Matthias, 

There were some more sessions for contributors and creators, such as the one on how to shoot video by Jan Schwefel... but I think your observation is valid.

While the discussions track was very successful, I'd like to make sure we have a firm commitment to lightning talks and unconference sessions for late breaking topics. This would allow more people to give short 5-10 minute demonstrations or reflections about their activity. These are almost always my favorite parts of Wikimania -- where you are inspired and surprised by folks you have never met, or didn't even know existed.

In the "Future of Wikimania" session this year, I also reiterated my hope for a "newbie" or "maker" pavilion in future conferences, where the emphasis would be teaching new skills to each other. Why not have hardware such as book scanning, flatbed scanning, filmmaking and other tools for folks to quickly collaborate. 

-Andrew


-Andrew Lih
Associate professor of journalism, American University
Email: andrew@andrewlih.com
WEB: http://www.andrewlih.com
BOOK: The Wikipedia Revolution: http://www.wikipediarevolution.com
PROJECT: Wiki Makes Video http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Wiki_Makes_Video


On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 6:18 PM, Matthias Süßen <info@pixelfehler.de> wrote:
Dear Wikimaniacs.
Please excuse the provocative title.   As you might know Wikimania2014 is over right now. And it was a great event and a big success. The program was very comprehensive and had something for almost every taste. But meta themes, technical and abstract topics imho played a dominant role. 

I think the most important part is still missing: program offers of (and for) contributors. There were some, but very few. The reason is undoubtedly not that there is a lack of submissions. There were a lot, but most of them were rejected. This is exactly what I do not want, and I believe it to be a development in the wrong direction. A welcome exception to this was Diego Delsos lecture "How Commons made a quality photographer out of me".  Hopefully there are more such events in Mexico. In London we had a lot of sections, such as Education, GLAM, Technology, Open Data and Free Culture. Maybe we should add a fixed "Contributors Area" if only to ensure that events of (and for) contributors become an integral part of a Wikimania and have a guaranteed place at future events. 

Let's go back to the roots. I would be delighted if it were possible for Diego to hold his lecture again next year. It would imho also be an excellent idea if there were events like

-how to take cheap images with a quality camera erm - I mean, how to take quality images with a cheap camera.
-How to adopt a foreign country
-Creating a bot for dummies
-my first edit in Wikipedia ever. How people come to Wikipedia and why they stay.
Workshops for Wikipedia editors, photographers, cartographers, illustrators and so on to mention only a few. 

Many people I spoke with demonstrated great enthusiasm, but they had the same questions as I. What do you think?

Yours,
Matthias Süßen      

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||  

Matthias Süßen 
Yorckstraße 115 
28201 Bremen   
    
t  0421 69 64 21 68 
c 0179 7 04 27 31 

info@pixelfehler.de
www.pixelfehler.de  

||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||  


_______________________________________________
Wikimania-l mailing list
Wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org
https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l