Natalia Szafran-Kozakowska is the community support officer for Wikimedia Polska She originally posted this essay on Diff, (part 1) (part 2), a new project hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation for the Wikipedia community. You can join Diff here.

Every year Polish Wikimedians convene to feel the human touch of the movement, and meet at conferences to learn, discuss and work together. This annual meeting, which gathers about 100 Wikimedians every year, is a great celebration of our community, movement and mission. When the COVID pandemic made it impossible for us to meet in person we decided that we would move the event online. And with that decision we started quite an adventure! Since online meetings are here to stay for a bit we would like to share some of the lessons we have learned.

1. Do not replicate offline routines. You may be experienced in organizing live events, but the digital environment, the amount of things that you can control, and the needs of your participants are different. Make a list of things that need to happen for your event to be successful and then ask yourself how can you make sure they do happen in the new environment. Think not only about big things (“people need to learn something useful”) but also about tiny ones (“people need to be in the right place at the right time”). Be creative! For example we stated that wellbeing of the attendees is a factor. This is why we had a lot of breaks so that everyone could step away from their devices, and a yoga session to bring some care to our tired spines.
2. But in some aspects – do. Especially if you replace a regular event which had its place in people’s calendars with a digital one. Bring a bit of a feeling of an in-person conference to give a sense of continuity. We knew that our attendees were excited about the fact that the conference was supposed to take place in Cracow. This is why we organized a remote guided live city tour. We were able to enjoy the views and ask questions. We also had a group photo (instead of a typical group screen capture we went for a collection of selfies which made the photo more vibrant). As a replacement of coffee breaks, we sent chocolates to the participants. Also, in the registration process, attendees could choose whether they want a physical surprise package sent to their home or a digital one to download.
3. Make it simple, and avoid adding confusion. Virtual events are still new for a lot of people. Participants need to know where and when to click, where to seek information and whom to ask for help. Keep as much information as you can on one page and, if possible, hold all (or most) of the sessions on just one or two links so that whenever the participants click, they will get to the conference room. Have a person and a separate communication channel (in our case, it was a Telegram group) assigned to give technical information and support.
4. The time can get tricky. While facilitating a conference and making sure that everything is on time is a challenge, it is much more difficult at a digital event. The speakers can go over their assigned time and can easily miss (or even ignore on purpose) cues from the moderator. Muting a person while they speak is neither elegant nor kind. So instead, plan breaks a bit (5 minutes) longer than you actually want them to be – it will give you a time buffer and will let participants have time to re-energize even if the session gets a bit too long. You will also have flexibility to allow an interesting conversation to continue. Keep the buffer secret from the panelists or speakers, though, so that they won’t treat it as an actual session time.
5. Think of all the things in which online conferences are better than live ones. And then make the most of it! Are there any people whom you’ve always wanted to invite but never could because of geographical distance or language barriers? Now it is possible! We took advantage and invited guest speakers from across the ocean and broadened our pool of participants by offering simultaneous translation. This way we could have attendees from all over the globe: from Russia to Sweden and from Ukraine to the U.S.! Online events give you a unique chance to broaden your audience and invite people outside of the Wikimedia Movement. We promoted our speakers using social media to boost interest from non-Wikimedians and invite them to our event.
6. Why so serious? To the participants, we sent conference packages including a pair of comfortable home slippers and a door hanger saying “Do not disturb, I’m attending a conference” so that we could add some humour to the fact that the conference has unexpectedly moved to participants’ homes.
7. Conference platforms – remember your priorities. Choosing a platform is not easy. Make a list of functionalities you need and put them in hierarchical order so that you will know: how important it is to you that the tool is open source? What feature is only nice to have? For example, Wikimedians use a very diverse set of browsers, so for us, having a tool that works on many different ones was a criterion.
8. Test your conference platform, learn its constraints, and let the speakers test it again. Test it in different groups and in different technical conditions (browsers, devices, and so forth). Shortly before the event we decided to shift the conference to a different platform because the one we had planned had shortcomings that were a no-go for us. You may schedule a get-together for the speakers the day before – it will help everyone get acquainted with the tool before the serious work begins.
9. From the attendees’ perspective, remote participation is less of a logistical effort. This extends to the period way before the event. In our case, participants (speakers, too) were often way less strict in honoring their commitments than they are at live events. They kept us waiting longer for their decisions about participating. They submitted the details of their talks later than they usually do.
10. Plan a lot and prepare your speakers. If you are having a scenario for a live session panel, discuss “theme entries” (and the amount of them) with your guests earlier. It keeps you within the schedule, and makes everything less stressful!
11. People need to move. And to take breaks. Sitting in front of the computer is much more tiring than being in a conference room. Which means: less session time, more breaks. We went for a 1-hour session/30-minute break schedule with one long (2 hours) lunch break and it was a perfect amount of time to keep everyone focused and well.
12. Diversify your program. Don’t make it a series of webinars. Shift between discussions and lectures, workshops and panel discussions. Changing format will help your attendees keep their focus. We made a mistake of scheduling social activities in the late afternoon when people were tired. In retrospect it would be better to plan them during the day.
13. Be flexible. Not all our ideas went as planned. And it was OK. Rather than pushing them we followed our participants’ needs. We wanted to provide a place for conversations so we opened a participants Telegram group (a solution which worked perfectly during our live events) but people preferred to use the Zoom chat and Telegram became more of a place for announcements. We planned a Wikipedia scavenger hunt for the evening but people preferred to socialize by chatting. If your goals are met in a different way than the one you have planned, who cares! As long as they are met, right?
14. Embrace the fact that things will go wrong. Because some will. The internet can go down, cats may jump on keyboards, the mics and the cameras may not cooperate, the speaker’s neighbours can decide to drill in their walls. There is a lot that can go wrong and not a lot of things you can control. Accept that the event doesn’t need to be perfect to be awesome. It’s not about perfection, it’s about connecting with each other. If obstacles come up, communicate it clearly to your participants and stay kind to yourself even if things go wrong. As long as you have that last one going – everything will be fine. Because kindness is the most important force in the Wikiverse!

And because of that I would like to thank my teammates Wojciech, Klara and Szymon with helping me with their insight in bringing all those learnings together!