On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 10:16 AM, phoebe ayers <phoebe.ayers(a)gmail.com> wrote: I had a great time -- the highlight was meeting Karen Sue Rolph, who just left Stanford Management Company as their Special Projects Director, and is looking to support the open source community. She knows more than half a dozen languages, is an anthropologist (but has Ph.D.s in multiple subjects) and so I think she would be ideal for California Chapter Principal Investigator. The PLATO exhibit was excellent, but there are strong parallels with today: the educational aspects were overshadowed by the entertainment aspects. I was able to talk to Paul Tenczar about TUTOR/CONCEPT answer judging, and I added pattern matching for fill-in-the-blank answers to the to-do list for GIFT: http://microformats.org/wiki/gift#Notes_for_further_work -- I should also take this opportunity to mention that Yaron Koren, a Wikimedia/Google Summer of Code Mentor, has offered to do the GIFT enhancement to the Mediawiki Quiz module for only $2,500 -- less than half of what it would have cost Google -- and have it ready in a month, with unit tests. This would allow us to start offering the assessments from more than 5,000 hours of coursework from the UK Open University on Wikiversity. I also got a chance to talk about acquiring a Hayes telegraph (ticker tape) transmitter with the museum board of trustees chair and the founding curator. They are planning a telegraphy installation from 1959 through the transatlantic cable, so I am glad I was able to point them to the first digital electronic alphanumeric communications system. Phoebe, at http://www.phoebeayers.info/phlog/?p=1617#comments you said that you didn't think the California community was ready for a chapter, and that you don't see a strong connection between the ideas on http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wikimedia_California and what a chapter can do. Would you please elaborate? There are some things that I've included in the initial draft Chapter grant request but aren't listed there. For example, a Chapter could establish a mirror of foundation servers -- which would be necessary to experiment with peer-to-peer wiki technology (third-party edit conflict resolution), and/or make Wikinews an independent, funded entity. Do you think either or both of those are worthy goals?