Reaching Out Award

It is my pleasure to be awarded the Reaching Out Award for the 2015/16 academic year. With the support of the scholarship monies, I was able to attend Wikimania 2016, the official annual conference of the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentation and discussion included Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge and free content, as well as social and technical oriented topics. The conference took place from 24 to 26 June 2016, with peripheral events from 21-28 June, in the mountain village of Esino Lario, Italy. 

During the conference, I discussed three topics with other participants from different countries, including the future development of Wikipedia, the gender gap issue in the technology community, and also the importance of establishing an Asian Arts database on the Internet, which is of paramount importance in my opinion. The establishment of such database could help us promote and preserve the Asian artworks globally, as well as enhance the accessibility of the artworks. Such idea is actually not new to us. The Europeana.eu in Europe is an internet portal that acts as an interface to millions of books, paintings, films, museum objects and archival records digitized throughout Europe. It undeniably makes the exchange of artworks knowledge more convenient. Some participants are very experienced in the projects about arts and technology. They shared their own experiences with me and I have learnt so much from them. 

Overall, it was a great experience to me.