Dear Wikimaniacs near and far,
Thanks to all for making Wikimania an amazing event this year. It was
more fun than a barrel of edit-warriors from Gdansk... who probably
showed up Saturday night. We had over 450 attendees, a quarter of
them from outside the US; over 50 journalists & media groups on-site;
85 presentations, workshops, and panels; 25 posters and 40 last-minute
lightning presentations; two great parties including robots and
holograms; a scavenger hunt full of info <hmm>; a Web 1.0 elevator
pitch-off judged by time-travelling VCs, Wikimania Awards for great
free-content media and writing judged by Wikipedians and Creative
Commoners, and the 17th annual world Calvinball championship. And 40
amazing volunteers who helped things run smoothly all year.
You can find media archives online. We have raw video for the two
main rooms, but this is not yet online; however audio is available for
most sessions:
http://wikimania2006.wikime=dia.org/wiki/Archives
Video of the Web 1.0 elevator pitch-off will be available soon (Finne?)
We are working on the proceedings; some full presentations are
available already, and the discussions are not over -- all
presentations are open to comment. A document with most of the
abstracts in one package will be available soon online.
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:Index
Finally, your feedback is appreciated, whether you attended in person
or remotely, in English or in other languages :
http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Post_conference_comments
Summer regards,
SJ
PS -- if you are inspired to launch a bid for your own favorite city
to host Wikimania next year, rough guidelines are up and cities are
being selected within the next 6 weeks (!!):
http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007/Bids
PPS - if you couldn't make it to Wikimania, and haven't filled your
wiki quotient for the summer, there is yet hope. Wikisym is coming up
next week, in Denmark:
http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006/