[Foundation-l] Wikimania: thank you to our hosts :-)

Fri Aug 12 21:31:22 UTC 2011

Hi folks,

I don't know if anyone has made a post-Wikimania thread yet thanking our
hosts --- if so, I'm sorry to duplicate, but I've missed it.

It was such an amazing Wikimania! I want to say thanks to everyone who
helped make it happen --- the site selection jury, the Israeli chapter, the
local planning team, the program committee, the people who worked on
scholarships, all the presenters, and everyone else who contributed. I
_think_ the key people were Deror, Harel, Itzik and Tomer, so thank you to
you four especially (as well as whoever else I have inadvertently missed).

Among the highlights for me:

* Yochai Benkler was seriously awe-inspiring.

* I was thrilled like I am every year to see old friends and to put faces to
names (FloNight, finally!) that I've only previously known on-wiki.

* The WikiChix lunch is always a highlight for me, and I am so happy to see
it grow every year. There was lots of energy and useful information-sharing
this year: it was great :-)

* This year I did less media than in previous years, so I was able to attend
a lot of talks. I still missed plenty that I wished I'd seen, but I saw a
lot of good stuff. In general, it seemed to me that there's a lot of good
thinking happening around editor retention issues -- it is great to see
people, in addition to naming and exploring the challenges, starting to move
towards solutions.

* It was lovely to finally meet Angela and Tim's gorgeous baby :-)

* And this year the closing party was AWESOME. I don't think Wikimedians are
generally renowned for the excellence of our parties, but this one was
super-fun. There was lots of energy on the dance floor, and I laughed out
loud to see Topher, James Owen and Andrew Garrett wearing garlands of
flowers and dancing on speakers. (In retrospect I wonder if I imagined that
part. It's possible I did :-)

All in all, it was beautifully managed and enormously fun: my thanks to the
Haifa organizers, who made it look easy :-)

Thanks,
Sue