Wikimania 2008/Bids/Atlanta/UNC Chapel Hill

During Wikimania 2008, we wish to have a sister event organized for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, to be held in tandem with the main event in Atlanta. It will be called the "UNC/ibiblio Many-to-Many Media Conference 2008."

Due to larger than expected public support from students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, we have decided it would be fitting of our event's theme to showcase achievements at UNC, a nationally and internationally recognized public research university, in conjunction with the main event.

This sister event is in the works, but would ideally consist of a few speakers local to the area, who specialize in open source and free culture movements as well as internet technology. It would also serve as a larger "meetup" of sorts for Wikimedians in North Carolina who otherwise could not attend the conference in Atlanta. Both events will be televised to one another simultaneously so each side can feel like they're "there."

Our contact person at this point is Paul Jones, a faculty member at UNC, director of ibiblio, and advisor to the organizations Carolina Free Culture and the Carolina Open Source Initiative. Jones and the bid have received the go-ahead from the Dean of School of Information and Library Science, and he wants to get other local universities involved, such as N.C. State and Duke.