Hello dear Wikidata community,
After the success of the first WikidataCon in 2017
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikidataCon_2017> and many
conversations regarding the future of this conference, we are now ready to
announce that the WikidataCon 2019 will take place on October 25th-26th
2019 in Berlin.
Apart from this first piece of information (save the date in your
calendars!), there are some important changes regarding the goal of the
conference that we would like to share with you.
After its first iteration, the goals of the conference will evolve. The
event will be more focused on networking and strategic discussions. The
target group will of course include the Wikidata community in its broad
sense, especially people and organizations who are already involved in
editing, structuring and reusing the data, but will also reach further the
organizations who may be interested in using Wikidata and Wikibase, or
contributing in various ways to the evolution of Wikidata.
The program will be adapted to this new goal, and organized around
different levels of involvement for the participants: from being inspired
(with keynotes, success stories, vision of Wikidata’s future) to diving
deeper into the hot topics, but also action: the participants will have the
opportunity to work on projects during the conference.
Besides many possible topics that will be submitted by the participants, we
plan to have a dedicated track about lexicographical data, discussing the
perspectives for further reusing data about words within and beyond
Wikidata.
A lot of space will be left for discussions, networking, building
connections between the different stakeholders and members of the broad
Wikidata community.
The conference will be hosting at least 250 participants. In order to make
sure that the access to the conference is fair and to not reproduce the
issues of last year (rush to get a ticket and long waiting list), we will
set up a more streamlined registration process, where a committee made up
of both staff and volunteers will make sure that the applicants will
contribute in one way or another to the goal of the conference. I will keep
you updated for the next steps of this process.
You can already see Wikidata:WikidataCon 2019
<https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikidataCon_2019> which will be
improved step by step over the next months, and you can already use the
discussion page. If you have any question, you can also contact me on my
talk page or by email.
We're looking forward to a great WikidataCon 2019, together with you!
Thanks for your attention,
--
Léa Lacroix
Project Manager Community Communication for Wikidata
Wikimedia Deutschland e.V.
Tempelhofer Ufer 23-24
10963 Berlin
www.wikimedia.de
Wikimedia Deutschland - Gesellschaft zur Förderung Freien Wissens e. V.
Eingetragen im Vereinsregister des Amtsgerichts Berlin-Charlottenburg unter
der Nummer 23855 Nz. Als gemeinnützig anerkannt durch das Finanzamt für
Körperschaften I Berlin, Steuernummer 27/029/42207.