Dear Wikimaniacs near and far,

Thanks to all for making Wikimania an amazing event this year. It was more fun than a barrel of edit-warriors from Gdansk... who probably showed up Saturday night. We had over 450 attendees, a quarter of them from outside the US; over 50 journalists & media groups on-site; 85 presentations, workshops, and panels; 25 posters and 40 last-minute lightning presentations; two great parties including robots and holograms; a scavenger hunt full of info <hmm>; a Web 1.0 elevator pitch-off judged by time-travelling VCs, Wikimania Awards for great free-content media and writing judged by Wikipedians and Creative Commoners, and the 17th annual world Calvinball championship. And 40 amazing volunteers who helped things run smoothly all year.

You can find media archives online. We have raw video for the two main rooms, but this is not yet online; however audio is available for most sessions: http://wikimania2006.wikime=dia.org/wiki/Archives

Video of the Web 1.0 elevator pitch-off will be available soon (Finne?)

We are working on the proceedings; some full presentations are available already, and the discussions are not over -- all presentations are open to comment. A document with most of the abstracts in one package will be available soon online. http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Proceedings:Index

Finally, your feedback is appreciated, whether you attended in person or remotely, in English or in other languages : http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/wiki/Post_conference_comments

Summer regards, SJ

PS -- if you are inspired to launch a bid for your own favorite city to host Wikimania next year, rough guidelines are up and cities are being selected within the next 6 weeks (!!): http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimania_2007/Bids

PPS - if you couldn't make it to Wikimania, and haven't filled your wiki quotient for the summer, there is yet hope. Wikisym is coming up next week, in Denmark: http://www.wikisym.org/ws2006/