Join us for the Celtic and Indigenous Languages Conference - Booking closes 27 June - Languages

20 Jun 2017

Dear colleagues,

How can technology support language communities?

Join us at the Celtic Knot: Wikipedia Language
conference<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2017> taking place
Thursday 6 July 2017 at the University of Edinburgh Business School to find out. Booking
closes 27 June so don’t delay!
The main objective for Celtic Knot 2017 is the coming together of those working to support
Celtic and Indigenous Languages in the same room at same time; strengthening the bonds
into a 'knot' and leading into action. We welcome diverse attendees ranging from
Wikimedians, linguists, educators, researchers, information professionals, media
professionals, translators, learning technologists and more coming together to share good
practice and find fruitful new collaborations to support language communities as a result
of the event.

New satellite event: Introduction to Wikidata and the Wikidata Query
Service<https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/introduction-to-wikidata-and-wikidata-query-service-workshop-lea-lacroix-wikimedia-deutschland-tickets-35404137729?aff=es2>
– this event is now scheduled 11am to 1pm on Tuesday 4 July presented by Léa Lacroix
(Project Manager Community Communication for Wikidata, Wikimedia Deutschland). Léa will
also be joining us at the Celtic Knot as part of the Wikidata workshop on 6 July too. Just
one of the many great
speakers<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2017#Speakers> and
presentations<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2017/Programme>
covering Catalan Wikipedia, Welsh Wikipedia, Scots Gaelic Wikipedia, Basque Wikipedia,
Northern Sami Wikipedia and more at the Celtic Knot:

Keynote speakers

  *   Professor Antonella
Sorace<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2017#Keynotes> -
Professor of Developmental Linguistics at the University of
Edinburgh<http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/%7Eantonell/> and founding director of
Bilingualism Matters<http://www.bilingualism-matters.org.uk/> will be speaking on
‘Bilingualism in minority languages: a resource and an opportunity’.
  *   Jason
Evans<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Celtic_Knot_Conference_2017#Keynotes> -
Wikimedian in Residence at the National Library of
Wales<https://wikimedia.org.uk/wiki/Expert_outreach/Wikipedian_in_Residence_at_the_National_Library_of_Wales>
will discuss his strategy for working with Wikimedia UK and the Welsh Government to
develop the Welsh Wicipedia using a combination of community engagement, data manipulation
and the implementation of Open Access policies.

Confirmed speakers also include:

  *   Susan Ross – Gaelic Wikipedian in
Residence<https://blog.wikimedia.org.uk/2017/01/wikimedia-uk-and-national-library-of-scotland-announce-new-gaelic-post/>
at the National Library of
Scotland.<http://www.nls.uk/news/archive/2017/01/gaelic-wikipedian-begins>
  *   Dr. Sharon
Arbuthnot<http://pure.qub.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/sharon-arbuthnot%28519b4b40-d075-4b6d-9199-15a05d214165%29.html>
- Research Fellow, Queen's University, Belfast. Presenting on the AHRC-funded eDIL
project<http://www.dil.ie/> (Irish Language dictionary) on Wednesday 5th July.
  *   Gareth Morlais – the Welsh Language Unit, Welsh Government.  Gareth will speak about
how mapping how much importance major companies (Google, Twitter, Apple) attach to
creative activity on Wikipedia led to the Welsh Government helping to fund two
Welsh-language Wikipedia initiatives.
  *   Delyth Prys – Head of the Language Technologies Unit, Bangor University, will speak
on Welsh/Celtic speech technology and why text-to-speech and speech recognition are
becoming increasingly important in our digital world.
  *   Àlex Hinojo<http://www.alexhinojo.cat/en/bio/> – Executive Director, Amical
Wikimedia<https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Amical_Wikimedia> on the Catalan language
project.
  *   Iñaki Lopez de Luzuriaga – Developing the Basque Wikipedia: From corpus expansion to
outreach.
  *   Astrid Carlsen – Executive Director, Wikimedia Norge speaking on Norwegian Bokmål,
Norwegian Nynorsk and building a project to revitalize the Northern Sami Wikipedia.
  *   Robin Owain – Wales Manager, Wikimedia UK, speaking on recent developments
supporting the Welsh language community.
  *   Mina Theofilatou  presenting on ‘The Kefalonian Dialect in Wiktionary and how
Wikitherapy addresses social equality in open-source language projects’.
  *   Duncan Brown - Llên Natur<http://www.llennatur.com/Drupal7/llennatur/>r/>,
presenting on ‘Y BYWIADUR: the dictionary of life’.
  *   Rémy Gerbet - Wikimedia France; presenting on the Lingua Libre
project<https://www.lingualibre.fr/> for massive open audio recording.
  *   Käbi Suvi - Wikimedia Estonia on the ‘Miljon+’ project as part of Estonia’s 100th
anniversary.
  *   Ilario Valdelli - Wikimedia Switzerland, speaking on the Digital Library in Romansch
and the new initiatives to map the archeological sites connected with Celtic culture in
the Alps.
  *   Wikipedia’s new Content Translation tool and how it has been successfully employed
in Higher Education to share knowledge between different language Wikipedias and give
students meaningful published practice – Ewan McAndrew, Wikimedian in Residence.

It promises to be a great event – including a panel on the Politics of Language Online,
excellent papers, workshops and discussion spaces. Please feel free to forward this event
to interested colleagues in your network.

If you would like to learn more then please contact me direct at
ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk<mailto:ewan.mcandrew@ed.ac.uk>.

Very best regards,
Ewan

Ewan McAndrew
Wikimedian in Residence

Tel: 07719 330076
Email: ewan.mcandrew(a)ed.ac.uk
Subscribe to the mailing list: wikimedia(a)mlist.is.ed.ac.uk
My working hours are 10.30am to 6.30pm Monday to Friday.
Wikipedia Project Page for the residency:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:University_of_Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh, Floor H (West), Argyle House, 3 Lady Lawson Street,
Edinburgh, EH3 9DR.
www.ed.ac.uk