My WMF Hackathon 19 experience: 3 Days, 2 Projects and many cool things!
From 17th to the 19th of May was held at the National Library of Technology of Prague the 6th edition of Wikimedia Hackathon.
Wikimedia hackathon is the annual event for all technical contributors to Wikimedia projects. During 3 days, developers, designers and many others technical contributors meet to work together and accelerate projects.
I’m once again honored to attend the 2019 edition. And here are some projects I worked on during the hackathon.
Mortar: Translatable, Updatable and Interactive documentation for GLAM uploads
It appears to us that mass images uploads on Commons is not quite simple as one needs to create corresponding items on Wikidata as well.
So the initial aim of this project was to take one GLAM CSV + Photo collection from a contributor and create an unified workflow using quick statements + pattypan to upload everything in Commons and Wikidata in an user-friendly way. When we were brainstorming during the hackathon, we just came to the conclusion that, what make the process quite complicated was its lack of documentation as tools already exists to do the job.
We then switched from the initial idea to creating and documenting an unified and user-friendly workflow for GLAM(Galleries Libraries Archives Museums) uploads on both Wikidata and Commons.
We have then created a workflow using Pattypan and OpenRefine, defined the missing steps needed, and started an easily translatable, updatable and interactive documentation platform. The tool will be deployed on Toolforge, the Wikimedia cloud services, in coming days and should be available for everyone.
Joining this project initiated by @Lena, and working with others contributors has been of a valuable experience for me.
LinguaLibre: Optimizing the UI for mobile devices
LinguaLibre is a web platform to record words and then upload them as audio files on Wikimedia Commons.
It came to me that it can be a really useful to promote indigenous African languages on internet. But in Africa, mobile devices have a high market penetration: most people use mobile phones to connect. So if we want people to use LinguaLibre to record African languages then we need to optimize its UI on mobile devices and offer a good user experience. That why I initiated this project.
As I am not a UX specialist, I ask for some help from UX specialists there at the hackathon. They help me challenge the initial mockup I started designing. I got valuable feedback from @volker and now ready to submit some new UI mockups to LinguaLibre community and will start templating the one validated. Stay tuned!
And it was not only about coding…
Even if participants are all focused on coding to complete their projects, we also attend some side events: Czech beer and food tasting, plants exploration, Jam session and concerts were organized to make those 3 days really cool.
Děkuji (Thank you)
It was a really great experience participating to this year’s hackathon and really cool meeting and working with others contributors and to accelerate projects. Can’t wait to meet you all next year!
My special thank to the organization team and to Czech Wikimediens for hosting this event. Děkuji !
Links
Photos on Wikimedia commons → https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wikimedia_Hackathon_Prague_2019
LinguaLibre platform→ https://lingualibre.fr/wiki/LinguaLibre:Main_Page
