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
This sounds interesting. I know nothing about the technical side either and would not consider competing for podium space; I don't even know whether the conference itself would interest me.
If enough people are interested this could serve as the excuse for a get-together of Wikipedians, particularly the ones on the West coast. For me it's a leisurely 6-hour drive from Vancouver. There was talk about such things last year that never materialized.
Ec
Geoff Burling wrote:
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
No one is planning on making a similar presentation;
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.)
More information about making presentations at OSCON is available at http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2004/
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