[Commons-l] Wikimania 2010: Call for Participation is there!

[Marcin Cieslak]

Wikimania is an annual global event devoted to Wikimedia projects 
around the globe (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, 
Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki). The 
conference is a community gathering, giving the editors, users 
and developers of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet each 
other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and 
collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open 
to the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers, 
programmers and free culture activists who are interested in the 
Wikimedia projects to learn more and share ideas about the 
Wikimedia projects.

This year's conference will be held JULY 9-11, 2010 in Gdansk, 
Poland at Polish Baltic Philharmonic. For more information, please 
visit the official Wikimania 2010 site:

http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org/

Wikimania 2010 will be a mix of submitted talks, open space 
meetings, birds of a feather groups, and lightning talks. 
Submissions will be discussed and selected in an informal process
on the wiki. If your submission is not added to the schedule, you 
will still have many opportunities to bring topics forward 
on-site.

IMPORTANT DATES

* Deadline for submitting workshop, tutorial, panel and
   presentation proposals: May 20
* Notification of acceptance: May 25 (workshops), May 31
   (panels, tutorials, presentations)
* All proposals and presentations will be welcome in the
   Open Space track of the conference, whether or not they
   are accepted in this initial process.

PROGRAM COMMITTEE

Submissions will be reviewed informally by a team of volunteers.

TRACKS

This year Wikimania will offer three tracks for submissions for 
members of wiki communities and interested observers to share 
their own experiences and thoughts and to present new ideas:

People and Community

The People and Community track provides a unique forum for 
discussing topics related to people using/building wikis. 
Relevant topics include, but are not restricted to, the 
following:

* Wiki Community: Conflict resolution and community dynamics;
   reputation and identity;
* Wiki Outreach: Promotion of wikis and Wikimedia projects among
   the general public;
* North meets south, east meets west: How can people of a
   different cultural background create an encyclopedia according
   to common rules? Same subject in the eye of different cultures.
* Special: Wikipedia in Central/Eastern Europe: this theme will
   provide a forum to present and discuss the latest progress of
   Wikis in the central/eastern European community.

Knowledge and Collaboration

The Knowledge and Collaboration track aims to promote research 
and find exciting ideas related to knowledge...

* Wiki Content: New ways to improve content quality, credibility;
   legal issues and copyrights (is free knowledge free?); use of
   the content in education, journalism, research;
* Semantic Wikis: The use of semantic web technologies, linked
   data; semantic annotation and metadata (in particular manual
   vs. automated approaches).

Infrastructure Track

The Infrastructure track at Wikimania will provide a forum where 
both researchers and practitioners can share new approaches, 
applications, and explore how to make Wiki access ever more 
ubiquitous:

* MediaWiki development: issues related to MediaWiki development
   and extensions;
* Moving beyond MediaWiki: what other Wiki-like platforms exist;
   what tools and features do we need for collaboration on
   different types of knowledge?
* Mobile Wikis: The Web is moving off the desktop and into mobile
   phones, how we use wikis on mobile devices?; wiki-based
   Augmented Reality (AR) applications, location based services
* User Interface Design: Usability and user experience;
   accessibility, adaptive interfaces and personalization; novel
   UI designs.

WIKISYM 2010

Please note that Wikimania 2010 is co-located with WikiSym, The 
International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration. More 
information about WikiSym can be found on the conference website:

http://www.wikisym.org/

SUBMIT A PROPOSAL

To submit a proposal for a presentation, workshop, panel or 
tutorial, please visit:

http://bit.ly/Submit2010

Thank you for helping make Wikimania 2010 a successful event. :-)
See you in Gdansk, July 9-11!



-- 
Marcin Cieslak
Wikimania 2010 Gdansk