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+title: "Wikimedia Hackathon Athens 2023"
+date: 2023-06-01
+tags: [wikimedia]
+---
+
+I attended my first in-person technical event last month: the
+[2023 Wikimedia Hackathon] in Athens, Greece! After initially getting
+involved [just before certain major world events] it was really nice to
+finally get an opportunity to meet both people I'd consider friends and
+that I've never worked with before.[^1]
+
+[2023 Wikimedia Hackathon]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023
+[just before certain major world events]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Google_Code-in/2019
+[CC BY 4.0]: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en
+
+[^1]: Although most of the attendees had at least heard of my name, which made this a really weird experience meeting new people.
+
+![Me hacking at the hackathon](/img/wmhack2023-hacking.jpg)
+{{< img-caption >}}I'm the one in the middle here, with a green t-shirt and a hat. <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023_-_Hacking_Room_-_Day_1_-_3.jpg">Image</a> credit: <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en">CC BY 4.0</a> by <a href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:TiagoLubiana">Tiago Lubiana</a>.{{< /img-caption >}}
+
+[Back in February] I predicted that I'd be working on "Likely something
+WMCS related? Or MW auth stuff (CA/OATHAuth)". In the end I ended up
+hopping between multiple projects. To summarize:
+* I worked with [Dreamy Jazz] on [this CheckUser patch]. I really
+  enjoyed getting a perspective on how the CheckUser tool is actually
+  used day-to-day and what kinds of features the CUs find useful.
+* [Kunal] and I [deployed] the [RealMe] extension to Wikimedia sites. I
+  think I was the first person to verify their Wikimedia user page on
+  a Mastodon profile, even though I [was beaten by Raymond] on
+  announcing the new feature to the public. This was certainly one of
+  my more interesting experiences deploying stuff to production,
+  considering it was a Friday evening[^2] and there was a very real
+  chance of missing dinner if something went wrong.
+* I helped [Arturo] with using [toolforge-weld], which is a new helper
+  library project I started a few weeks before the event.
+* I helped a bunch of people with using Toolforge and Cloud VPS, and
+  processed access and quota requests to unblock people.
+
+[Back in February]: https://www.mediawiki.org/w/index.php?title=Wikimedia_Hackathon_2023/Connect&diff=prev&oldid=5750504
+[Dreamy Jazz]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Dreamy_Jazz
+[this CheckUser patch]: https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/c/mediawiki/extensions/CheckUser/+/921243
+[Kunal]: https://blog.legoktm.com/2023/05/31/2023-wikimedia-hackathon-recap.html
+[deployed]: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T324535
+[RealMe]: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:RealMe
+[was beaten by Raymond]: https://social.cologne/@Raymond/110396164044936279
+[Arturo]: https://ral-arturo.org/2023/05/31/hackathon.html
+[toolforge-weld]: https://gitlab.wikimedia.org/repos/cloud/toolforge/toolforge-weld
+
+[^2]: We did undeploy an another extension just before deploying this one, so technically we didn't change anything.
+
+I ended up attending a couple of sessions that I found interesting. I
+wish I could've attended more, but as expected I couldn't consentrate
+on the presentations anymore after attending a couple, and I slept over
+one that I really wanted to attend :(. I still managed to have very
+interesting conversations with lots of different people.
+
+Thank you to the WMF for providing me a scholarship to attend the event.
+
+About the travel experience itself:
+* This was my first time travelling internationally alone. Everything
+  went well, which was nice.
+* I liked the Copenhagen and Stockholm-Arlanda airports, everything
+  worked as expected and there were not too many people there. I've
+  been in Stockholm and Copenhagen before many times, but never flown
+  via either of those.
+* I flew with two new aircraft types I have not flown on before: [B738]
+  and [CRJ900]. I already dislike the CRJ family as they are clearly
+  designed for shorter people.
+
+[B738]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_737_Next_Generation#737-800
+[CRJ900]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombardier_CRJ700_series#CRJ900
+
+I can't wait to meet everyone again, whether that's at Wikimania in
+Singapore later this year, next year's hackathon or something else.