my name is catherine maher and i'm executive director of the wikimedia foundation the non-profit that hosts and supports wikimedia and other projects and proud to work with many global organizations and partners that support the community including many of you here today. i'm so excited to be here for the third annual conference in the united states and first ever in north america. it's amazing to see how our community continues to grow and reach beyond our own borders every single day. it's my first time at a wiki conference in the united states and can't tell you how excited i'm here in beautiful, sunny san diego, it's my vote we do more events here. i want to thank the organizers putting together this event, there's more than 300 individuals 16 different affiliates and 30 different glam partner institutions and for those who are newer, ga it's galleries, libraries arc vivacious archives and institutions. so i'm beautiful to be here. yesterday we had a country crawl across balboa park learning about her tige and cultural influences and learning and my personal favorites san diego's

--name is catherine marr, katherine maher. the wikimedia foundation is a nonprofit foundation that host then supports wikipedia. we are proud to work with many global organizations, the many global organizations and partners that support the community of wikimedians and the projects. i am so excited to be here for the third annual wiki conference in the united states and the first ever wikiconference north america. ours amazing to see how community continues to grow and reach beyond our own borders everything they. it is my first time at a wikiconference in the united states and i cannot say how excited i am to be in san diego. it is my vote we do more events here already. i want to thank our incredible conference organizers for putting together this event. there are more than 300 individuals in attendance from 16 different affiliates. again, for those of us who are newer, lamb is one of my favorite acronyms in our movement he redid his galleries, andaries, archives, movements. i'm happy to be holding this event in the ballpar