Wikimania-l January 2008

wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org

18 participants
12 discussions

Public meetings dated February 3, 2008
by Cary Bass 31 Jan '08

31 Jan '08

Hello Wikimaniacs! Please consider this public notice that we have modified the public meeting in order to better accommodate the bidders as well as the jury. What this means is that we shall be having two public meetings rather than one; twelve hours apart. The first public meeting will take place at 03:00 (UTC), on Sunday, February 3. For people who are further west than UTC-3, this will be Saturday evening. Times for the first meeting are as follows: Brisbane (UTC+10) 13:00 Kathmandu (UTC+5:45) 08:45 Karlsruhe (UTC+1) 04:00 Buenos Aires (UTC-2) 01:00 Toronto (UTC-5) 22:00 SATURDAY Bogota (UTC-5) 22:00 SATURDAY San Francisco (UTC-8) 19:00 SATURDAY (well before Torchwood) The second public meeting will be at 15:00 (UTC), on Sunday, February 3. For people who are further east than UTC+9, this will be Monday morning Brisbane (UTC+10) 01:00 MONDAY Kathmandu (UTC+5:45) 20:45 Karlsruhe (UTC+1) 16:00 Buenos Aires (UTC-2) 13:00 Toronto (UTC-5) 10:00 Bogota (UTC-5) 10:00 San Francisco (UTC-8) 07:00 Bidding teams should decide on at least one (although they are free to attend both); however, please advise one of the moderators which one(s) you are going to be attending. Thanks, Cary Bass, for the Moderators

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Fwd: [Foundation-l] Usenix workshop on computer conferences
by phoebe ayers 25 Jan '08

25 Jan '08

Looks interesting! ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: George Herbert <george.herbert(a)gmail.com> Date: Jan 25, 2008 3:20 PM Subject: [Foundation-l] Usenix workshop on computer conferences To: Wikimedia Foundation Mailing List <foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> This workshop may be of interest to the WMF staff, and those doing or considering doing Wikimania and other conference event bids... http://www.usenix.org/events/wowcs08/ -- -george william herbert george.herbert(a)gmail.com _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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sponsors et al
by Florence Devouard 20 Jan '08

20 Jan '08

Hello, I'll be leaving for Davos next tuesday. I noted all participants coming from Egypt and might try to get to meet them to "sell" them sponsorship for this year Wikimania. I sorted out the complete list for your information. I'd love it if some of you could have a quick look, and based on ... their own knowledge, tell me if that is worth I contact certain people, or no chance/bad idea. Any help to save me time would be great. Errr, some of them are certainly a bit "big" to contact anyway, but they might have assistants coming with them... (and yeah, I will try to say to M. Serageldin) Ant Helmy Abouleish Vice-Chairman and Managing Director SEKEM GROUP Akil Hamed Beshir Chairman and Chief Executive Officer TELECOM Youssuf Boutros-Ghali Minister of Finance MINISTRY OF FINANCE OF EGYPT M. Shafik Gabr Chairman and Managing Director ARTOC GROUP FOR INVESTMENT & DEVELOPMENT Hassan Heikal Co-Chairman and Chief Executive Officer EFG-HERMES HOLDING Laila Iskandar Chairperson COMMUNITY AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENT (CID) Egypt Tarek Kamel Minister of Communications and Information Technology of Egypt MINISTRY OF COMMUNICATIONS AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY OF EGYPT Yasser El Mallawany Chairman and Chief Executive Officer EFG-HERMES HOLDING Amre Moussa Secretary-General LEAGUE OF ARAB STATES Gamal H. Mubarak Assistant Secretary-General and Head, Policy Secretariat NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC PARTY (NDP) Rachid M. Rachid Minister of Trade and Industry MINISTRY OF FOREIGN TRADE AND INDUSTRY OF EGYPT Naguib O. Sawiris Chairman and Chief Executive Officer ORASCOM TELECOM HOLDING SAE Ismail Serageldin Director BIBLIOTHECA ALEXANDRINA

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Fwd: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikipedia Invites Users to Take Part in Open, Collaborative Video Experiment
by Mark (Markie) 18 Jan '08

18 Jan '08

forwarded from the foundation mailing list, most of this is irrelevant to wikimania apart from one bit. i have copied this up to the top but the whole email is below, if you want to see in context. <snip> I'd also like to see a solution to the issue of developer representation at Wikimania. Commercial interests are generally able to afford to send representation to Wikimania, while many highly relevant open source projects are not. </snip> thanks mark ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Gregory Maxwell <gmaxwell(a)gmail.com> Date: Jan 18, 2008 9:02 PM Subject: Re: [Foundation-l] [Commons-l] Wikipedia Invites Users to Take Part in Open, Collaborative Video Experiment To: jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org, Wikimedia Commons Discussion List < commons-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org> Cc: wikitech-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org, foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org On Jan 18, 2008 3:07 PM, Jay A. Walsh <jwalsh(a)wikimedia.org> wrote: [snip] > ability to bring multi-media, free knowledge content to our users. We > recognize that Kaltura's software and interface are still not 100% > open-source, and as such the technology will not appear on any > Foundation projects until we've worked through some of the technical > challenges - which is where you come in. Hi Jay, This would appear to be your first post, so welcome to the lists... I understand that you are new here, so you may need the time to collect the background information, but I think that I, and other contributors, need to have a clear explanation as to why the Wikimedia Foundation is calling for volunteer resources for this project when it has failed to call for any resources, or bring any attention at all, to the existing slideshow functionality which our own users have developed. While the JavaScript slideshow software developed by our own users lacks the special effects of Kaltura., it has the advantage of requiring no proprietary software. It also integrates with the existing MediaWiki software in a scalable manner and leverages our revision control technology and user experiences. For most of the Wikimedia projects it can be argued that a simple javascript slideshow is actually a better fit for our needs. I think we also would like to know how the Kaltura product is ever expected to be "100%" free in accordance with our practice of only integrating free tools when it has a fundamental requirement on Adobe Flash, a proprietary format which can not be completely implemented without using patented technologies. I ask this not to be confrontational, but because it is a serious point which I have been asked about which I am unable to answer. One multimedia free software developer said to me about the press release 'it may be slightly more accurate if you replace every instance of "open" with the word "flash" ;)' As a long time contributor to the Wikimedia projects in many capacities, have to say that I found the press release to be misleading and somewhat disingenuous. > Kaltura has released their code to the open-source community to help > this project along. It's available on SourceForge, Unfortunately the released system is far from complete: For example, Mediawiki Integration is achieved by simply embedding material from the Kaltura site. This is very similar to a number of pre-existing youtube extensions. (Such as http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:YouTubeTag). There really isn't much to contribute to such an extension. The player code in svn also contains a number of third part copyrighted components which I am reasonably confident that Kaltura does not have the rights to release under a free license. (I'm sure this is an honest error, but its still worth mentioning) > You're invited to examine the code, test the technology as it exists on > WikiEducator, and help us bring this functionality to the Wikimedia > Foundation projects over the coming months. You'll find a feedback > process on the WikiEducator landing page, and of course we fully welcome > discussion about the technology on the lists. Beyond the Mediawiki extension, which as I said above is little more than a embed shim, they have released some flash code. Unfortunately the flash code can not be built with open tools, so the overwhelming majority of our users couldn't reasonably contribute to that part of the software without undertaking unreasonable costs. > We're excited that an innovative, private business has taken strong > initiative in embracing open-source development. I'm disappointed to see that the Wikimedia foundation has yet again missed an effort to use its viability, both internally to the community and externally, to promote pre-existing community driven software initiatives. A pattern of promoting the "prodigal sons" of the proprietary-cum-kinda-free world over out own contributors and developers is a dangerous I am especially disappointed to see Wikimedia promoting a technology which depends on a proprietary format which can not be reimplemented without patent encumbered technology, especially when a substantial portion of the functionality could be provided with standards driven technology already available in the users browsers. In the future I hope the Foundation will first seek community input on technology partnerships: A flash slideshow editor isn't anything anyone here has been asking for, as far as I can tell... But we have thousands of other widely desired features, many of which could have substantial external components ripe for partnership. By asking the community you could also learn of our preexisting work in various areas. I'd also like to see a solution to the issue of developer representation at Wikimania. Commercial interests are generally able to afford to send representation to Wikimania, while many highly relevant open source projects are not. Thank you for your time. _______________________________________________ foundation-l mailing list foundation-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/foundation-l

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Invited speakers idea
by Christophe Henner 15 Jan '08

15 Jan '08

Hey everyone, The Program Committee is currently working on a list of famous" personn to invite to come and submit a paper to Wikimania. We'll make the final list this week-end. Please feel free to make some suggestions here http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Program_ideas . Thanks to everyone, and have a nice week. -- schiste

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Re: [Wikimania-l] [Foundation-l] Wikimedia IRC Network - New Channel (#wikimania2008.wikimedia)
by Michael Bimmler 13 Jan '08

13 Jan '08

On Jan 13, 2008 1:26 PM, E <e.wikipedia(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Hello all, > > Seeing I don't really know where to post this (on foundation-l or wikitech-l), I have decided to post it here and someone can hopefully pass it on to the person that it may concern. > > As always, we have RC channels on irc.wikimedia.org for every wiki, and it seems that the #wikimania2008.wikimedia channel has not yet been created for the feed from http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org. Per Freenode policy, this would probably need to be called #wikimedia-wikimania2008 (did you check whether that one already exists?) Michael

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Re: [Wikimania-l] [Foundation-l] Wikimania 2009 Bid Season update
by Mark (Markie) 13 Jan '08

13 Jan '08

Wikimania 2009 an update for anyone interested is below 6 bids have been submitted which are listed below along with their respective bid page links ** Bogotá <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids/Bogot%C3%A1>*(Colombia, South America) * *Toronto <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids/Toronto>*(Ontario, Canada) * *Kathmandu <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids/Kathmandu>*(Kathmandu, Nepal) * *Buenos Aires<http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids/Buenos_Aires> * (Argentina, South America) * *Brisbane <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids/Brisbane>*(Queensland, Australia) * *Karlsruhe <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids/Karlsruhe>*(Germany, Europe) (all above from - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids#Bids] So what happens now?? *No more new bids will be accepted. * All major information should be put on the bid pages by Feb 3rd (00.01UTC) * A public meeting will then be held with all the current bidders (Feb 3rd 15:00 UTC) * From Feb 3rd to Feb 14th the Question and Answer phase from the Jury will occur, with bid teams answering the questions and refining of their bids. *From Feb 3rd to Feb 14th the Jury will be deliberating their decision and will deliver the verdict to the public on or before Feb 20. (All above from - http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids/Timeline) thanks to all the bid teams and bidders so far, and good luck to all of you for the future. thanks mark

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Wikimania 2009 Bid Season update
by Cary Bass 12 Jan '08

12 Jan '08

Hi, this email will formally serve as an announcement for Jury selection for Wikimania 2009 selection, as well as notification that the creation of bids will be officially closed as of 23:59 (UTC) today (just over an hour from now). This means that all bids must have been started by this time, and any bid pages made after that time will have to be rejected. The Jury list is available at: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Jury>. Details and bids are at: <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2009/Bids>. Yours very truly, -- Cary Bass Volunteer Coordinator Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running! Support the Wikimedia Foundation today: http://donate.wikimedia.org Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. Phone: 727.231.0101 Fax: 727.258.0207 E-Mail: cbass(a)wikimedia.org

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Wikimania 2008 date & first IRC public meeting
by simonpedia 09 Jan '08

09 Jan '08

Dear Markie, Aphaia, Mido, Thanks for your feedback. You’ll understand that all I’m trying to do here is suggest ways for wikimedia communications to be bought into the 21st century. I have no bias as to which tools might suit global groups. I’m simply pointing to ones that are often used by global groups to overcome the basics such as spending about a month talking about how, and when, to get a global conversation together, so the word can be spread and related events (co)organized. Let me be thorough about your reply of the 21st of last month as if you have not used a forum, you may not be aware of how easy things are made by keeping a conversation to one thread rather than spreading an announcement over a number of separate elists or wikis. Markie said,“ >>>the link there is wrong and i have now fixed it. it should have pointed to HYPERLINK "http://wikimania2008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planning/Meetings"http://wikimania2 008.wikimedia.org/wiki/Planning/Meetings instead of the page it was pointing to which was the unstable version of the homepage for design changes etc... also "make it more obvious", okay... the meeting announcement was IIRC sent to the foundation mailing list, wikimania mailing list, in wikizine and was mentioned on the meta wiki and mania wiki. it was also put up in various IRC channel topics and was probably sent elsewhere.. so if youve got any ideas as to where else we should put it ill try to find time to put meetings announcements there Thanks for the fix (knew it had to be something like that but lack your experience). An “obvious” starting point would be here. HYPERLINK "http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Events"http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Events . You might take Mike Halterman’s approach (just below at the COTA conference) Delete the history lesson(s) and link as if we are talking about just this year’s Wikimania, cause this page should. Seems like a collaboration between these two conference groups would halve the workload for both and double their returns, but that’s up to them. And thanks for the IRC for dummies. It’s what is needed on the CPG page (if you have an interest). Markie said “….vertical walls and narrow channels, im not sure what that means..” Vertical walls are those mental ones that are created by separate email lists and WMF projects. They won’t exist in your mind so much as you seem to have been here awhile. But it causes the obvious things to be missed like that link off the main meta events page ro the wikimania page, which would be a starting point for most outsiders. It also means so much spam through the habit of sending the same message to the incrowds’ lists. Narrow channels are similar things like the Foundation elist; Jimmy’s “sewer” as he calls it. People are obviously ambitious for the monster he’s created, and the supposed system for dealing with all their proposals is almost dead = HYPERLINK "http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikimedia_Outreac h"http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proposals_for_new_projects#Wikimedia_Outrea ch So they go to one list = one narrow channel = where they vent their frustrations, rather than being offered a system & tools where they can meet potential peers and rev a project or put it to bed. Eric and Sue provide ‘new’ eyes here so hopefully we might see an outcome this year. Aphaia, said; “as a non native speaker of English, and as Transcom chair, regarding the potential translation, I strongly oppose to have our regular meeting on voice chat” That’s fair, completely agree, and why I said Skype “would seem friendlier than > IRC (by itself)”. All I’m proposing is to investigate tools which are often used by global groups to see which combinations will fall into useful routines. Re: Skypecast. You’ll notice I also put a link to Wikipedia Weekly immediately below the one to skype (on the CPG page). I really don’t give a stuff which tool is used here. What I’m trying to encourage is a place where people can get together, have a conversation, stream it if they want, and perhaps take minutes and/or record for podcasting, etc, systematically. Skype’s just one freebie that seems useful. I could have suggested a couple of tools that UK’s Open uni would probably provide tools for nix if it was considered useful. E.g HYPERLINK "http://kmi.open.ac.uk/technologies/msg/2007/11/21/video-chat/"http://kmi.op en.ac.uk/technologies/msg/2007/11/21/video-chat/ HYPERLINK "http://oufm.open.ac.uk/"http://oufm.open.ac.uk/ (NB Forget the video, but we could chat, talk and view (i.e. work on) pages together) But inertia seems to be in the wikimedia culture just now. I’m sure Casey will have the pulse across remote groups better than I do. Most isolated groups seem to believe the world runs as they see it, so feedback like “irc is fine and is used by many people to communicate normally” is pretty “normal”. In other places, the forum approach is considered normal. HYPERLINK "http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/"http://www.sitepoint.com/forums/ And so “wikis for communicating? You’ve got to be joking” is their normal response. Mido. You obviously have the Bibliotech onside, which as far as I can see means that the National Library (NL) must be involved. Forget COTA for a bit, although their programme will obviously coincide nicely with your own in spots. The greatest sell as I would put to your NL is to compare between the “Old world, New World”. Get some bright Egyptian (TV or locally respected) presenter to compare Alexander’s library to Wikipedia. The Library will have tons of content through their global connections. I’ve spent part of my life trying to inspire some nice old Rotarians at these kind of annual events, which usually means coming up with something to wake them up before their sleepy sessions begin. < it’s just a suggestion, but if the idea is to raise the WMF profile over there, then this is one point in time, and place, where the comparison could get some old and new heads nodding in unison. If they need spoonfeeding just compare this HYPERLINK "http://www.worlddigitallibrary.org/project/english/"http://www.worlddigital library.org/project/english/ to 46 million users/month. OK. To summarise. The HYPERLINK "http://www.accessgrid.org/"http://www.accessgrid.org/ (AG) is just the fattest version of Skypecast or the OU’s meeting rooms. There are lots of others. The AG would be a useful tool for tying together conferences (and/or their sessions) in different countries at the same time, and streaming to non attendees so they could ask question or give input when its wanted. They are all just global classrooms. We already have a framework for a global library, which is more than the UN has done, so we might as well try to include a few National librarians to help fill some gaps. Excuse the length of this loaf. But it’s better than 3 half baked cookies. Happy New Year. No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.516 / Virus Database: 269.19.0/1216 - Release Date: 9/01/2008 10:16 AM

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Testing pentabarf (was: More help needed on Wikimania 2008 Program)
by Luis Henrique Fagundes 07 Jan '08

07 Jan '08

Hi Jacob, I'm testing right now, and writing comments as I do it. I guess you already noted some of them, but here it goes: - When you first creat an account, the subject of e-mail is something like "activate your pentabarf account", would better be "activate your wikimania 2008 paper submission account" or similar - Once user activates the account, there could be a direct link for logging in - The Wikimania logo only appears after logging in - There could be notes on abstract, description and resources fields, with instructions like the size of text expected. - The image submitted is automatically resized, there could be a note saying the expected dimensions of the image. That's all I see for now, it looks great! I volunteer for giving technical help on pentabarf if you need. I have no experience with it, but I know php very well and can invest some time in hacking it. Luis On Jan 6, 2008 11:53 PM, Jakob Voss <jakob.voss(a)nichtich.de> wrote: > Hi Ray! > > You wrote > > > While I may not be suited in helping directly on this kind of task, My > > one wish is that there be a significant track to deal with the issues of > > WMF governance. Having one session where the participants meet the > > Board on the last day is not enough. At both Boston and Taipei this > > only raised a lot of questions when there was no further time for > > discussion. Some very important and difficult questions have recently > > been raised on the Foundation list, and those questions require a > > thorough airing. > > We are just testing a submission and planing system for the conference > that might be used. Can you please help testing it by submitting your > wish as a concrete idea for an event at Wikimania 2008 via > https://wikimedia.pentabarf.org/submission/wikimania2008 and give > feedback whether this kind of giving input is suitable? I strongly bet > that discussing single ideas like I-want-a-session-on-X or > how-about-a-workshop-on-Y is not the way it will work. > > Thanks and greetings, > Jakob > > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimania-l mailing list > Wikimania-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org > http://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l >

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Wikimania-l January 2008