[Foundation-l] Conferences, Wikimedia, TED

[Milos Rancic]

As the most of you know, TED has affiliate program called TEDx. I am
organizing TEDxBelgrade events. The first one was in Saturday.

There are two important points for us: (1) even local conferences
could be very inspiring and (2) there is online documentation how to
make them.

As Wikimedia bureaucrat by profession, I was very carefully reading
TED's documentation and I was insisting to implement all of them.
(Coordinating organizational network in non-hierarchical manner was
also possible thanks to my Wikimedian background.) TED's documentation
[1] is very good and I suggest to all Wikimedians who organize events
to read it. Some adaptation is needed just for places with not a lot
of technical infrastructure. In other words, all present Wikimedia
chapters could implement TED's recommendations as they are.

I expected just an ordinary event, with good and bad sides. However,
just carefully selected speakers, working with them and regular
implementation of the rest is enough to create an event about which
participants would talk during the next days as an extraordinary
event.

Our conferences don't need to be about great big and small ideas. They
are about knowledge in general. But, it is also possible to create
interesting and inspiring events about knowledge. There is a set of
small techniques which makes difference between boring and very
interesting [scientific] event.

I think that all Wikimedia chapters are able to do that. I suggest to
all of Wikimedia organizations to organize their own TEDx even or
events according to TED's recommendations. If anyone needs help, just
email me.

[1] - http://www.ted.com/pages/view/id/351