Dear Mr. Vibber and Ms. Ayers,<br><br> Let me reply your advises one by one in the following, along with Ms. Ayers' statements.<br><br><div><span class="gmail_quote">2007/2/12, phoebe ayers <<a href="mailto:brassratgirl@gmail.com">
brassratgirl@gmail.com</a>>:</span><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><br>a) have more excellent formal technical talks and panels in the main
<br>program -- but this means that all of you interested in the subject<br>will have to *submit* talks :) (the cfp will be open soon, hopefully).</blockquote><div><br>WIKIWYG and CLEF WiQA funders have both accepted my invitation.
<br>That is, we will have at least these two topics in the main conference<br>program. For CfP, web maintenance team is trying to establish Indico<br>and getting helps from Ivan, hopefully it will be open soon, yes.<br></div>
<br>For more concrete technical programs of main conference, we are<br>roughly following past Wikimania topics and then polish them.<br>Basically I am trying to organize human resources from Web API<br>perspectives. This is also current direction of Hacking Days "Extra,"
<br>i.e. the parallel track of Hacking Days beyond MediaWiki itself.<br><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">b) if the core developers want to plan a closed, invite-only meeting,
<br>they should be able to do so before or after the main conference<br>(getting in touch with the accomodation/registration coordinator would<br>probably be a good idea for timing issues) but this wouldn't be the<br>
same thing as a general hacking days.</blockquote><div><br>For MediaWiki core development, it is an invite-only hack-athon.<br>We would like to invite MediaWiki committers formally via MediaWiki<br>foundation later, and keep it self-organized by developers themselves.
<br>What we can do for MediaWiki core developers is preparing a quite space<br>with high-speed network, confertable seats, enough foods and drinks, etc.<br><br>For more closed meetings before or after the main conference,
<br>coordinators may provide clear information about suitable places<br>to meet and to stay. For example, if developers want to have a BOF<br>in the evening, we may order the best cafe with beers and wireless<br>for them.
<br></div><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">c) we need good ideas in how to integrate ideas from the tech talks,<br>the more limited meeting, and those with interest in hacking mediawiki
<br>into a smaller, more open hacking days.</blockquote><div><br>To hold a parallel Hacking Days "Extra" with realistic productivity,<br>we need a series of "unit tests" to prove the "design" of Hacking Days plan.
<br>That's why I also take charge of a local hacking days and an open source<br>conference in Taipei. They are<br><a href="http://taipedia.info/mediawiki/index.php/TaiwanHackathon">http://taipedia.info/mediawiki/index.php/TaiwanHackathon
</a> (in English)<br>and<br><a href="http://osdc.tw/">http://osdc.tw/</a> (in Chinese),<br>respectively.<br></div></div><br>I am looking forward to any concrete question (and even challenge)<br>about what's the best "evaluation" method to ensure the Hacking Days
<br>can reach good coverage and accuracy both.<br><br>I know there are also a lot of arguments on this mailing list and<br>wikitech-l. The replies are going to appear soon.<br><br> Cheers,<br>Mike<br>