[Wikimedia-l] Wikimedia Conference in Karlsruhe, Germany

[Romaine Wiki]

The past three days (22-24 Nov) there was in the south German city of Karlsruhe near the French border a conference organised by Wikimedia Germany and a whole group of volunteers. The conference, WikiCon, was held for the fourth time as German language conference, with many users from Germany, Switzerland, and Austria, but also users from Poland, Czech Republic, Italy, and the Netherlands. I was there too and was asked to give a presentation and tell about about bots and about Wiki Loves Monuments. The conference was held in the buildings of the complex of the Karlsruher Institut für Technologie (KIT), with there the rooms for presentations and talks, a university cafeteria and a hall.

The conference took three days to enable the users to travel here from longer distances to come here. Friday was the day of arrival. In the afternoon almost everyone arrived. Those who were early could join the excursion to the Bundesverfassungsgericht [1], an important court in Germany. At the beginning of the evening everyone was welcomed and a buffet was arranged. After that a Entzücklopädischer Abend (entzücken = delight), in what humor and music where used to have a look at the going ons in Wikipedia. After a long night everyone went to their hotel.

On the second day there were seven tracks - seven simultaneous series of presentations - about a wide range of subjects with attention to all kinds of aspects of Wikipedia and the things that accompany it. See for the program in German on https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiCon_2013/Programm
At noon a lunch was arranged for the attendees in the cafeteria. At the beginning of the evening followed the ceremony of Wiki Loves Monuments in Germany. Then there was a buffet arranged for the attendees, after which people lingered long and talked until midnight.

On the third day, there was a barcamp [2], the visitors had indicated the day before what topics they wanted to talk about and/or give a presentation and who was interested. There was also room for discussion on some issues. Around noon we moved to the main hall for closure. There the motivation awards were handed out: which projects over the past year contributed most to the development of (mainly) the German Wikipedia. Also everyone was thanked who helped to make this conference a success.

I personally I liked the most talking to users to exchange our experiences on Wikipedia and learn from each other, what subjects people are working on and what they encounter working on the various projects. There is a huge overlapping with what users encounter on the German Wikipedia compared to other wikis, but we actually know so little about each other.

Other ingredients were big Wikipediabeanbags, Wikipedia seating cubes, wikichocolate, wikipuzzles, free internet, nice users on an interesting conference.

Also I should mention that the KIT is active with open access as publication model.

See for images: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:WikiCon_2013

Greetings,

Romaine


>From a poster there:
Many Wikipedia article on meals have no photo yet.
What could be more natural than the court to prepare myself to photograph, and involve them in the Wikipedia?
-- http://wikifeedme.openthesaurus.de/





[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Constitutional_Court_of_Germany
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BarCamp