wikipedia alone is nowhere near finished. In fact, we have only barely gotten started. In english, wikipedia, only 226,706 of the over one million biographies are about women. That is about 16 . In 2012, the Oxford Internet institute did an evaluation and half of our articles only cover 2. 5 of the worlds land area. And only about 2. 5 of the world geotagged wikipedia articles are about africa despite the fact that that continent is home to 20 of the world population. We have got a ways to go. This is just the encyclopedia. We also know that free knowledge takes many forms. It takes the form of images, data, original sources, language, and so many other forms of knowledge that are represented across the wikimedia project. So, we do need more inclusivity , because we need more people to join us. That is the way we achieve our mission. We must open ourselves up to be the thing that we have promised to ourselves. What does this inclusivity look like . It looks like the people in the world around us. We know that. And how do we do it . And how do we bring all of the voices in . I believe we do it with intention and embracing the potential of what our movement can be. As i mentioned earlier, we started simple, as an idea with a website, an encyclopedia where everyone was free to contribute freely. This remarkable idea grew up around it. We grew into a constellation of individuals, activities, and organizations. That simple idea that anyone should be able to freely share in knowledge proved to have a gravity of its own, pulling Brilliant Minds and institutions into its orbit. We refer to ourselves as a movement, and i firmly believe we are. But i believe there is so much more we can do to become the thing we want to be, and so, i challenge us to fully embrace this idea of a movement. It is inclusivity, power, complexity, also in its messiness and potential. Movements are things that affect social change. They work together, plan together, aligned together around their core values and so do we. For many people, social change is what we do. We drive change towards greater openness and sharing. Commons, more knowledge available to more people. They are organized to directly confront where they have weaknesses. As we look around today, we see a diversity of voices and more organizations and Partners Join us every day. As we heard earlier today, we have gone from a place of wondering how we relate to libraries to feeling as though libraries are our partners in this powerful mission we have. While we have left a pretty big mark on the world of free knowledge, we know we have so much further to go, so many more people to reach, and much more change to make. In order to achieve what we have what in order to achieve we want to achieve, we have to do it with that intention of acknowledging our doubt, thinking about where we go, and planning for how we get there as a movement, as a deliberate, intentional thing. In many ways, we are already on our way. Our communities are doing great things to realize our full potential, including building that inclusivity, where all of the world voices can be included. I want to call out this vital work today. You heard a little bit about afro crowd. [cheering] [applause] ms. Maher absolutely. You deserve all of the applause. Afro crowd aims to increase the people of african descent who actively participate in the wikimedia project. Through monthly, multilingual editathons they have made a significant number of wikimediaons to the project. Wikimedia mexico also, yes. [cheering] ms. Maher these editors aim to bring in women together to edit wikipedia article is to women and their work and men are not invited to these editathons and that creates a safe and welcoming place for women to participate. More than 200 women participated in editathons. When we have great inclusive ideas, we see that the spread. That they spread. Finally, i want to recommend in sorry,ia canada im my apologies i am mangling that. The project which launched in august of this year. It is the first nation of canada who want to increase content about the first nation about knowledge, culture, and language of that great nation. These projects offer leading examples of how our communities are working to fill the gap and address our movements challenges head on. We need to celebrate these efforts and our progress. I want to congratulate each of these groups for what they have done, as well as countless other organizations and individuals for affecting real change and impact in filling these gaps in knowledge. We know there is more to do. Another is more to be done. One of the first things that we need to know our intentions. We have to be clear with ourselves on how to welcome them, how to engage them, and make space for them. This means we need to commit to and abide by and hold up friendly spaces and codes of conduct in all our communities. It means clarifying our values so they are not just about open and diverse, but can help us make decisions about what culture we want to have as a community. Open spaces and inclusion starts with language. We have to think about how we communicate with others. The words we use and how things translate. Not just in terms of language to language, but individual to individual, how we share and how we receive. We need to practice inclusivity. We need to identify the people we want to work with. We need to go talk to them. We need to listen to why they are not working with us yet. This is really important. It is not just about asking people to join us. We need to understand the structural barriers, social, economic, or otherwise, as to why they are not participating in our movement. We need to reflect on them and thats when you to understand what their objections and challenges on we need to understand what their objections and challenges are. Then, we need to reflect on them and think how we might evolve in order to bring in more individuals and become a more welcoming and inclusive space. We need to take part in consultations in conversations and encourage others to do this as well. Part of having these conversations and truly listening was an important moment in talking to our colleagues who are working to increase the participation of wikimedia editors in ghana. It was through directly engaging with these challenges where they felt as though we were being we were able to create a better working relationship and hopefully grow that community. Which gets me to the next thing i want to talk about. We need to invest in the diverse and Inclusive Communities we want to have. We have to resources. These communities dont happen just because we want them to, we want them to. They happen because we want to go out and make a commitment. We are investing in this explicitly. Part of the wikimedia model is around community grants. The Foundation Set aside a half Million Dollars to Fund Resources for increasing gender diversity and to fund tools and initiatives that facilitate and support Healthy Community culture. We kind of used to do this thing where we sat around and talked about welcoming women and people of color and people from emerging communities. Now, we have dedicated staff and budget and resources to help these communities grow, because thats what it takes. Its not just about saying we want to do it. Its about actively committing and going out and doing it. Im not saying we are there yet. But at least we are taking the first steps. We are working on how to address harassment and create of Healthy Community culture. Our grantmaking campaign is focused on researching ideas to address harassment in the wikimedia projects. We launched a Leadership Development program to identify, train, and support Community Members who can be the next generation of leaders across our movement. We are investing in regional conferences in developing regions to spread the resources we have that will help communities grow. We know we need more voices and we want a more inclusive community. The big question next is, where do we want to go as a Movement Together . You knew you were not going to get out of here without me bringing up strategy in some way. I want to make a request for all of us sitting here in this room, in this room. Over the next six months, we are hoping to have a conversation about the future of our movement. As i said in the beginning, we have been an Incredible Community of people for 15 years now, and we have achieved a tremendous amount. One of the things im hearing as i go around and talk to people is, we have achieved all of this , and we have this incredible momentum, and we have these resources, and we are positioned in a way today that we have never been before to take advantage of the opportunities out there and the hard challenges in front of us, and the imperative to bring more people into our movement to make it the thing we wanted to be. Want it to be. What is the thing that gets us all moving in the same direction together, or at least sets out a direction in which we can all bring our unique resources and skills in the context and cultures in which we work . When i hear that, i immediately think about what do we want to do as a movement . And the next strategic thing we want to take on . What is the next mountain we want to climb . We have so much more to do. Its not about saying we are taking on Something Different than the encyclopedia or anything along those lines. Its about saying, what are the next set of milestones we want to achieve together . And how we think about restructuring and how to we make and how do we reach out to the people that can help make this change possible . So, we will have that conversation over the next six months, and i want to invite all of you to participate in it. In january, we will kick off a movement wind strategic consultation. Its for the movement. Over the course of the next few weeks, we will be reaching out to many of you, asking for your participation in how the conversation should happen, how you would want to participate, and then thinking about what we want at the end of that. We really do want to make sure it is about creating a space in which every Voice Matters and every person can share their perspective on what the future of our movement can be. I hope inclusivity will be at the top of this conversation, but i know there are many other subjects we will want to take on as well. So, i will ask you to add a page to your watchlist. And im going to ask you to read more. Metathat page up on that asks us,meta what it is we want to do in terms of the strategy consolation consultation . I encourage you to come tomorrow to a session by plot. I want to hear from you what is the best way for you to participate in a conversation about our future. What are your hopes and fears for that conversation . How can we make sure that conversation gets us to a place where we all feel as though it is the place we want to go, that your voices have been heard . That the important voices have faced the challenge. I believe it is on the schedule. I am going to leave it there on the strategy consultation. The fun is about to begin. [laughter] maher we are going to have an incredible two days, today and tomorrow. Coming together, talking about the future of knowledge, talking about building a community, and where we can go as a movement , and what we want to be in the world. I am so excited that we are here together in san diego, with all the participation and diversity that that means, and i cannot wait to get started. Thank you so much. [applause] andrew lee. Ame is a lot of you may know me, i andh about it cap about have written about wikipedia. We have inclusivity as it theme theme of this conference. It is such a great theme to work with, because part of inclusivity is to include people from all walks of life, to help enhance, correct, and extend the world record. We really wanted to meaningfully engage the theme here in Southern California. Ive written a book called the wikipedia revolution. But i think the true revolution of wikipedia is allowing more than just the winners to write the history books. When we talk about education, what do you think about . You think about k12, curriculum, diplomas. But if you think about this, how much of our learning happens informally outside the classroom . Especially for the rest of your life, after your formal schooling. This depends on museums, libraries, journalism, and now wikipedia is part of that mix. It has disrupted the ecosystem, but with great side effects. This type of freely distributed, Lifelong Learning online and through wikipedia was the innovation of the enlightenment. Scientific and rational thought challenged established authority of the church and the monarchy , and you suddenly had scientific exploration and people creating content outside poles of authority. The problem with this is, as the authorities evolved out of the church and the monarchy, the viewpoint of the enlightenment was still very much a western perspective. The term Encyclopedia Museum has been up for debate in the museum world. Some see it as a pejorative to describe the imperial, colonial outlook and a message for western museums to extract and display artifacts outside their original location. Its against this context that a new wave of museums have opened up. Especially in washington, d c where we do a lot of our editing. The museum of the American Indian was one of the real hallmarks of this. The newly opened National Museum of African American history and culture is another example of this. Sherry is that there somewhere. Back there somewhere. Sherry, myself, and jim hayes stood in line for the first public day of that museum and edited in line at 5 00 in the morning. [applause] andrew yes, they thought we were nuts when we were doing that. We have backtracked and analyzed articles such as pocahontas, trail of tears, thanksgiving, and im sure our speakers will tell us about the gold rush, something you wouldnt think had implications for native americans. What was fascinating about that was that they were they worked with us very early on in the process. Three years before they were going to redo their prominent exhibit, they contacted us to edit with them and back back and backtrack and look at the wikipedia content for what they were going to have an exhibit on. Death wikipedia and beingdia wikipedians soft sought by museums. They immediately pointed to two folks, Stan Rodriguez and michael conley, and we are very happy to have them as our speakers h