Translator: Elisabeth Buffard Reviewer: Tatjana Jevdjic
I'm going to talk about commitment,
so I'll leave my little Mrs Wikipedia
for a while,
but I will still talk about it anyway.
Talk to you about commitment as a driving force,
a driving force in your life.
I believe that no one is born committed,
we become committed, as Simone said, to other subjects.
For my part, commitment was
something founding,
something that motivates my life day after day,
and which got built gradually,
through a multitude of small choices, of small --
small actions, one after the other,
which have pushed me little by little,
to guide my life to be like now,
very focused on sharing, freedom, and so on.
I think that I chose this commitment
to open up to adolescence, with some difficult periods,
when instead to withdraw, I chose to turn to others,
probably to forget certain things,
and then, motivated by this opening,
and enriched by this opening,
I carried on.
I also took this commitment, in a rather chaotic professional life,
with choices that were more imposed than selected,
changes of direction,
which have pushed me little by little to exceed, surpass myself,
make choices, go beyond myself,
test how far I could go,
by changing from a historian's life
to marketing, to the Web, and then today to Wikipedia,
day and night, to share knowledge.
So, these small insignificant choices,
it was for example for me
choosing one night, around two o'clock in the morning,
the 'Modify' button on Wikipedia,
to share some knowledge, share something,
and then, little by little, dedicate myself completely
in this sharing of knowledge,
reach out to others,
give a little bit of time, give a little bit of empathy,
a little bit of attention to others, and then finally,.
guide my life, all my actions, to these choices.
And these choices, instead of feeling heavy, instead of weighing on me,
gave me strength, and came true through meetings,
because life online is not something artificial,
where you talk with people without really knowing why about very superficial things.
The people I met on Wikipedia are contributors of many kinds,
which allowed me to open my vision of the world
and extend this online commitment with actual meetings.
These meetings, it could be people like you,
it is the Chilean academics of Astrophysics,
it will be a Malian student, it will be a pensioner from Auvergne,
it will be to be a Swiss cardiologist,
with whom we will gradually share, and move forward with each other
in a project that transcends us completely, that --
each person could only bring a small thing,
but together, we get to build an encyclopedia
which brings to the world knowledge as much as possible.
I built this commitment at first through small contributions,
giving a little bit of my time here and there,
and thanks to these encounters where you feel who you want to go forward with,
who you feel like setting up these beautiful projects with,
it drove me to commit to Wikimedia France,
first just as a volunteer,
going to give a helping hand, doing an interview
giving a lecture, going to a workshop to teach people to participate.
Later it led me to chair this association for a little more than two years.
Then, the leap of faith, this summer I was offered to work every day,
all year round to share this knowledge with the great majority of people.
And this commitment also brought a change to my life,
to the beliefs I had about the way to look at the world,
and to go towards a more free society.
After free knowledge, free software,
there is free software, a free society,
based on sharing, based on exchange, on a collaborative model.
Something which, for me who originally comes from a scientific background,
and you work in your little world, on your field of expertise,
you suddenly come to advocate a much more open,
much more sharing, much more committed society,
intimately, in consistency, your thoughts, actions, way of life day by day,
being really fully open.
So, this commitment does not remove the small fears on a daily basis,
the fear of the next day, the one-time difficulties, and so on,
but it gives overall, it gave me in any case,
and I hope it gives you too, if you have the same approach,
a kind of strength, which allows to move forward
seeing beyond the next day, and further than the tip of your nose,
and further than the difficulty;
to really be in a confident forward process.
So why can I tell you about it and why do I come
to introduce what makes me go forward in life?
It is to make you feel like doing it too.
Commitment, for me, is not something binding,
it's something that --
the balance between the effort it requires from me and the benefits I get from it
is clearly in favor of the benefits.
The commitment gave me an inner strength
that allows me to move forward with great confidence and to go further.
It is as if you had a kind of support holding you on the side, like this,
and securely anchoring you in the ground
to be able to go further,
be much more daring, think beyond what we could think --
from your small circle, go very much further.
For me, it is something that has given me a freedom to think,
freedom of action, freedom of imagination, which I had not before.
The second reason I want to urge you to you get committed in life,
it is that, even if we don't live for admiring returns,
we don't live to leave a trace behind,
but what a pleasure to see your relatives or your children take this same path,
feel that there is a consistency and want to ask the same questions to go forward too!
This is something that satisfies me greatly,
that really gives me a profound joy.
And then the last reason is that commitment,
it's a commitment towards a goal.
This goal might not be so important to achieve.
What is important is the path leading to it.
As for me, I'm happy to go on this path, happy to share my time.
my knowledge, my skills, my empathy,
this strength which animates me to be able to move forward.
For me, the path is as important as the goal,
and what can I wish to all, it's that you find this purpose and move forward on this path
with all the strength that the joy and conviction to be committed
for the best possible cause will give you.
(Applause)