What it's like to be Wikimedian of the Year
.jpg)
I attended my first Wikimania this year in Katowice, Poland. I thought about applying for a scholarship when the process was open, but ultimately decided against it. I figured that attending WikiConference North America was enough for one year; obviously, I changed my mind once I was chosen as the Wikimedian of the Year. I had never been outside of North America before this event, so this experience was a lot of firsts for me. If I had told younger me that my first trip to Europe would be in Poland, she would have been very confused.
In late May, I received an email telling me that I was one of the five people shortlisted for the award. I tried not to think about it too much: I didn't think I'd actually be the winner and that one of the other four editors would be chosen. I didn't consider my accomplishments to be even remotely comparable to those of Rosie Stephenson-Goodknight or Emily Temple-Wood, so why would it be me? I was told to expect a response within three weeks, but it ended up taking longer than that (apparently, there were unexpected challenges internally, and I was told it wasn't my fault). I found out that it was actually me on July 4, which gave me about a month to come to terms with my upcoming fame. I was excited for the most part, but I was also terrified; sometimes it felt like a countdown of doom, where my life would never be normal again.