On 19 Jul 2012, at 23:59, Thomas Dalton wrote:
> On 19 July 2012 05:57, Florence Devouard <
anthere@anthere.org> wrote:
>> The first is that I see a trend in seeing Wikimania as a "conference" rather
>> than a sort of "giant meetup". I regret it.
>> I was particularly sensible this year to the fact we had "factions". I could
>> see the French speaking guys hanging together here. And the German chapter
>> people hanging there. And in another corner the editing community of the
>> English Wikipedia. And over there, the Glam people. And though there were
>> naturally bridges between those groups, there was not much mixing and
>> bonding.
>
> I certainly found myself talking to people from the UK far too much. I
> did make a point of leaving the UK group to go and speak to other
> people a few times, but there is a strong tendency to drift back to
> the people you know. I think it becomes more of a problem the larger
> Wikimania gets.
>
> Having been to quite a few international Wikimedia events, I know a
> lot of non-UK people too, which helps. People at their first
> international Wikimedia event must find it even harder. There
> difficult part is always initialising conversation with someone new
> (we're all Wikimedians, so finding something in common to discuss once
> you've started talking is usually pretty easy). I have two ideas for
> helping people initiate conversation:
>
> * A speed-dating style event near the beginning of the conference.
> Make sure it is the only thing happening at that time to maximise
> participation. You won't be able to get everyone to talk to everyone
> else within a reasonable amount of time (1000 people, 30 seconds each,
> that's over 8 hours!) but you could speak to a large enough proportion
> of attendees for there to be someone you've met in most groups so that
> you can easily join the group.
>
> * "Talk to me about..." lists on badges. Knowing that someone is
> interested in a particular thing can give you an excuse to talk to
> them.
>
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