On Mon, Mar 26, 2012 at 11:30 AM, Juliana Bastos domusaurea@gmail.com wrote:
In practical terms, long story short, I need a certificate of participation with the name of a university or scientific association in the letterhead.
That makes sense. I don't know how close the interaction with GWU is; but I suggest asking for this specifically.
When I organized Wikimania in '06, our faculty sponsor sent out letters on Harvard letterhead to help bring any attendees who asked. I don't remember many failing to get funding, even though we were a new conference. We may have produced a simple certificate for a couple of participants, but did not have one for everyone. [In contrast, if I recall correctly Wikimania Buenos Aires did have one.]
On Sun, Mar 25, 2012 at 8:42 PM, Laura Hale laura@fanhistory.com wrote:
This echoes what I was told by a lecturer at the Australian National University. Academics would like to participate at these events, but they need to clearly fit into the academic narrative. Conference precedeeings, a formal call for papers circulated to academic listservs, some indication of how the peer review process is done for deciding who presenters are, highlighting university participation as a co-host/partner for the event, a list of other academics who have been invited and will be participating, etc.
These are good things to do anyway, as I think James suggested elsewhere. I don't know that there has ever been a consolidated proceedings PDF published with more than abstracts, but it has been considered by past org teams... other considerations have included stricter submission requirements, or an academic track that has such strict requirements.
Anyone interestd in this should talk to Phoebe Ayers, who has helped organize many Wikimanias (including '06 with me), and chaired WikiSym, a strictly academic conference, in 2010.
We have had some excellent academic presenters at past Wikimanias. But it would be great to have more.
SJ