Hi folks,

I don't know if anyone has made a post-Wikimania thread yet thanking our hosts --- if so, I'm sorry to duplicate, but I've missed it.

It was such an amazing Wikimania! I want to say thanks to everyone who helped make it happen --- the site selection jury, the Israeli chapter, the local planning team, the program committee, the people who worked on scholarships, all the presenters, and everyone else who contributed. I _think_ the key people were Deror, Harel, Itzik and Tomer, so thank you to you four especially (as well as whoever else I have inadvertently missed).

Among the highlights for me:

* Yochai Benkler was seriously awe-inspiring.

* I was thrilled like I am every year to see old friends and to put faces to names (FloNight, finally!) that I've only previously known on-wiki.

* The WikiChix lunch is always a highlight for me, and I am so happy to see it grow every year. There was lots of energy and useful information-sharing this year: it was great :-)

* This year I did less media than in previous years, so I was able to attend a lot of talks. I still missed plenty that I wished I'd seen, but I saw a lot of good stuff. In general, it seemed to me that there's a lot of good thinking happening around editor retention issues -- it is great to see people, in addition to naming and exploring the challenges, starting to move towards solutions.

* It was lovely to finally meet Angela and Tim's gorgeous baby :-)

* And this year the closing party was AWESOME. I don't think Wikimedians are generally renowned for the excellence of our parties, but this one was super-fun. There was lots of energy on the dance floor, and I laughed out loud to see Topher, James Owen and Andrew Garrett wearing garlands of flowers and dancing on speakers. (In retrospect I wonder if I imagined that part. It's possible I did :-)

All in all, it was beautifully managed and enormously fun: my thanks to the Haifa organizers, who made it look easy :-)

Thanks, Sue