Ghana at the Wikimania event

Wikimedia Ghana acting Coordinator to represent the country at the 2012 Wikimania event in the USA

By Oral Ofori

The acting Coordinator of Wikimedia Ghana, Nkansah Rexford Nyarko has been invited by James Hare (a the Wikimania Coordinator), to the 2012 Wikimania Conference held annually. This year's event, which is the eight of this international conference, will be held in the Washington District of Columbia (DC) in the United States of America (USA).

Wikimedia DC, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to free knowledge and culture in the Washington DC area will be organizing this year's conference with assistance from the Wikimedia Foundation Incorporated which is also a nonprofit organization that operates websites including Wikipedia; the free encyclopedia. This conference is held in different cities yearly and this year, the event will start from July 12 to 15, 2012. Find more about Wikimania 2012 here: http://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Mr. Nkansah was invited to represent Ghana at the 2012 Wikimania to be held at the George Washington University in Washington DC, USA because the event organizers believed it will afford him the opportunity to learn from the international community of editors as he has been calling for the establishment of a Ghana chapter of Wikimedia. Attending the conference will also give him networking opportunities with enthusiasts through out the world to share ideas and celebrate free knowledge.

This invitation is coming off the heels of an earlier invitation that was extended to Nkansah Rexford Nyarko by Dorothy Gordon who is the Director General of the Advance Information Technology Institute at the Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in Accra Ghana to attend the center's '2012 Innovation Week'. That event happened from June 5-9, 2012 during which Rexford had the opportunity to build his own community and talk about the idea behind Wikimedia and why it was necessary to form a Ghanaian Chapter of this international community.

Rexford believes the time for Ghana to have her own version of the global free encyclopedia is now and together with a number of passionate Ghanaians like Ebenezer Frimpong who is a pharmacy student in Ukraine, Ato Ulzen-Appiah of Ghana who is with Google Africa, this writer who is a Ghanaian based in the Washington DC metropolis of the USA and the acting Public Relations Officer (PRO) of Wikimedia Ghana, amongst a host of other young Ghanaians. All these passionate people are working hard to use the global and Ghanaian media to invite people and journalist who are conversant with inputting information in Wikis and making edits to contents relating to Ghana to help in lifting this fledgling establishment off the ground. To know more about Wikimedia Ghana and the spirit behind it, check out a recent story done by its PRO here http://www.oralofori.blogspot.com/2012/05/young-ghanaian-spearheads-establishment.html#more

The work of Wikimedia Ghana is indeed an all important one that not only Ghanaians will benefit from, but the entire continent of Africa and the whole world too, which is why the organization's acting Coordinator is calling on all to get involved to help create awareness, raise funds and be involved actively to realize the ultimate goal of providing free and open knowledge to all as uniquely explained in this informational video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_w9017Egs-4

One of the quickest way Wikimedia Ghana is also planing to get more people involved is to target the youth through organizing outreach programs to help practically show to the world how the organization will make great impact by getting tens of thousands of students and personnel in respective educational institutions on all levels across Ghana to help out with adding and editing information to the Wikimedia Ghana data-base and making it readily accessible to all who might need it freely.

With the help of the global Wikimedia body, the forming Ghana chapter of the organization now has its own email list which Ghanaians living in and out of the country and persons all over who are interested in people, places and things about Ghana are being encouraged to join to not only share ideas and information, but to quickly and easily learn how to add and edit information to the data-base and to protect the authenticity of such contents. To post to this list, send your email address or find general information about the mailing list at: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-gh