Wikimedia Australia at ESEAP 2026

What we've been up to in May!

3 June 2026, Belinda Spry.

For three days in May, Wikimedians came together to share ideas, learn from one another and strengthen the relationships that underpin our movement. The ESEAP conference 2026 held from 15-17 May in Kaohsiung, Taiwan, was the fourth regional conference for Wikimedia communities across East, Southeast Asia and the Pacific.

Around 150 attendees gathered in person, including affiliates, volunteers, librarians, educators, researchers, enthusiastic newbies and long-time contributors. The theme, "New Era of ESEAP: Pioneer the Future Together!" reflected our shared focus on collaboration and building strong regional connections in one of the most diverse regions in the Wikimedia movement.

Wikimedia Foundation CEO Bernadette Meehan attended her first regional conference in the role, taking the opportunity to meet community members and engage directly with participants from across the region.

Eight Australians attended the conference, travelling from across the country and bringing experience from long-term community work as well as insights from more recent projects. Their participation reflected both our commitment and support within Wikimedia Australia’s engagement in the region.

Australian participation across the program

Wikimedia Australia’s presence was felt across multiple streams and activities throughout the conference.

As Chair of the ESEAP Hub Steering Committee, Belinda introduced the new ESEAP Hub staff and the ESEAP Community Connectors during the opening ceremony, marking an important step in the Hub’s continued development. She was facilitator in the Women’s stream (Day 1) and facilitated parts of the Hub stream (Day 3) whilst meeting as many conference participants as possible.

On the first day of the conference Amanda Lawrence and Belinda Spry facilitated the Women and Gender stream which brought together a wide range of discussions on representation, participation, and community-led approaches to closing knowledge gaps.

Alice Woods presented her work on improving the representation of the Northern Territory through Wikidata, one item at a time, demonstrating that small, structured contributions add up to something much bigger over time.

Ali Smith attended on an ESEAP Travel Scholarship as one of the conference's social media ambassadors, helping to share updates and highlights from the event with the wider movement.

Among the newer contributors was Ni Komang Ista Triana, Wikimedia Australia’s 2025 Data Analyst Intern, who has continued her path in Wikidata contributions and attended on a Wikimedia Foundation scholarship. Ista participated in the Youth Track, which brought together emerging young leaders from across the region to explore questions of leadership pathways, engagement, and representation. The launch of the ESEAP Youth Group was a particular highlight.

Long-time Australian editors Alex Lum and Jeremy Ludlow also participated, contributing their experience and continuing long-standing engagement with Wikimedia projects.

Key reflections from the conference

Across sessions on Artifical Intelligence (AI), gender equity, governance, and community health, a consistent message emerged: Wikimedia projects are not simply databases of information, but living communities built around the shared practice of creating and curating free knowledge.

The movement’s greatest strength lies in its people and its human-centred approach to knowledge creation.

While technology continues to evolve rapidly, many participants emphasised that the long-term sustainability of the Wikimedia movement depends on supporting the individuals, communities, and organisations that make this work possible. Community resilience, inclusion, leadership development, and creating pathways for the next generation of contributors were recurring themes throughout the conference.

There was also strong agreement that community engagement activities - such as editathons, mentoring, and local gatherings - are not peripheral, but essential infrastructure for a healthy movement. These spaces help ensure that contributors feel welcomed, supported, and able to grow within Wikimedia projects.

Women and Gender stream

The Women and Gender stream brought together a wide range of initiatives focused on addressing gender gaps across Wikimedia projects.

Participants shared experiences and a mapping exercise to list women’s projects, from global campaigns and user groups, as well as research and tools designed to better understand and visualise knowledge gaps. These included long-running initiatives such as Women in Red, Feminism and Folklore, Wiki Loves Pride, as well as our own Australian Women Write Wiki, and other regional campaigns working to improve representation across content and contributor communities.

A consistent theme was that effective gender equity work relies on more than content creation alone. It also depends on building supportive communities, flexible training options, strengthening mentorship pathways, and ensuring that contributors are visible, recognised, and able to take on leadership roles when they are ready.

The discussions reinforced the idea that addressing systemic bias is an ongoing, collective effort across many intersecting initiatives rather than a single program or campaign. Questions still remain around key areas, such as how to increase the number of women and gender diverse contributors in Admin and Extended Rights roles. This is seen as important for ensuring more equitable representation in decision-making spaces, strengthening governance processes, and supporting better-informed decisions. It may also help create safer and more inclusive environments that encourage broader participation from women and gender diverse editors.

Youth engagement and emerging leaders stream

The Youth Track highlighted both the urgency and opportunity in engaging younger contributors in the Wikimedia movement. We celebrated officially launching the ESEAP Youth Group under the auspice of the ESEAP Hub. This gives a highly visible yet supported group an opportunity to grow and develop across our region.

Participants discussed attracting and retaining new and young editors, and the long-term implications this has for succession, community sustainability, and knowledge diversity.

Ideas included meeting young people where they are through social platforms, connecting Wikipedia editing to education and career development, and making contributions more accessible and rewarding. There was also strong interest in structured pathways such as student ambassador programs, institutional partnerships, and mentoring models.

A key takeaway was that sustaining the movement into the future will require not only attracting new contributors, but also supporting them to remain engaged, grow into leadership roles, and become mentors for others.

AI in the Wikimedia movement

Artificial intelligence was a major topic of discussion throughout ESEAP 2026. Rather than being framed as a replacement for human contributors, AI was largely seen as a tool that is already reshaping how knowledge is created, accessed, and interpreted.

Participants highlighted both opportunities and risks. On the positive side, AI tools may help support tasks such as translation, research assistance, formatting, and identifying gaps in content coverage. These applications were seen as potentially valuable in reducing workload and supporting contributors across different language communities.

At the same time, there were significant concerns about reliability, bias, and the risk of content flooding or ‘recolonisation’ - particularly in smaller or under-resourced language editions, where community capacity to review and manage content may be limited.

Across these discussions, there was strong support for a community-led approach to AI governance, including:

locally grounded ethical guidelines for AI use
clear transparency expectations for AI-assisted editing
safeguards to protect volunteer motivation and recognition
recognition of editors as curators, verifiers, and ethical stewards of knowledge
protection of smaller and Indigenous knowledge spaces from disproportionate harm

Overall, AI was framed not as something to passively adopt, but as something the Wikimedia movement must actively shape. The goal is to ensure that new technologies strengthen, rather than weaken, the movement’s core values of human judgement, collaboration, and community accountability.

Closing reflections

ESEAP 2026 reinforced a clear message: the future of Wikimedia is fundamentally human.

While technology continues to evolve rapidly, the strength of the movement lies in its communities, its relationships, and its shared commitment to free knowledge. Supporting those communities - through genuine inclusion, engagement, and meaningful participation - remains central to the movement’s long-term sustainability.

Wikimedia Australia thanks the ESEAP 2026 organisers, facilitators, and scholarship programs that made Australian participation possible, and looks forward to continuing to strengthen regional collaboration across the ESEAP community.