Dear Midwest MediaWiki users and developers,
SWMCon Spring 2015 [1] will be held in St. Louis, MO USA from Wednesday, May 6th to Friday, May 8th. We’re hosting SMWCon in the historical garment district of downtown St. Louis City which is now a flourishing dining, residential, and shopping district. It’s also home to our venue for the conference, T-Rex [2]. T-Rex is home to numerous startups and incubators, and a really great shared space in the heart of St. Louis.
We are inviting you to submit your contributions to help collect and put together the conference program. Additionally, please add yourself to the informal list of attendees if you’d like to attend.
=== About SMWCon ===
This twice-yearly conference brings together researchers, users, developers and enthusiasts of Semantic MediaWiki and related projects, such as Wikidata. Semantic MediaWiki is a family of extensions to the open-source wiki software MediaWiki (best known for powering Wikipedia) that allow a wiki to store structured data in addition to textual content, thereby, turning a wiki into a flexible, collaborative knowledge repository.
=== Call for Contributions ===
Attendees, talks and tutorials are needed.
SMWCon is a community-driven event. Visit the SMWCon wiki page to learn more, add your name to the list of attendees, and register your talk.
http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2015
Your talk does not have to be complete. A short description and length is recommended and will make planning easier.
Please note that all tutorials and presentations will be video and audio recorded and made available for others after the conference.
=== List of Topic Ideas===
Here are some suggested starting points:
Specific applications
- Applications in science
- Applications in business
- Other applications such as culture and personal wikis
- Open data and government-supported repositories
Concepts and development
- Evolving semantic wikis into Linked Data platforms
- Text Mining and Natural Language Processing for Semantic Wikis
- Extending via PHP, Javascript and API-based extensions
- Widgets
- Interoperability and mashups
- Community building, feature wishlists and Semantic MediaWiki's roadmap
- Improving user experience
- Helping new and experienced users contribute
- Modeling complex domains
- Access control and security aspects
- Multi-lingual and cross-lingual sites
=== Important Facts ===
Submission Deadline: Wednesday, April 22nd (please contact the program chair if you need to submit later)
Event Dates: May 6th to 8th 2015 (Wednesday to Friday)
Location: T-Rex 911 Washington Ave., St. Louis, MO, USA
Conference wiki page: http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2015
Participants: Everybody interested in semantic wikis, especially in Semantic MediaWiki, e.g. users, developers, consultants, business representatives and researchers.
=== Sponsors ===
- Mercy [3]
- SNPedia [4]
=== Registration ===
Registration will be open soon. Be sure to add the SMWCon page to your watchlist! We encourage you to share this with your fellow colleagues and wiki enthusiasts.
See you in St. Louis!
Yours,
Chris Koerner, Local Chair
[1] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2015
[2] http://downtowntrex.com
[3] http://mercy.net
[4] http://snpedia.com/index.php/SNPediaThis electronic mail and any attached documents are intended solely for the named addressee(s) and contain confidential information. If you are not an addressee, or responsible for delivering this email to an addressee, you have received this email in error and are notified that reading, copying, or disclosing this email is prohibited. If you received this email in error, immediately reply to the sender and delete the message completely from your computer system.
Announcing AfroCROWD Intro to Wikimedia and How to Edit Wikipedia
workshops at New York's Brooklyn Public Library. Please
also excuse cross-posting to various lists as we try to network across
the United States.
WHEN:
Saturday, February 7th 12:30 -3PM
Sunday February 8th 1-3:30PM
EVENTBRITE (better reading format):
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/afrocrowd-intro-to-wikimedia-how-to-edit-wikip…
If you plan to view via Livestream from a different city, please let
me know of your interest at alice.backer(a)gmail.com.
BROOKLYN PUBLIC LIBRARY ANNOUNCEMENT:
http://bklynlib.org/15tFUphhttp://bklynlib.org/15tGPGd
PROPOSAL:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:PEG/AFROcroWd_and_Interglider.ORG/Ou…)
BACKGROUND:
Against the backdrop of Black History Month, the workshops seek to
further the International Decade for People of African Descent’s
development and education goals and Wikimedia’s goal of increasing its
reach. Technology companies Facebook, LinkedIn, Yahoo and Twitter have
recently reported that their workforce is 2% Black, a figure
non-proportionate to the 13% of Blacks living in the United States.
The Black Twitter phenomenon shows that Afrodescendants have
successfully taken to social media as an organizing tool. Exposing
more Afrodescendants to Wikimedia has the potential to take this foray
a step further and transfer skills that might deepen Afrodescendant
exploration of online technology. But beyond it all, editing Wikipedia
alone or as a group is a constructive and rewarding way to spend time
online.
The workshops will be the first in a series of activities by Afro Free
Culture Crowdsourcing Wikimedia (AfroCROWD), a new initiative which
seeks to increase the number of people of African Descent who actively
partake in the Wikimedia and free knowledge, culture and software
movements. The workshops are open to all Afrodescendants including but
not limited to individuals who self-identify as African,
African-American, Afro-Latino, Biracial, Black, Black-American,
Caribbean, Garifuna, Haitian or West Indian.
Although the February workshops will be held in English, they will
take into account that many Afrodescendant groups in the United States
might find that access to Wikipedia’s multilingual crowdsourcing
platform can help them transfer free knowledge to populations of
African descent outside of the United States that they are connected
to through origin or direct familial bonds. Multilingual
Afrodescendants may also want to use such platforms to develop and
maintain online bodies of relevant knowledge in native languages such
as Garifuna, Haitian Kreyòl, Igbo, Spanish, Twi or Yoruba, thereby
contributing to the survival of and increasing their proficiency in
those languages while also feeling more culturally grounded.
WHERE:
Brooklyn Public Library
Main Branch
10 Grand Army Plaza
Brooklyn. NY
http://www.bklynlibrary.org/
(Subway: 2,3, 4 to Grand Army Plaza)
FOUNDERS
AfroCROWD founders are Alice Backer, founder of www.kiskeacity.com,
www.haitianbloggers.com, and Global Voices Lingua, a Brooklyn-based
lawyer, blogger and free knowledge and culture enthusiast who has been
aggregating and disseminating Haitian online expression since 2005 and
has launched citizen media campaigns in Haiti, the Caribbean, Africa
and the United States and Milos Rancic, founder of Anarchopedia,
veteran Wikimedian with over 10 years in the movement, Wikimedia
Language Committee member and chair of Interglider.ORG. Milica
Gudovic, Interglider.ORG's CEO, participant to the process of
localization of Creative Commons Licenses for Serbia and experienced
feminist activist of 20 years, has lended considerable time and
expertise to our grant proposal and will help us with training in the
coming months.
STAY UPDATED VIA FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/afroCROWD
A L I C E B A C K E R
Haitian Blog Aggregator: http://haitianbloggers.com
LOF1804 Podcast: http://www.kiskeacity.com
Blog: http://www.kiskeacity.com
Twitter: http://twitter.com/kiskeacity
Newsletter: Kiskeácity Daily
skype: alicebacker