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
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Matthias Süßen Yorckstraße 115 28201 Bremen t 0421 69 64 21 68 c 0179 7 04 27 31
info@pixelfehler.de www.pixelfehler.de
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