Talk:Wikimania 2006

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This is a collection of all discussion about Wikimania 2006. Please link to any subpages from here, in the introductoin; other discussions should get their own section.

Please leave questions or comments here, in any language. +sj +

See also (some of this to be merged):

• suggestions and ideas taken from Wikimania 2005.
• Wikimania 2005 feedback

Venue Selection

Based on the date, if you were to have it at a university you could definitely look into getting some rooms in their dormitories/residence halls, as they commonly do for conferences held on their campuses. It isn't a 5 star hotel, but for those on a budget (see: Students) it is a great option. 24.145.195.191 18:44, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Proposed banners, etc

.

See other designs here: User:B4#Wikimania_Design

B4 01:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Conference planning software

We need conference planning software. See or add to the list of suggestions on the planning page.

setup one [by the] middle of January 2006, so that the program comitee can have a look at it before the call of paper starts --PatrickD 07:13, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Moving to an English page

this is re: the current redirection of Wikimania 2006 to Wikimania 2006/En (original goal: to encourage the development of other language-revisions of the portal page) --sj

I am totally against this move. It so happens that yes, Wikimania will be coordinated in Egnlish. Thank you for moving back the English to the main Wikimania 2006 article. Cheers. notafish }<';> 11:12, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Let me add: Pages in the form Wikimania 2006:XXX make no sense, as you lose the arborescence so practical on the wiki. Planning Wikimania in 7 languages makes no sense whatsoever, you should have learned at least that from last year. Let us translate the content of the Website and make that smart, rather than disperse our efforts at the very beginning. That you have pages giving info on what is what is fine in every single language. That you have organisation pages with different languages is completely unprofessional. It may be polically correct, but it makes NO sense, you're going to find yourself with millions of outdated pages. Please Sj, STOP! notafish }<';> 11:19, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Arborescence? Tree structure? It is a mirage... Are you suggesting that subpages are better than colons? I tend to agree with you, but colons were already in use last year...

As for planning an event in multiple languages -- it is just like running any interactive multilingual conversation (a poll, vote, etc). It may be difficult, but it is important. You may wish to read Meta:Interlanguage links. It has one or two ideas about maintaining communication in other languages while also giving an accurate impression of page-freshness. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+ 06:59, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

A note on multilingualism : This is not political correctness, be certain of that. It is simply that Wikimedia is, for better or worse, a truly multilingual organization. Think of what the 50% of Wikimedians who are not En-3 or -4 see when they visit meta-pages. Rather than 'generously' finding funds to bring such people to play with us, we should be bringing such conferences to them. That we are temporarily restricted to holding conferences where we have deep contacts (and with a heavy English component), should not keep us from doing what we can to include those participants in every aspect of Wikimania... even (especially?) brainstorming. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+

Then, please, do have a brainstorming page. But I repeat, you're duplicating efforts here. Let's have one page to list everyone, translate the introduction is as many languages as you wish, and depending on who is interested in organizing Wikimania, translate in their language. Again, this is not about making Wikimania an English only conference, this about trying to have something coherent and efficient going on. And please, do not talk to me about maintaining communication in other languages. May I remind you that I am French, that I am talking to you in English, and that I live in Germany? notafish }<';> 02:32, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

And yes, I was talking about the colons. If it was so last year, then it was a mistake. Let's correct it. notafish }<';> 02:34, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

As they said of Abe Lincoln... "...born in Kentucky, raised in Indiana, and lived in Illinois." I know well who you are :) So I'm a little confused about your suggestion that things will be coordinated [only] in English. Having English as a primary language ('as it so happens', for efficiency), and as an only language (if you can't express yourself in English, don't get involved), are different things. As for duplicating effort, I am all for giving people better guidelines about how to translate pages effectively, starting with just the gist of the page; or translating only abstracts of pages that are easier to maintain. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+ (update: 00:10, 3 November 2005 (UTC))

---

Ahh, pages without colons: much better. As for the "/En" suffix -- perhaps this was unclear above. The suffix is necessary simply because "Wikimania 2006" is a fairly international name, the same for many languages. It is analogous to creating a portal at www.[project].org; and does not change the fact that the English page is the main content page.

By asking people to leave comments in all languages on a single page, are we not encouraging, as you suggest above, information to be translated into many languages; while discussion and planning are all in one place (presumably translated from all languages through English)? sj 00:10, 3 November 2005 (UTC)

Various subpages

List all the subpages associated with this. ;) (--delphine)

Yowsa. Alright, here's an attempt:

Wikimania 2006/Planning

Wikimania 2006/Official requirements for potential host cities

Wikimania 2006/Boston (notice, support), Wikimania 2006/Toronto, Wikimania 2006/London (UK bid), Wikimania 2006/Milano, Wikimania 2006/Cleveland

--+Sj+

General sponsorship

Support for Wikimania

• Checks : Socialtext. Ross M says he definitely wants Socialtext to be a sponsor again this year... "and I still want to pay for last year :)"
• Swag : Ubuntu DVDs. A set of Wikipedia-enhanced Ubuntu installations on DVD were discussed by Luis Villa, who has headed up Ubuntu 'live CD' creation recently. Some steps required to make this a reality; he's interested.
• Swag : O'Reilly books.
• Dev collaboration: GNOME developers - a trio of devs working w/Nokia? on phone integration, and on distributed platforms: interested in better phone-friendly dumps/interfaces. contact: Robot & Robtaylor

  Also, GNOME devs working on distributed text-versioning; want to use WP content & uses cases for testing. contact: Mako

• Machine translation groups looking for testbeds. (Franz Och @ Google, Tolga Secilmis @ ES Limited; cf Taran R&)
• OSI: similar arrangement to last year? (a similar amount; but this time with more notice)

  NB: Some of the Boston-area foundations and groups looking to sponsor overseas travel are suitable for longer-term relationships, independent of venue. We should start finding similar foundations throughout the world...

• Could someone contact me about the possibility of Yellowikis sponsoring the handbook/Boston cityguide?--Payo 23:09, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Planning

see also: archived planning talk, mainly from August. Please move back content that is still under discussion.

moved from main page:

thankyou I am Pastor Eliah Mauza from Dodoma TANZNIA I want yor support for the school and the Projects here in Tanzania.

• see www.pmc-ministries.com Tanzania church ministries Email pmctchurch AT yahoo.com

Program

Keynote speakers

Lets' avoid having two out-of-synch lists of suggested Keynote speakers--this one, and the longer version at Wikimania_2006/Program#Speakers (the content page). If you want to discuss somebody here, please also add that person's name to the list of nominees on the content page. Betsythedevine 22:38, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Just to note: I'd like to have en:Ted Nelson as a keynote speaker as long as he is able to give keynotes (he should be almost 70 now). -- Nichtich 08:13, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Comment: David Weinberger posted about an impressive talk Ted Nelson just gave in the UK [1] Betsythedevine 21:30, 30 November 2005 (UTC)

I'd add en:Larry Lessig and en:Clay Shirky, possibly also en:Judith Donath and Philippe Aigrain (no page on en or fr - boo). Cormaggio @ 11:21, 1 September 2005 (UTC)

Lessig of course and en:Tim Berners-Lee. Shirky is also good but not that popular. Aigrain? Donath? I'd accept all of them but as Keynote we need something special. Additionally getting in contact with the scientific Open Access movement is still important, so en:Stevan Harnad would be nice.

You would be surprised but Christian Wirth (Cali resident) and Jason Scott (a Boston Local) are pretty damn interesting speakers live. Jason in particular has been doing Text archival stuff from the BBS days for a while now and currently has a BBS Documentary out that would actually be a worthwhile "movie" to show during wikimania. Alkivar 07:32, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

The documentary would make a good screening, to support its free licensing. (and a good discussion topic for the next freeculture meeting...) Sj 19:25, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

Tutorials?

Has there been any thought into running some classes at Wikimania? I'd be interested in teaching some, though probably not more than two or so because of the prep work required. Based on what I get asked on IRC, there might be interest in:

• Creating SVG illustrations with Inkscape
• Editing Wikipedia with EMACS (spelling and syntax highlighting oh my!)
• Introduction to a Linux as a Free desktop enviroment (yea, it's not a linux conference but a lot of Wikipedians end up interested in Linux and I often find myself helping people get started with it in IRC).

Thoughts? --Gmaxwell 04:00, 5 October 2005 (UTC)

I could definetly see this added to the schedule, we'd just want to make sure the topics were broad enough for many participants to be interested. I'm not even sure how many of the Mac users on Wikipedia have eMacs, for example. I'd be personally interested in the Linux lessons myself. -- user:zanimum

I'd be willing to do an audio recording tutorial for anyone interested (e.g. Spoken Wikipedia article type stuff). Alkivar 07:34, 5 November 2005 (UTC)

Tutorials can be awesome. There were popular ones last year. Other ideas : video editing, and ogg in general; an encyclopedic-writing tutorial; copyright releases and strategies for getting them; ... Sj

Overview Track

After Wikimania 2005 it was suggested that one way for the programme of 2006 would be to have a day (or a half) where there's only one track of very short (5 minutes) talks. This gives the audience a way to get an overview of all topics discussed on the conference. This could be also a daily session at the end of the day, providing summaries of the day's workshops' and discussions' results.

I like the idea of summary sessions of the day's results. For overviews, we could do less than 5 min; perhaps useful at the start of each day, to help people decide where to go. Sj 19:25, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

BOF sessions

Birds of a Feather sessions -- informal sessions organized by attendees.

[H]as anyone ever read David Lodge's novel, _Changing Places_? In it he describes a parlor game called "Humility" where each player tries to think of a book he has not read -- but everyone else has, & thus scores a point for each person. Some variant on this idea might be worth a BoF at the next Wikimania. -llywrch, in mail

Meetings

November 5

add comments and follow-up thoughts here. Transcript-summary to come.

We agreed to tentatively hold the next meeting in two Saturdays, 8 hours earlier; and to consider alternating between these two times (perhaps on different days). Please give feedback about this, especially if neither time works for you.

Discussions to be continued on-wiki

• Organization teams for Wikimania: what teams are needed, with what organization? Which need to be organized *soon*?

  Program, technical, website, budget & operations, volunteer-coordination, other? What should we learn from last year?

• What other volunteers are needed; and how should we attract them? Both locally and elsewhere. For instance : transcribers and translators and podcasters

  Outsourcing conference organization : the next Board agenda includes a discussion about hiring a conference organizer. What should such a position entail? How would it interact with the above teams?

• An early CfP : to allow for speakers who may need a long time to prepare for coming. What will we use for paper processing?
• What should our goal be for international and small-project outreach be?
• How strongly should we promote multilingualism at Wikimania?

Sj 00:14, 6 November 2005 (UTC)

Teams

specific suggestions moved directly to Wikimania 2006/Teams. Leave meta-discussion here.

The current ideas fr program, translation, and transcription/broadcasting teams amount to over 100 volunteer-roles on their own. Of course there will be overlap between translation and transcription/broadcasting; and many of these volunteers will be off-site. Nevertheless, this would add a major online volunteer component to the event (which would in itself likely spur far more on-wiki and -blog discussion than we had last year).

Program managment

(or other management tools)

1. Program team : A program team needs to start work early (see program team, above). A call for papers should be released as early as is feasible, to allow speakers who may need a long time to get a visa a chance at early acceptance.
2. Managing the program will involve processing submissions, by email or via a form; responding to submitters, and likely involve conference-handling, or at least simple ticket-handling, software. What will we use?

Patrick suggested letting the program team look at the processing software in advance of the actual CfP publication. This may be as early as December. We should start discussing details as soon as possible.

• Pentabarf (papers and scheduling; software unstable)
• Continue (non-free)
• PyCon software (paper-processing)
• Ubuntu DownUnder software (event scheduling; many parallel rooms at once, via many dimensions)
• ...

Conference goals

What should the conference goals be? What specifically should it focus on? Should the goals differ, if at all, from unstated goals last year?

• General goals : Both an academic conference, and a community gathering. forming international connections.
• Academic goals : outreach to academia? Better coordination with subject experts?
• Research goals : better cross-platform wiki developer collaboration? MediaWiki improvement? Sociology feedback?
• Community goals : promotion of smaller projects? of multilingualism? cross-project pollination?
• Publicity goals : better understanding of the projects? more active sign-up to contribute? more and better feedback from non-editing users?
• ...

International outreach

How much of what kind of outreach should we pursue? Should it be to improve representation of large sections of the world / large languages? To broaden the network of smaller projects? How much outreach to community members and how much to presenters or [potential] users of Wikimedia content?

We may have an easier time encouraging others to support the conference if we have firm goals in mind. Should we look for support for 50 attendees? From attendees from each of 20 geographic or linguistic regions? How specifically do we know what kind of outreach we want?

Multilingualism

How strongly should we promote multilingualism at Wikimania? Will there be a multilingual newsroom? Simultaneous translation for certain events? Pairing guests with partner-translators? Grouping travellers by native language or region before they arrive, to make them feel more comfortable? Conference materials available in more than just English?

I would like to see a set of 5+ core languages, and a newsroom/press center that supports all of them; at least with real-time transcriptions in all core langs. Sj 11:49, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

Future meetings

We should start having specialized discussions on-wiki about each of the areas above. In particular, let's set up an early program agenda for the week after the next general meeting; either for an IRC meeting or just as a list of points to go over methodically on the wiki. Please note interest and availability below. +sj | Translate the Quarto |+ 05:10, 13 November 2005 (UTC)

Program meeting I : late November

when can you make it? who is interested?

• +sj | Translate the Quarto |+, Mon/Tue/Wed, and probably some time on Thanksgiving weekend (Fri/Sat/Sun). Not Thursday :-)
• PatrickD Mo/Tue/Wed (but not to late (MEZ) have to work the next day) The Weekend is hard because I'm on a conference.
• I'm going to have limited time and internet access between November 18 and December 1. "Evenings" (UTC+11) would probably be easiest. I can't do the 18th or 30th (UTC) at all. Angela 22:43, 13 November 2005 (UTC)
• Count me in. Fri/Sat/Sun of Thanksgiving weekend (11/25-27) would work great; M/T/W after the holiday would be fine, too. Jeremy
• Interested but spotty schedule -- Mon,Tue,Wed (Nov 21-23) are ok, not Thurs., poss. Fri,Sat, not Sun. The week after (Nov. 28-Dec 3) is fine, except for Mon & Tues evening (UTC-8). brassratgirl

November 19

Press issues:

We might be able to get some pre-conference coverage. It'll let people know about the conference in advance and give them the opportunity to register and go.

This can be particularly important for international travelers who might need to make visa arrangements, etc.

If we contact the press about it early, they can do better planning to cover the event in the summer.

We have like six months to convince the media to come, we might get some coverage we wouldn't get if they have about two weeks notice.

Topics

The Boston Wikipedia Meetup Group brainstormed some topics at the last meeting, just for fun:

Science

Library stuff

Information science/tech

Medicine

Education

JT's paper

Wikis in business

Reputation/identity issues in Wikipedia

Wiki organization

Better organization of the wikis would help people get Wikimania info quicker

Different sections for the press, potential attendees, potential planners, potential sponsors

If you're interested in helping with ____, go here kind of stuff

It's difficult now to explain to groups what Wikimania is

Boilterplate text would help, as would pointing them somewhere on the wiki with concise info

Promoting Wikimania

graphic/banner for sponsors for their Web sites

graphic/banner for bloggers, wikiers, and others

graphic/banner for co-organizers, co-sponsoring organizations

graphic/banner for people involved in the planning

<Betsy_Devine> Here's a list of Cambridge attractions, that needs translation into wiki-link format http://amityandcolin.com/cambridge.html

Shekhar : talk to my friends at http://www.sarai.net/ (about hindi, tamil, etc)

<Betsy_Devine> An IgNobel show would indeed rock. I know there's a touring version that goes to Australia...

<Jamesday> Should contact news organisations now and get ballpark level of interest from them

From old WM/Boston talk

International Conferences in the US

I. There are many international conferences held in the US. Learn from them!

II. Massachusetts is a good state to have on your side if you're worried about being harrassed by the State Dept. Details, links, #s.

III. Strong Latin-american support, and extra funding available, suggest we could have quite a diverse international conference here.

Conferences In Boston

• GPL Version 3 International Unveiling at MIT, January 16 and 17, 2006.
• Sixth International Conference on Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School, October 19-24, 2005.
• Noreascon Four, the 62nd convention of the World Science Fiction Society, September 2-6, 2004. 7000 attendees from 33 countries, according to the Boston Globe.
• 2004 mtg of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, with over 1400 attendees from 28 countries.
• Linux World, February 14-17, 2005 (still needed-- attendance figures)
• Inaugural International Creative Commons (iCommons) conference, June 25-26, 2005, hosted by Harvard Law School and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society. http://creativecommons.org/press-releases/entry/5488
• Arisia (yearly science fiction con; mostly regional but with some int'l participation) http://2006.arisia.org/
• Anime Boston yearly attracts 1500 anime fans to Boston: http://www.animeboston.com/
• The Witching Hour was a Harry Potter fan convention with significant international participation (esp. from UK), 1000 attendees total, held in Salem, MA just outside Boston October 6-10, 2005. http://www.witchinghour.org
• RSI summer events; for high school students around the world - only 75 each year; but including one or two from each of several partner countries; including non-VWP countries in Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Conferences Elsewhere in the US

• Neuroscience events : Neuroscience 2004, for instance, had 31,000 people from around the world.
• ISEF, the International Science Fair, with 1400 students from 40 countries in recent years.
• Model UN high schoolers... from where? cf. Andy Carvin's talk
• The annual AAAP conference (thousands of scientists; but mainly from the US)
• O'Reilly Emerging Tech conference[s]
• iCommons, other int'l CC events
• Some past international sci fi cons that took place in the US: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4677/usa_A_L.html#AL, http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/4677/usa_M_Z.html.
• Comi-Con is an yearly international comic convention in California: http://www.comic-con.org/index.php
• Upcoming science fiction cons held in the Northeast, some attracting many international participants: http://www.nesfa.org/necons.html
• DragonCon in Georgia "is America's largest, multi-media, popular arts convention," with recent years' attendance figures above 20,000: http://www.dragoncon.org/
• I-CON is a several-thousand-attendee sci-fi convention in New York: http://www.iconsf.org/general.php
• Archon is a several-thousand-attendee sci-fi convention in the St. Louis area: http://www.archonstl.org/
• Startup School this month - visitors from NZ, Mexico, Austria, Brazil...

Categories of sponsors

1. Sponsorship for latin american attendees (3 groups: the R. Institute for Latin American Studies; the Latino university-information network; and the Baker Center)
2. Sponsorship for attendees from other parts of the world [OSI, via 2 contacts; jointly with FSF (Brazil), W3C (anywhere), and MIT (programmers); Hippo Family]
3. General sponsorship [IBM; Novell; Charles River & other funds]

Foreign visitors to Massachusetts

With proper preparation, most visitors should not have difficulties getting a visa.

Attendees from certain countries (Iran, Libya) may have a difficult time getting a visa, and will need strong supporting documents and local connections. From other countries (China, Colombia, India, other parts of the middle east), the process will generally take over a month and should be started well in advance.

The most difficult cases will be single young men residing in non-VWP countries, out of school and unemployed, with few family ties and few resources.

The visa process may be accelerated, and rejections overturned, via immigration officials in Massachusetts; who should be informed immediately if there is a problem with a visa application. They deal with such things every day, and are eager to help. Even the most difficult applications can be facilitated : demonstration of the applicant's expertise in the field; a detailed letter of support from the hosting University, addressed to the Senator and transmitted to the local embassy; and financial support covering a round-trip ticket.

Getting a business visa for the US has become quite difficult and expensive. It should be cleard up whether people can be considered tourists, i.e. enter on a tourist visa and still attend a conference. I know people who were detained for trying to enter the country on a tourist visa and attend a CS conference. This is a very serious issue. Perhaps Jimmy Wales needs to contact Homeland Security and INS and let them know what the Wikimania is? --WiseWoman 20:41, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Local immigration officials asked for and received information about what Wikimania is; and did not think anything related to the topics of Wikimania might be controversial. Tourist visas were recommended. Sj

Well, in any case people should prepare to be harrased and treated pretty rude by the immigration officers and the people issuing the visa. And if you ask me, its a pretty bad idea for people from: Iran, Libya, Syria (ok the whole middle east except Israel), China, Southeast-Asia, any poor country in the world etc. to even try to visit the USA. Boston is a pretty bad choice... de:Benutzer:Dickbauch

You are right about the first three countries. If there are any people who wish to attend the conference from Iran, Libya, or Syria, we will have to make a real effort to get everything squared away well ahead of time - and be prepared to help deal with bureaucratic hassles. (The situation is hardly different for Canada.) Visitors from the rest of the world should not have unusual difficulties. Overall, getting a visa and entering the US has reportedly been getting progressively easier over the past 1-2 years. The 35,000-person Neuroscience conference had some difficulties in 2004 (but not too many) and effectively no difficulties in 2005, with arranging visas for their international attendees. They noted that the most difficulty they had was with Chinese and other nationals living in Canada, who wanted to come to the US for the conference ; this was significantly more difficult than getting visas for, say, Chinese citizens in China. These cases, too, were reported to be easier in 2005. --Sj

FWIW, I booked my visa interview on November 2005 and they gave it to me on February 1st 2006. I received the electronic visa on my home 3 weeks later. I'm mexican. If you need an interview on an US consulate, you should try to make it happen ASAP. --Damog

Dates?

[M]y favorite [dates] would be the last week of July / first two weeks of August, mainly because school starts back in Berlin 21. August and our university is not out until July 21. Of course, I realize that there is no date that is not school vacation somewhere :-) --WiseWoman 20:37, 23 October 2005 (UTC)

Have dates been finalised yet? If so, can you post the dates somewhere prominently on the Wikimania 2006 site? I'd like to be able to attend. Thanks, 137.143.155.224 21:48, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Not quite yet. Believe me, they'll be made public when they are. Brassratgirl 05:44, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

If the August dates (Aug 4 - Aug 8) are final, PLEASE change the header on the English pages to say AUGUST 4 and not 04/08. When in Rome, er, Boston, please use the US convention. Otherwise, some folks might show up in April... ;-)--BradPatrick 04:04, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

Boston

Boston Wikicity

This will provide a great opportunity for people to fill in things on the Boston Wikicity. I for one did not know know of this particular Wikicity, and by using this in conjunction with other wiki projects, this could be a really helpful resource for Wikimania 2006. -Mysekurity 05:18, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Article review committee structures

I've had the opportunity to observe close up the process of selecting abstracts for presentation at research conferences. There are several models to work from, but as most of them require pots of money for airfare and hotel costs for the abstract review committee members and reviewers, we'll cut to the model used by the Society for Adolescent Medicine with some modifications suggested on the fly.

1. Create a basic set of criteria to measure, and build a review form based on this set of criteria. Criteria need not be strict, and should be measured on a scale, but with scores weighted to give priorities (for example, a topic development criteria may be given a score value of 3, while spelling and punctuation given a score value of 1, but both measured on a scale of 1-5 - each topic scale point is worth .6 while each spelling and punctuation point is worth .2.)
2. Create track-based committees. Basically you're looking for people who can review article submissions.
3. Do not send out articles for review until all submissions have been made; the goal is to avoid over-burdening any group of people, but to insure each article is reviewed by two different people. Articles should be blinded.
4. Send out articles for review with specific deadlines when they must be reviewed by. This deadline should be early enough to allow for reviewers who fail to review, and for anomalous scores, to be reviewed by a third reviewer.
5. Send out reminders to reviewers at least one day in advance of the deadline.
6. If two reviewers give widely differing scores to a single submission, send it out to a third reviewer.
7. Average scores and rank submissions to the several tracks. Unblind at this point.
8. Starting at the top, determine which papers will be given podium presentations based primarily on scores, relevance to the track and a subjective veto (if someone is known to be able to put an entire audience to sleep during a 5 minute presentation, don't put them on the podium. Likewise if they are known to cause riots in the same time frame.) Determine which receive poster presentations.

- Amgine 01:35, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Amgine - I think the above sounds great! In the last program meeting, I volunteered to help work on the CFP with User:brassratgirl. Is that useful or premature? --AlexanderWait 07:57, 28 November 2005 (UTC) aka "asw" & "await" on IRC.

Meeting date change, please

I removed the statement that the next meeting will be December 3, becuase I think it's pretty urgent that I be including ASAP in everything that's going on here. Continuing to have unauthorized meetings which give people the impression that unauthorized people are making actual decisions is not a good idea! We have to sort out who is empowered to do what, and I need to be involved in that.

On December 3rd, I will be travelling. After that I don't travel for 2 months. Let's move that meeting to a mutually agreeable time and stop having unauthorized meetings, please. --Jimbo Wales 15:15, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

"Unauthorized" sounds pretty mystifying to me. Many volunteers in Boston want to help with wikimania. I've attended in-person and IRC meetings etc. How can we know what's "authorized" and what's not? --AlexanderWait 07:41, 28 November 2005 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. When are you thinking? Any specific dates you have in mind? -Mysekurity 04:23, 26 November 2005 (UTC)

New meeting dates have been suggested here. Sj

More on teams

Some refactoring and some new content under #Teams, above.

Archiving 2005 content

From the 12-10-05 general meeting: 2005 pages from wikimania.wikimedia.org that I would suggest need to be archived, and their corresponding sections on meta:

• http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Call_for_papers to --> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2005_Call_for_Papers
• http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programme to --> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2005_programme (this is an important page to keep from wikimania.wikimedia)
• http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Coordinators to somewhere on --> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2005_organisers
• http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Competitions to a new 'competitions' page (listed under 'program' on the main page).
• http://wikimania.wikimedia.org/wiki/Social_events, ditto -- to a new 'social events' page

wikimania.wikimedia.org will need new 2006 content, as well.

One thought I had is to make all the 'draft' and 'planning' pages on meta (eg. Wikimania 2005 Call for Papers) subpages under themselves after the content from meta has been moved, perhaps using "planning" (Wikimania 2005 Call for Papers/Planning?) and adding a link on the first page to "call for papers planning page." Make sense? The planning content is probably valuable as well and worth saving, as evidence of how the page developed. Thoughts? Brassratgirl 23:36, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

Interesting idea. At the moment, I'm archiving all wikimania-website content directly under its current title there, prefaced by "Wikimania 2005:<name>", as though 'Wikimania 2005' were its own namespace, while leaving the meta-content at "Wikimania 2005 <name>". This may not be ideal. However, there was nothing like a 1-to-1 relationship b/t the pgaes on meta and those on the wikimania-website.... Sj 15:17, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Hrm. let me know when you're done and I'll make up some kind of index. I think it could get confusing mostly when it's not clear which page is more "developed," but I don't have a better suggestion atm. Brassratgirl 16:59, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I'm amending this, after further thought -- it's *totally* confusing to have two sets of wikimania 2005 pages on meta. Which is which? impossible to tell, unless you know the pages inside and out. This might be important. I can think of, for instance, press that's covering 2006 going back to look at the 2005 pages so they can say "while 2005's conference, blah blah, 2006 was ..." and getting totally lost in the planning content. I still don't have any better ideas, though, except for making a big index of pages both planning and archive and sticking it on both, as a footer or something. Brassratgirl 04:55, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Looks good. I'll get to work on that ASAP. Linuxbeak 23:38, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

I started an archive here : Wikimania 2005:Main Page, and some content for the new main page is being developed at User:Linuxbeak/Sandbox. Please look and comment. Sj 15:17, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

Conference software

Regarding conference and paper submission software, I found a very nice open source tidbit called Open Conference Systems. You may find it at http://pkp.sfu.ca/ocs/. It looks very good, has a lot of nice features for both the applicants and the reviewers, and would work very well for what we want. Comments? Linuxbeak 01:22, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Related groups

academic groups, conferences/conventions, content creators, media, university departments, volunteer groups, &c

...

Opponents as guests

Hi, I don't really know if this is the right place to put this, but if not, please move it. I would like to suggest to put in the scedule also some critical notes. Maybe it's an idea to invite people having problems with wikiprojects, or who just are against it? People like Seigenthaler or Brandt. We could listen to them, we could learn from them, we could discuss with them. And it would make the conference more in balance. It's of cource the question if they would like to come, but is inviting them an option? And who would be the best for that? (Not necessarily the most controversial, but more the person who is most likely to discuss in a proper way and would like to come) Please think about it, and don't shoot it immediately. Let the idea settle, because however it sounds odd in the beginning, it could be an extra value to the conference. Effeietsanders 23:01, 22 December 2005 (UTC)

Definetly don't let Brandt in, he'd just reck the spirit. But Seigenthaler might be an interesting guest, he could shed even more thoughts about where we should be going. -- user:zanimum

Lodging

I am a Wikipedian and a resident of Boston. I'm not really sure of where this notice should go, but I am willing to offer lodging (crash-on-the-floor style) in my apartment for Wikipedians attending the conference. The house is vegan-friendly, close to public transportation, and run on anarchist principles. Languages spoken include English, Yiddish, Hebrew, and German. You can e-mail me through my user page on Wikipedia. The user name is Daykart. 65.96.220.2 21:12, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Awesome. You can just note this on the attendees list. Sj 22:38, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Wikimania name change?

There has been some concern about the difficulty in registering the domain name and trademark for 'wikimania', and brainstorming about a new name. See Wikimania name discussion for details. Sj 23:13, 4 January 2006 (UTC)

IRC Channels for Meetings

Sometimes I have problems locating the IRC channel for meetings on the wiki. I know meetings sometimes happen in wikimania on freenode.net and sometimes elsewhere. As someone who is trying to rally volunteers from outside the Wikipedia/Wikimedia community, let me convey here that it would be much appreciated if IRC channels where meetings are happening could be listed with meeting notices. Thanks! jkbaumga 17:30, 30 January 2006 (UTC)

will do. as a general rule of thumb, they're in freenode#wikimania. Brassratgirl 21:15, 22 February 2006 (UTC)

They should all be in #wikimania, until we have many more meetings than we have at present. Sj 23:50, 23 February 2006 (UTC)

Audience

Which age group is Wikimania aimed for? It seems that many of the events are aimed toward tech professionals. Since many Wikipedians are teenagers, is there anything in Wikimania that would make it suitable for teenagers/adolescents as well? Schzmo 17:03, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

thoughts on teams

old content from the Volunteers page

General organization thoughts

What is a good division into organization teams? Groups last year, at some stage, included: program, technical, website, budget, operations, volunteer-coordination, translation-coordination, publicity...

Other fairly large volunteer-run conferences and events (each with its own organizational style):

• neuroscience - some staff; 35k people.
• worldcon scifi events - 4-5k people; fanfiction events, ~1k people
• bloggercons - 300-400 people
• esperanto cons - week long, multi/unilingual, mainly Europe; 300+ people

Would it help to pay someone to work on overall conference organization? What might such a person do? How would this work with volunteer organizers?

Core conference team

Last year, there was a Lead Coordinator, a General Coordinator, and a Local Coordinator or two. Together, they made many key decisions, including the regular snap decisions that had to be made as soon as the opportunity arose. Division of labor was not sharply defined, however; various people worked on aspects of budgeting, registration, travel arrangements, invitation-writing, answering help-mail, organizing information on the website, drafting and sending out press releases. There was a core team of 5-7 people, and when something came up that had to be done, whoever was around and able to do it did it. These things were not always cleanly predicted or delegated without complication.

• Conference organizer -- the Board recently posted an advertisement looking for someone to hire for such a role; the details of the role were unspecified.
  • Would this be like the Lead Coordinator from Wikimania 2005? That was a role which involved organizing meetings, sending out the internal communications describing the state of the event, getting people to work together, coming up with ideas, organizing teams and delegating tasks, keeping track of everything that was going on in each team, setting deadlines, working to integrate sponsors and media contacts, and occasionally (quietly) making final decisions where necessary; and did not, for instance, involve budgeting, registration, venue-negotiation, or dealing with most contractors.
  • Would this be like a conference organizer hired out from a typical agency : someone who asks for input about conference goals, and regularly checks for updates on changing conference needs; and is devoted to helping find contractors and negotiate good deals, arranging finances and logistics, advising on or handling paperwork, holding people to deadlines, keeping up with contractors and deliveries (from agreement through fulfillment), overseeing setup and takedown on-site?

    If this role is going to be paid, it seems to me appropriate for it to be of the latter sort. Paying people to exercise authority and delegate tasks is hard to coordinate with an active volunteer crew. No matter how much work such a manager puts in their job, it is only a fraction of the work everyone else puts in together. On the flip side of the coin, staying on top of logistics, finances, and contractors can mean being constantly on call during business hours, not being able to set ones own hours, and doing difficult work that, if successful, is completely invisible to the rest of the world. It is easier to justify paying someone on a volunteer team when they are doing unenviable heavy lifting for the others. Sj 12:34, 5 December 2005 (UTC)

• Registration organization
• Satellite events coordination (coordinate also with hacking days lead)

  Including at local museums, libraries, universities

Other core team-members: leads from other teams below, including at least one from the translation team and one from the information team.

More helpful pages:   Wikimania 2005 | 2005 website +/-