How did the Wikimedian adventure started for you?
That’s a really nice story, actually. 🙂 It was 2011 and Wikimania was hosted that year in Haifa, Israel. I was already part of the Open Knowledge Movement, heavily involved in Project Ben-Yehuda, a digital library of Hebrew writings (very similar to Project Gutenberg, only in Hebrew). A good friend of mine, who was already a Wikimedian (without me knowing about it!), said to me: „Listen, there’s this conference happening. I think you should come.“ Being very busy back then as well, I said, „I don’t know… I’m really busy… I’m not sure I can find the time“. But I then decided to make the time and go. On the week of the conference, I suddenly got a strong gut feeling, and said to my best friend: „I have a feeling about this conference, that it’s gonna be life-changing; it’ll be life before that conference and life after it“. And this is exactly what happened – I came, and on the first day attended a few sessions on GLAMWiki and Wiki in Education, and that was it. I was completely hooked. That day I joined Wikimedia Israel, had my first private lesson editing Wikipedia, and a week later I attended our first GLAM meeting with the Israel Museum. This led to leading the GLAM collaboration with them, then becoming the National GLAM Projects Coordinator for Wikimedia Israel, running lots of Educational Wiki outreach, lecturing about Wikipedia and running workshops for beginners, and also joining the board of Wikimedia Israel, all within a few months. I immediately got involved in the international aspects of our movement, and here we are, 8 happy years later, Wikimedia completely transformed my life and I never looked back.
