Meeting:2021 AGM/President's Report

As the global COVID-19 pandemic continued in 2020 and into 2021, Australia has fared well in for the most part, and the occasional relaxation of restrictions and lockdowns has allowed a few face-to-face meetups and events to take place, but as expected the bulk of interaction in the community has been through online means.

While interstate and international travel has been mostly off the table, or too risky given the numerous rapid border closures, I am delighted that Wikimedia Australia has been an active participant in a number of global virtual events including the WikiCite Virtual Conference in October 2020, Wikipedia 20 celebrations in January 2021, and the upcoming Wikimania 2021 next week.

Annual Plan

Wikimedia Australia again applied for funding from the Wikimedia Foundation’s Simple Annual Plan Grants (APG) program to cover costs of chapter governance, community support and outreach and engagement. Most of the details have been covered in the welcome presentation and the annual report, but the key change has been the re-allocation of funding for travel, events and scholarships to allow us to employ Caddie Brain as the chapter’s first staff member. I know the committee and the community appreciate Caddie’s incredible work in the past six months to organise events and partnerships, developing vital documentation including a communications strategy, branding guide, annual grant reporting and generally building and supporting organisational capacity.

As always, special thanks also to our key community Kerry Raymond, Ann Reynolds and Margaret Donald who have time and time again have volunteered their time and resources to conduct online training, facilitate events and manage hugely successful campaigns such as 1Lib1Ref which goes from strength to strength each year thanks to their much appreciated efforts.

Global and regional engagement

As always, Wikimedia Australia works closely with the Wikimedia Foundation and the global community to advance the capabilities and sustainability of the movement. Several of our members have been involved in movement initiatives such as Movement Strategy implementation, the Movement Charter, the Brand Project, the Global Code of Conduct and elections for the Board of Trustees.

WMAU is also a key member of the ESEAP (East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific) regional cooperation hub, which I am delighted to see is an exemplar of the type of regional hub model proposed by the movement strategy. In particularly, I am delighted with the close collaboration and partnership in the past year with our dear "cousins" in Aotearoa New Zealand, with several amazing projects and content coming out of that trans-Tasman connection.

Committee of management

The term of this committee started on 13 October 2020, and had a full cohort of members across four states (New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and Western Australia). We welcomed Amanda Lawrence as a new member, and welcomed back Tom Hogarth after a year’s break.

Today we welcome three new members to the committee: Bunty Avieson, Michael Barritt and Paige Wright.

Leaving the committee in this term are Jacinta Sutton and Steve Crossin, and I thank them both for their years of service, particularly Steve who has been on the committee since 2013 and has held the roles of president, treasurer and this year, secretary.

My particular thanks to Pru Mitchell who as treasurer and previous president has been phenomenally helpful in my first term as president, and I am very grateful Pru has accepted the nomination for another term as Treasurer. And of course, massive thanks and appreciation to Caddie Brain, firstly as vice president, and then of course as Community Support and Outreach Coordinator / Executive Officer. I don’t think I could have handled all the administration without the support and advice of Pru and Caddie, and Caddie’s engagement with the community and partners has resulted in metrics which would be incredible even in a year without COVID-19.

The year ahead

As a chapter, Wikimedia Australia has adapted amazingly well to the “new normal” of virtual events and meetups - as such a large country, we probably had a pretty good distributed model of communication and collaboration. Vaccinations and travel bubbles permitting, I truly hope we can meet up face-to-face, with fellow Australians, our friends in Aotearoa and eventually internationally in late 2021 and into 2022 and beyond.

In the next twelve months, I am very keen to focus on First Nations/Indigenous Australian content in the Wikimedia projects, which will involve engaging and enabling First Nations communities to take the lead on developing content, and establishing a community of practice to advise the broader community of editors on First Nations topics and content.

Thanks to all our members and the community for your support in these difficult times, and at a turning point for the Wikimedia movement. I look forward to working with you all, and wish you safety and good health.

Alex Lum, President