User:Jonathan Cardy (WMUK)/Conway Hall
We've run a few editathons now and we know some of the things to expect, and some of the things that can go wrong.
Conway Hall on the 8th of August was a bit of an experiment for us, our first evening editathon with at least half an eye on the London commuters. It was also the first time I came to an editathon armed with a mobile WiFi hotspot or a universal laptop charger.
Our hosts supplied us with a lovely large room and had very good WiFi. Thus far how very like the Royal Opera House, though the decor was somewhat less sumptuous and here I was host, IT support and catering. I just had time to reorganise all the tables and chairs from boardroom style to cafe style with a table on each electricity point before the rush started.
Conway hall's archivist had put out a collection of reference books, biographies and so forth many looking venerable and probably long out of print. Of course that meant a no tea and coffee rule on any of the desks where the old books were being used, luckily the kitchen served as a break room.
As usual we'd brought one more laptop than we had bookings for, but on this occasion we could have used a couple more - I should perhaps have guessed that Conway Hall's predominately elderly membership would include several people who'd popped in to see what it was all about. I could have used four spare laptops.
This was far from the first time someone had forgotten their power cable, but it was the first time I could approach them with a handful of power adaptors saying "great I've been hoping to try this out, lets see which head fits" and set them up with a universal power supply. We should have one as standard for this sort of event.
One awkward moment came when a newish editor who'd had some past experiences with overhasty deletion taggers, started an article in a sandbox, and someone who couldn't make it to the evening saw the redlink and helped out by adding a stub. A quick merge solved things, but I think we need to warn against sandboxes for similar events. But with six separate tables each with two to five people we managed far fewer edit conflicts by focussing on a different article per table than in the days when the whole editathon focussed on one article.
Attendees ranged from newbies to very experienced editors but this time included some in between.
Overall I think the event was a success, and I think we should run more such London Evening events.
Jonathan Cardy is Wikimedia UK's GLAM organiser, organising Wiki events with Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums. If you know of an archive that would contemplate a similar event then please drop him a line.