Hello everyone --
This year, O'Reilly will be presenting the Open Source Convention here is Portland, Oregon. Since travelling to it is a negligible task (it's in downtown, & I usually commute further to work than there), I've been considering making a presentation about Wikipedia at this year's convention.
However, I can think of about a dozen people who know far more about the goings-on at Wikipedia than me (e.g., Brion, Magnus, Mav, Ed Poor -- practically everyone on this mailling list), & I wanted to make sure that
1. No one is planning on making a similar presentation;
2. No one minds that I attempt to give what O'Reilly calls a "Session Presentation" (it's a 90 minute talk) on Wikipedia.
Obviously, I'm not very familiar with the technical side of Wikipedia -- although the challenge of keeping one of the largest Wikiwiki sites up & running is something that any talk needs to address. My intended emphasis for this talk would be more on the social side -- as well as addressing the perennial question, ``Can a distributed group of people write a useable encyclopedia?" (FWIW, my honest answer to that question is yes.)
Just to be up front, I could receive an honorium for this presentation (besides free admission to the conference), & as an unemployed contributor I'll admit I could use the money, but I was planning on giving part of the money to the Wikipedia Foundation.
More information about making presentations at OSCON is available at http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2004/
Geoff Burling