Key Note at the closing ceremony of Wikimania 2024 by Gereon K.
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Hello. Most of you already know what you saw on the screen. “Listen to Wikipedia” on listen.hatnote.com. Every appearing dot is a live edit on Wikipedia put into sound. For me all sound is music – and that is what I would like to talk about now.
Music is an art form and music is part of our lives.
For 23 years we as Wikipedians write about music. Music is emotions put into sound. Creating music is a creative process. But we are Wikipedians. We recycle knowledge, we do not create it. We take facts and rearrange those facts, we retell the knowledge of the world in our own words. But we don’t invent new knowledge. So the music we write about has already been composed. Music has been part of the movement all the time – and not only in written form or as sound files on Commons. Well, I don’t know any compositions that have Wikimedia or Wikipedia as its subject. I heard that there are some, in Ukrainian for example, but they are not widely known at least to my knowledge. Still we are intertwined with music much more than just writing about it.
I will give you some examples:
On the 22nd of October 2005 the page “Songs about Wikipedia” was created by user Aepic von Trols on English Wikipedia with the edit summary:
„here are several, and other fun stuff is in Wikipedia: notably under Department of Fun, and boy does this place need some cheering up“
It first only contained the entries “Hotel Wikipedia” (which is Hotel California by the Eagles with new lyrics) and a song called “Coconut Monkey” (based on Paperback Writer by The Beatles).
The lyrics of Hotel Wikipedia were uploaded to Meta even much earlier: on the 22nd of August 2004. And Meta as well has a fitting category, which is called “Humor songs and poems”.
Music has accompanied our gatherings, our events, since the beginning. I only started editing in 2006 (first as IP then with my account in 2007), so I am a newbie. That’s why I did not follow the movement from the beginning and I only visit events since 2009. But everything we do is still readable online, with one exception, which is the Wikimania 2006 at the Harvard Law School. All talks and events of this event do not exist on the internet.
So looking at our events I find our first Wikimania, which as you all know happened in 2005 in Frankfurt, Germany. Wikimania 2005 had a media competition. One of the categories of this competition was called audio. Competitors, who were Kat Walsh, Gregory Maxwell and Steven Dunlop, uploaded sound files of self-played examples with bassoon, piano and tromboon.
Wikimania 2006 had, as I was told, the Wikimania awards and user Makeni provided pieces played on lute.
I don’t want to go through all Wikimanias, but there are some music moments that impressed me a lot music-wise, that I can still remember today as if they were yesterday. Attendants might remember different things that stay in their minds, for example the beach theme for some (like in Haifa and Hong Kong). For me it is music. And I remember Wikimania 2014 in London, where conference director Edward Saperia managed to have interesting and talented bands and musicians all over the venue like the Lambeth Trio, the Horizon Quartett, Owl and BushBuntu, Michael Baker, Tom Green, The Slumberjacks, Power of Two, Black Hay and many more.
2016 in Esino Lario gave us permanent sound objects, country music and dance in the main village square, a silent film accompanied by live music, a theremine concert involving falcons in flight, and a concert by Roberto Paci Dalò about the Armenian genocide.
In Cape Town 2018 I saw certain Wikipedians that are normally shy and/or introverted dancing on stage during a live performance. And I remember an administrator conference in Austria, in Salzburg, in 2017. Between two sessions the organizer brought musicians with violins in who played Mozart. Very pleasant. In Yerevan during Wiki events I have experienced performances with Armenian instruments.
I have been talking now about writing about music – and then about contributing files to Commons – and about performances at events.
Wikpedians have many talents. You can find almost every skill among them. For every subject and aspect and skill we have a specialist. So naturally there are musicians amongst us. In 2017 a musician from Hamburg, Lukas Mezger, who we know under the name Gnom, asked Wikipedians to join an orchester to perform at a German WikiCon. WikiCons are like small Wikimanias. Since 2017 the live music at events in the German speaking world is provided by Wikipedians and not by rented musicians. I would now like to ask Gnom to the stage. He has a surprise for you.