I do hope the HK guys are reading ;)
Joe
On 19 Jul 2012, at 23:59, Thomas Dalton wrote:
On 19 July 2012 05:57, Florence Devouard
<anthere(a)anthere.org> wrote:
The first is that I see a trend in seeing
Wikimania as a "conference" rather
than a sort of "giant meetup". I regret it.
I was particularly sensible this year to the fact we had "factions". I could
see the French speaking guys hanging together here. And the German chapter
people hanging there. And in another corner the editing community of the
English Wikipedia. And over there, the Glam people. And though there were
naturally bridges between those groups, there was not much mixing and
bonding.
I certainly found myself talking to people from the UK far too much. I
did make a point of leaving the UK group to go and speak to other
people a few times, but there is a strong tendency to drift back to
the people you know. I think it becomes more of a problem the larger
Wikimania gets.
Having been to quite a few international Wikimedia events, I know a
lot of non-UK people too, which helps. People at their first
international Wikimedia event must find it even harder. There
difficult part is always initialising conversation with someone new
(we're all Wikimedians, so finding something in common to discuss once
you've started talking is usually pretty easy). I have two ideas for
helping people initiate conversation:
* A speed-dating style event near the beginning of the conference.
Make sure it is the only thing happening at that time to maximise
participation. You won't be able to get everyone to talk to everyone
else within a reasonable amount of time (1000 people, 30 seconds each,
that's over 8 hours!) but you could speak to a large enough proportion
of attendees for there to be someone you've met in most groups so that
you can easily join the group.
* "Talk to me about..." lists on badges. Knowing that someone is
interested in a particular thing can give you an excuse to talk to
them.
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