This is a shout out to all the planners and volunteers and speakers, etc who worked so hard to bring us Wikimania 2012 -- Thank you!! It was great!
Yes! I am sitting in the airport dreaming of getting some sleep soon. I had wonderful experience and am leaving very inspired. Thank you all!
BirgitteSB
On Jul 15, 2012, at 9:55 PM, Claire claireleah@yahoo.com wrote:
+1! This was a superb conference, and I had a wonderful time seeing friends old and new. Many thanks to all who worked so hard to make it happen.
wishing you much-needed rest, Phoebe On Jul 15, 2012 6:55 PM, "Claire" claireleah@yahoo.com wrote:
THANK YOU ALL!
This was probably the biggest project that I ever done in my life and it almost feels strange to be finished with everything.
I learnt so much from this and I would like to thank everyone who attended and everyone who helped to make this happen! You are all great!
See you next year!
*~Orsolya* Deputy Program Chair **
2012/7/16 phoebe ayers phoebe.ayers@gmail.com
Thanks friends. As one who arranged Wikimania before, I know how hard was your lasts months and I think everyone will agree that you arranged amazing conference!
Thanks for the great work and the warm hosting in D.C!
Itzik Wikimedia Israel
On Sun, Jul 15, 2012 at 9:55 PM, Claire claireleah@yahoo.com wrote:
Indeed, thanks for all your work. I'm really glad I had the opportunity to meet so many Wikimedians from around the world, and find out about so many other projects.
Risker/Anne
On 15 July 2012 21:55, Claire claireleah@yahoo.com wrote:
Thanks to all the folks that helped organizing a absolutely incredible Wikimania. The only bad thing is that it finished!!
Thank you all guys for having put your heart to this project. Everything was flawless I believe :)
Alhen
@alhen_ alhen at wikipedia, wikihow, wikispaces, and most places. Promotor de Wikimedia Bolivia 00-591-79592235
2012/7/16 Risker risker.wp@gmail.com
Thank you all from my little self too! Wikimania 2012 has completely restructured and reaffirmed my outlook (as an individual) on the life, society and meaning of existence.
-Viswam Wikiuser:Viswaprabha
On Wed, Jul 18, 2012 at 8:53 PM, Alhen alhen.wiki@gmail.com wrote:
Am 19.07.2012 08:34, schrieb Florence Devouard:
Hi guys
Salut Madame,
What's the favorite wiki page where we can collect our feedback on this year Wikimania ?
vous voulez prendre ça: https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Feedback
Cordialement,
Manuel
https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Feedback
I dropped my comments over there.
There are three things on which I would like to specifically insist upon
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. Seeing Wikimania as a conference is not really helping closing the gap. We get 4 or 5 sessions in parallel. Glam group goes there in the session related to Glam. Editing community goes there listening to the session related to arbitration. Chapter group here goes to listen to legal risks. And so on. The more sessions we have in parallel, the more chance that each group stick to its habits. Adding side events does not necessarily help. When wandering in the street, we could meet with a group of iberocoop people sticking together or a group of WMF staff members heading to that restaurant. Even the wikichix meeting could have been done differently. Such as giving the time to each women of ONE table to present to each other rather than all of us to each other. And making sure that women do not sit by their friends but with new women. The side meeting probably helping the most are actually visits (such as the visit to the Capitol) since these are smaller groups of various origins. But there is this tendency to group with people you already know because it is always tough to get to new people you know little about. In the past, I remember events that helped create more bonding. For example, sleeping in one area rather than dozen. For example, breaking a wikiball together. For example, hosting lightning talks in the main lobby all along the conference. I think we need to think of Wikimania more as a networking event than it is right now. And give more chance to isolated people to connect and more chance to groups to break and bridge with other groups. I hope there can be discussions on how to achieve that (looking at how networking groups do is a good direction) and that next year team will have that at heart.
The second is that I was actually surprised to see the organizing team put itself so much "in the background". I did not feel very satisfied that the team was essentially listed on a slide at the beginning and end of the conference and that we see a group of people on stage during 1 mn at the closing. If only because I will hardly remember any of the team member besides James, Aude and Danny. James as the leader. Aude and Danny because I already know them. But others ? Unfortunately not. Their names were plastered on an slide (since I didnot know them, it did not help me to recognise their face afterwards). In a regular conference, this is normal. We just thank the organizers and give them a one minute fame. But at Wikimania, the team should be special. It should be leader and at the heart of the event. We should know who they are and at the end of the conference, I feel we should feel like hugging them like mad for what they did (or hate them :)). There are various ways to do that. Such as at least presenting each of them at the beginning so that we have a face in front of the name. Putting a big wall in the lobby with the face and name, their role, and their favorite food (or whatever). Setting up a 10 mn presentation at the beginning of the day. Having a contest with them on stage. A banner to sign. A tower in lego to destroy. Anything.
The third is.... WMF board. The Q&A is a tradition; but I feel traditions ought to change sometimes. It probably made more sense to have a board Q&A when we had no staff at all. Now, the staff is providing one keynote (Sue) plus many talks (not far from half of Wikimania talks I think) and providing plenty of input during three days. So the board Q&A is getting boring and not very useful anyway. Plus, as I told Jay, the concept of having a WMF staff select and ask the questions is setting up a barrier, thus increasing the distance between board and wikimedians. To be fair, I find it odd that most wikimedians have next to no idea of what the individual board members think on a specific topic. And most answers to board does not succeed to fix that. It should be clarified if the goal of this "event" is to help members understand better what individual members think OR if it is to understand better board strategy OR if it is to better understand certain issues. But if these issues are operational in nature, the questions should go to staff, not board. I think it is time to have another format. I wonder if it might not make sense to rather select one hot topic per year and have board give their opinion on that very topic in details and with individual position rather than having them give short, bland answers to 10 random questions.
Florence
I agree with Florence's comment about being sad that Wikimania is no longer a giant meetup. For all that the talks and lectures are very informative, I sort of wish that we had the GLAM track lecture, the Dev track, the [whatever] track, *AND *the "I just want to hang out with people" track. Give those of us who show up mostly because we want to meet and talk to other Wikimanians a big room, and maybe a lot of beer or snacks, and see what develops! We end up ad-hoc-ing this oftentimes by using the ballroom, or the lobby, or whatever large space, but even those are often set up in a way that makes me think it never occurred to anyone that some of us would spend most of our time there if we could. Lack of seating or enough outlets, the tendency Florence mentions for people to clump off at tables by their affiliation, and lack of central location for the hang-out space are some of the pitfalls I've noticed happening in the past two wikimaniae. If I ran the world, every Wikimania would have a large room full of abundant couches (not tables to sit around, and not rows of chairs) and electrical outlets where people would be encouraged to just hang out and meet new people.
-Fluffernutter
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 5:57 AM, Florence Devouard anthere@anthere.orgwrote:
To be honest, I think I spent the majority of the time just sitting with a laptop in the big rooms and I felt that the conference's structure was well done (i.e. it allowed for this laziness rather than tutting at me for it).
I think what you're really looking for is one giant unconference - and, given that Sunday was clearly the least productive day of the whole weekend, I don't think Wikimania 2013 would really benefit from a complete overhaul of the "seminar" structure.
We need to somehow find a way to make Wikimania the best of both worlds - being able to meet and sit with others while also learning something from the experience.
I'm sure that the Hong Kong people will be able to improve on what was already a very good and informative conference next year, anyway. :)
Joe
On 19 Jul 2012, at 23:06, Katherine Casey wrote:
On Thursday, 19 July 2012 at 16:18, Joseph Fox wrote:
I think Wikimania could do with having a small group tutorial track. There's lots we can teach each other in a small group structure. Article writing, writing for Wikinews, handling difficult OTRS responses (obviously, that's only for OTRSers), bot hacking, dispute resolution techniques, handling image copyrights, restoring images, reviewing Good Articles, whatever. There's lots of things we can teach each other, and having a slightly more formalised way of doing so in small groups seems like a really useful thing we could do at Wikimania.
On 19 July 2012 11:18, Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.com wrote:
I agree that Sunday was unproductive (although I got a lot out of the session I led, in which I invited others to suggest solutions to issues I'd been experiencing). But I'm sure that was a result of the unconference being tagged on "after" Wikimania, rather than being a part of it, and being ill-explained and under-promoted before the day (conversely, the facilitation on the day was good).
Indeed, every other unconference I've ever been to has been /highly/ productive, and I'd be in favour of replacing the formal sessions with /just/ an unconference.
On Thursday, 19 July 2012 at 16:44, Andy Mabbett wrote:
That may just be because the Wikimedia crowd aren't familiar with how unconferences work. I'm tempted to suggest we ought to try having a one-day WikiCamp in London organised with the advice of people who have run a few unconferences before, so we can test the model independently. ;-)
Something I would personally appreciate as an improvement, is a block of 2 hour around lunch with NO INTERNET! That ought to improve the mingling :)
Also speeddating seems to be an effective method (there are many ways to accomplish that).
Lodewijk
2012/7/19 Katherine Casey fluffernutter.wiki@gmail.com
2012/7/19 Lodewijk lodewijk@effeietsanders.org Something I would personally appreciate as an improvement, is a block of 2 hour around lunch with NO INTERNET! That ought to improve the mingling :)
That's what we would call an "Analogue Hour," which I would be in favor of having. I think encouraging people to put down cell phones, computers, iPads, and other electronic devices for a defined period of time during the day would encourage more personal interactions. Not everyone will participate, but if a lot of people do it, it will be considered a success.
Sincerely,
Nicholas Michael Bashour President Wikimedia District of Columbia Washington, DC, USA
On 19 July 2012 05:57, Florence Devouard anthere@anthere.org wrote:
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.
Thomas, I LOVE this idea. Can we please please please have this for our badges next year, Hong Kong people? Pretty please with a cherry on top?
-Fluff
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 11:59 AM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.comwrote: <snip>
On Thursday, 19 July 2012 at 17:03, Katherine Casey wrote:
Thomas, I LOVE this idea. Can we please please please have this for our badges next year, Hong Kong people? Pretty please with a cherry on top?
We need the conference badge anyone can edit. ;-)
Hi,
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 5:59 PM, Thomas Dalton thomas.dalton@gmail.com wrote:
I'd like to +1 this. It was done for the hackathon badges in 2011 iirc and it was great. It makes it easier for introverts (of which there is no shortage among Wikimedians) to start conversations.
It's probably not enough (meaning it needs to be supplemented with other mechanisms to facilitate interaction, including in smaller groups and/or more quiet venues) but it's a good start.
This has been a really interesting discussion so far, I think! A part of me wants to say that the grouping off at this Wikimania isn't the fault of anyone, but is a natural course of what happens at larger conferences. Having had the chance to attend conferences of many sizes and of varied topics, it's interesting to see how things play out socially and logistically. There's much to be said for wanting to keep things as Meet-Up-like as possible, but I feel that you'll never quite succeed in what you're aiming for as long as Wikimania is so large. And the fact that it's growing is a great thing, by the way!
Things will change through the years, and people can adapt. But the truth of the matter is that this really was quite an overwhelming conference by anyone's standards, and when you're in a mass of people it's only natural to gravitate toward your comfort zone. It's a bit of a survival mechanism, especially for those who aren't as outgoing! In contrast, when it's a smaller conference (a couple hundred people) where everyone is able to mingle freely, the environment is more conducive to being more Meet-Up-style.
I'm not saying that a balance can't be reached, but I'll be really interested to see how this challenge is addressed. There have already been some great suggestions!
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 12:05 PM, Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.comwrote:
Make sure to put everything here:
https://wikimania2012.wikimedia.org/wiki/Feedback
I'll remind the HK folks about it too, as I love the idea of more "wiki-like" mixing methods.
-Andrew
On Thu, Jul 19, 2012 at 9:05 AM, Joseph Fox josephfoxwiki@gmail.com wrote:
--
I personally met quite a few new people, but I did so at the Hackathon (where no one I knew was there) and at random (i.e. the non-event/invite) dinners. During the conference proper, when I didn't have something I really wanted to see, I followed a pre-conference friend to what they were seeing.
Also, yes we need to do the "Ask me about..." thing. I saw a lot of custom messages written on people's badges, and those were more effective conversation starters than just project listings alone.
Sven
On Jul 19, 2012, at 12:25 PM, Andrew Lih andrew@andrewlih.com wrote:
I totally agree with Sven, the tag explaning about what you can talk about can really make it easier for a person to just break the ice and start talking.
Just like him, I also met quite a lot of different people. Although I regret no having spent more time with the Iberocoop crowd, I had the opportunity to talk about common problems with people from other Wikipedias and different projects as well. The guys from wikiHow are great and provided and interesting insight as to why women participate more on wikiHow than on Wikipedia.
Also, the guys from Hong Kong can now be aware that the unconference model is somehow working around the world, and given the experience in Washington, it could be a great idea to include it as part of the conference.
I have to thank Aude because she led the tour to the capitol, and also, including (if privacy is not much of a concern) a mail with pictures of them now so we can recognize them next time we see them. Thanks Wikimedia DC.
Alhen
@alhen_ alhen at wikipedia, wikihow, wikispaces, and most places. Promotor de Wikimedia Bolivia 00-591-79592235
2012/7/19 Sven svenmanguard@gmail.com
Thomas Dalton, 19/07/2012 17:59:
I remember that in Wikimania 2010 there was someone constantly reminding us to say hello to random people we didn't know, to meet new wikimedians.
As already written by some on [[feedback]], the first problem is being able to meet people you know already, but only by name; which can already easily count in the hundreds, if one is mildly active on wiki and on mailing lists (although not everyone attends). What I did in my first Wikimania was reading all badges to find names I knew, not always efficient (especially if badges turn around). This might be the easiest issue to address.
Nemo
On 19 July 2012 12:56, Federico Leva (Nemo) nemowiki@gmail.com wrote:
It probably wouldn't be affordable (unless someone has already invented it), but it would be cool if we had little RFID pagers that you load with a list of names of people you want to meet and it beeps when you are near them.
wikimania-l@lists.wikimedia.org