[Wikimania-l] Wikimania meeting minutes 2005/11/05

Poor, Edmund W Edmund.W.Poor at abc.com
Fri Nov 11 14:35:00 UTC 2005


Note that Harvard Square is near Harvard Law School (restaurants are 5 min. to 15 min. by walking). Kendall Square is near MIT Media Lab. I might be able to interest my mother in providing bed and breakfast for a couple; she has a spare bedroom with a Queen-size bed overlooking a lovely garden.

Conference goals should be:
1. Enhance community interaction: make it more fun to be a Wikipedian / WikiMedian!
2. Improve the quality of Wikipedia and other Wikimedia projects

I can get professional encyclopedia editors to attend / speak at the conference - all with PhD's in their fields.

I am preparing a paper and/or speech (with slides) on "Online Interactions which Facilitate the Production of Quality".

Ed Poor
(who grew up in Cambridge, Mass.)

> -----Original Message-----
> From: wikimania-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org 
> [mailto:wikimania-l-bounces at Wikipedia.org] On Behalf Of SJ
> Sent: Thursday, November 10, 2005 9:24 PM
> To: wikimania-l at wikipedia.org
> Subject: [Wikimania-l] Wikimania meeting minutes 2005/11/05
> 
> 
> Society of Wikimaniacs
> November 5, 2005, 20:00 UTC
> irc.freenode.net#wikimania
> 
> Present :  _sj_, akl, Alkivar, Angela, AnyFile, brettstil, 
> brion, Chris_Parham, delphine, e2m__, EricaG,  gwdash,  
> JamesF, jikomboe, MikeSnow, mysekurity, Phroziac, randy_f, 
> reagleBRKLN, sasha_ (asw), 
> Shanel, shekhar, Solensean, TitaniumDreads,
> 
> ...but silent : Bdka, cathyma, Chiacomo, CraigSpurrier, 
> da_didi, GerardM, Get_It, here, mattis, MichaelDiederich, 
> poli_, Rdsmith4, SabineCretella, soufron, SvenDowideit, 
> tobacman,  tractor, zwitter ...and away : AppleBoy, Austin, 
> GhostFreeman, JeLuF, mark, Rince, Schuyler, SethIlys,
> 
> 1. Long before the meeting, Alkivar links to [[Jason Scott 
> Sadofsky]] ("a computer history archivist... who is 
> humorously anti-wikipedia") and suggests he would make a good 
> speaker.  Also notes that on campus you can have better 
> parties later than you can elsewhere in town.
> 
> 2. e2m__ asked if attendees from Asia, Africa, and South 
> America will be particularly welcome.  The meeting is just 
> starting, and this is never answered... are they?  See also 
> the discussion of conference goals, below.
> 
> Via email, Node suggested organizing travel groups of people 
> from similar countries / languages, to help them get used to 
> the new environment; and to offer partner-interpreters (for 
> each group?) -- 
> to encourage people with poor English skills to attend who 
> normally avoid such international events.  
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_2006#Internation
> al_outreach
> 
> 3. Time sensitive issues first : dates for the conference?  
> There are 3 promising weekends :  July 22-23, July 29-30, and 
> August 5-6.  The weekend in August seems to be the easiest 
> for people to schedule, but may be more expensive for flights 
> from Europe.
> 
> 3A - Todo: compare flight prices for these dates.
> 
> 3B -  Harvard professional schools start late for the US, but 
> early for Europe.  UK high schools get out late, will still 
> be in session mid-July (so flights might be cheaper).
> 
> 3C - Anyfile did a quick price search; prices were the same 
> for those two weekends. Group & corporate flight discounts 
> were mentioned.
> 
> 4. Working with the Harvard dorm & room offices : the [room] 
> office hasn't sorted out their schedule yet; will get to it 
> "very soon".
> 
>    UPDATE: The optimal week[end] for dorms is in early August 
> (we could get any combination of dorms we want, up to 450 
> beds). Still waiting on room details.
> 
> 5. Amgine: will the whole event be at the Harvard Law School? 
>  Answer: No.  The MIT Media Lab wants to host some smaller 
> events, even all of the hacking days.  They've also offered 
> to book their largest hall, Kresge auditorium, if we want to use it.
> 
> 6. Where is there food?  Places mentioned : The Harkness 
> Commons (next door), on-campus caterers (cheers from the 
> local union member), nearby restaurants around Harvard & 
> Kendall Square.
> 
> 7. Timeline : budget 3 months for travel preparation after 
> acceptnace of papers, for the most difficult cases. CfP in 
> January, December; give initial acceptances by April.
> 
> 8A : Next meeting - when is good?  rotate every meeting by 15.2 days? 
>  Pick two times and switch between them?  Have multiple 
> meetings on some weeks?  We settle on the second option.  
> Next meeting tentatively set for 1600 UTC, Saturday November 19.
> 
> 8B : Have short meetings and keep most discussion on [Meta].  
> Clean out the Wikimania wiki and decide if want the site to 
> be a wiki next year.
> 
> 9A. What should the conference goals be?   We agree generally that it
> should support the online communities, and be a party and 
> social gathering; and that it should involve "a conference".  
> We had some
> trouble defininzg 'conference.'   How could we describe the community
> and academic parts of Wikimania more clearly?
>      Is international outreach important?  Increasing the 
> visibility of small projects?  Increasing outreach to 
> underrepresented languages?  Should the goals for this year 
> be different than they were last year?
> 
> 9B.  Naming : JamesF liked "symposium" better than 
> conference, but didn't find broad support . (Wikisym's use of 
> the term was noted.)  
> Mysekurity suggested "the [N]th First Annual" conference, a 
> la the Ignobels.  MikeSnow chimed in with "Wikimania 2.0".
> 
> 10. Design, logos, mascots.   Mysekurity wanted a logo contest.  This
> met with some definite opposition. Conference t-shirts and 
> laptop stickers, however... JamesF dreams of having a 
> different shirt from each wikimania in 20 years.  Delphine 
> suggests a confernce mascot... a new one every year.  (the 
> Wikipedia worm? Bob the Angry Sunflower?  a dolphin?  a 
> weasel?  a marmot?)
> 
> 11. Advisors : Sj brings up Tthe idea of a general advisory 
> panel -- representatives from outside the community, from 
> different parts of the world, who could suggest and provide 
> intros to potential speakers and sponsors.  Chris Parham 
> noted the structure doesn't have to be formal, but that 
> getting people involved in this way would be helpful.  
> Delphine wanted to know what the advisors would do, other 
> than advising the program team.
> 
> 12. Announcements.  Will there be announcements on the main 
> WP page[s]?  A sitewide notice?  When, for how long?  At the 
> first opportunity to sign up, before a major 
> paper/registration deadline? It is noted that sitewide 
> notices were put up last year on fr:wp, to some complaints, 
> but not on en:wp.
> 
> 13. Media streaming.  Mysekurity: webcam streams?  audio? 
> Mysekurity: will it be broken down into 'important' and 'not 
> important' segments? 
> Akl: as long as there's someone to do it... mysekurity would 
> be glad to '''help''' (emphasis his :)
> 
> 14. Feedback from attendees and presenters.  Attendees from 
> last year want a social list to keep up with friends from 
> Wikimania.  Other feedback already left on meta needs to be reviewed.
> 
> 15. Licensing of papers.  General agreement: ask speakers to 
> agree to a reasonably free license, and to audio/video 
> reproduction if they're being recorded, well ahead of time.
> 
> 16. Conference planning software. No word from Austin, Jakob, 
> or Patrick; it is generally agreed that a license agreement 
> on paper submission makes sense.  JamesF mentions that he was 
> at some point happy to help Austin improve on last year's reg 
> system; regrets mentioning it again :-)  It is also agreed we 
> should choose our program planning software in time for the 
> program team to look at it.
> 
> 17. Program team and Papers
> This team is one of the first to act.  How will it be 
> structured?  Who will be on it?  Who will lead it?  We should 
> get help from outside the community; technologists and 
> academics (e.g., Sunir, others from Wikimania '05?) 
> methodically split up papers into review groups.
>     Amgine notes CfPs should have a postmark deadline.  
> Delphine says there should be a very official, and a secret 
> unofficial deadline.  Sj suggests having an early deadline 
> for people who need advnce notice; Delphine said she will pay 
> Sj a beer if anyone submits a paper early. 
> Mysekurity: will papers be physical, on a wiki?  will they be 
> editable / commentable by others before the event?  Delphine 
> notes she would not like that.
> 
> 18. Other teams
> Website and conf-software are also needed soon.  Ditto 
> general conference organization. How should the organization 
> be divided? 
> Should they be split into formal committees?  Do we need to 
> hire people to coordinate the volunteers, or have an external 
> conference organizer?
>     Sj noted there is an agenda item on the upcoming board 
> meeting re: hiring an organizer for Wikimania.
> 
> 19. Multilingualism
> Soleansan thinks we should translate papers into Swahili, "or 
> at least in Réunion creole," so people don't get the 
> impression that WP is only
> English, or only for English-speakers.   Alkivar thinks we need
> Fr/Es/De translations for every major speaker.  Delphine 
> suggests waiting until registration is opened and we see who 
> signs up.  akl notes that in Frankfurt, none of the German 
> attendees needed translations.  .
>    Sj added that we know hardly any relevant presenters who 
> don't speak in English, but if we had a better way of 
> finding/filtering potential speakers, we might find them.  
> Delphine suggests spending money on travel sponsorships and 
> visas, and not on translation..  But we didn't release the 
> CfP in too many languages last year... can sj evaluate a 
> Russian paper?  via a translator. (e.g., the Chinese-language 
> paper submitted last year)
>    akl wants to know if the next irc meeting will be held in 
> swahili, russian or in chinese? :)
> 
> 20. Closure and followups
> Two hours was a bit long.   Follow-ups on the wiki:
> 
> http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimania_2006/En#November
_5_discussion


++SJ
_______________________________________________
Wikimania-l mailing list
Wikimania-l at Wikipedia.org http://mail.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l



More information about the Wikimania-l mailing list