A Few emails have been circulating re the content and the programme of the conference, and I wish to put in my two cents.

This year a track of "discussions" have been introduced. Though a full track (and rooms) have been set aside for this, a total of one discussion has been proposed to the programme committee (and has been accepted of course).

I do agree with what Louis suggest, and with some of the things suggested. The breaks should remain breaks – time to rest, have coffee and have informal talks which are an important part of Wikimania. Time should also be set aside for discussions and for lightning talks, but the fact is – the community who comes to the conference does not propose discussions (and nobody volunteers to lead them). My experience from past conferences is that the "unconference" day is a waste of time. Most people already leave the conference and go touring or go home, and do not stay for the unconference talks.

The fact is – no one wanted to lead a discussion this year, and no one came and said "I want a basic course of Wikipedia editing".

What we can do different next year is to "impose" some discussion time. I have suggested during the conference that next year we will have a discussion track set aside, where, for example, one day, every half hour, one WMF board member will be in the "hot seat" answering questions, the best of which will be asked again in the Q&A session for the whole gathering to hear. On the second day, WMF teams will be in the hot sit to answer legal or technical questions.

I also suggest that WMF stuff will submit talks in which they conduct a tutorial to various aspects such as the visual editor, wikidata etc – but this is of course up to them to submit, and for the entire conference programme committee to approve.

As to the number of tracks – as I have shown in my lecture – this has not really changed in the past 8 years (with the exception of DC due to the large number of attendees) and I think four tracks + 2 workshops/tutorials + 1 discussion is a good composition for next year as well.

And by "four tracks" I mean four presentations or panels tracks. This does not meant the entire time there will be four tracks. The conference may have 8 or 12 subject tracks (such as "women", "Asia", "GLAM", "culture", and the best submissions of all will be chosed and placed, thus a track may only be in one session of the conference if only one good panel or 3 good lectures have been submitted). I do believe that a conference session should be 90 minutes of which 3 * 30 sessions (allowing 25 min session + 5 min Q&A) but this is flexible, and can be 90 min panel and discussion, or 30 min talk + 30 min panel + 30 min discussion, or any other variant. But this also enables a 30 min break every two hours which is important.

I personally (in my biased opinion) think the programme was good, and believe that a situation where the attendees say "there are two good things to listen to right now, which one will I chose" only leads to wanting to come again next year (as opposed to "there is noting interesting right now, I will go back to the hotel and rest").

Deror

(Deputy programme chair for Wikimania 2011, 2012 and 2013)

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>Date: Fri, 16 Aug 2013 02:46:32 -0700
>From: Luis Villa <lvilla@wikimedia.org>
>To: "Wikimania general list (open subscription)"
> <wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org>
>Subject: Re: [Wikimania-l] A thought: Different tracks
>Message-ID:
> <CAM2wSz4SfgGjCgQzEYKbwX5+Q7TObv0tHEcRE1qxxLJVFwmn1g@mail.gmail.com>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"
>
>On Thu, Aug 15, 2013 at 7:36 PM, Samuel Klein <meta.sj@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
>> I would prefer more of Wikimania to be interactive and
>> discussion-oriented; perhaps you would prefer more to be
>> presentation-oriented. That's a good tradeoff for a program team to
>> discuss. But presenters could then think consciously about which of
>> these modes they intend to participate in.
>
> a simple change, the default language for submissions could be shifted
>from "presentations" (currently used repeatedly as the 'default' term to
>describe what is going on) to "discussions and presentations" or something
>along those lines. Simply that reminder that presentations aren't the only
>way to have a session at the conference might go a long way towards opening
>things up.
>
>Luis