[Foundation-l] Second Wikipedia Academy

[Frank Schulenburg]

Dear all,

Last week, Wikimedia Deutschland announced the second Wikipedia Academy 
to be held in Mainz on August 24th and 25th, 2007. This year the 
conference will focus on the humanities in Wikipedia, aiming for a 
dialogue between researchers and Wikipedians. Wikimedia Deutschland 
organizes the conference in cooperation with the Mainz Academy of 
Sciences and Literature, one of the seven great German Academies of 
Sciences.

For the first time, the Wikipedia Academy will be sponsored by the 
German Ministry for Education and Research. Wikimedia Deutschland was 
chosen as an official partner of the "Year of the Humanities", an annual 
event organized by the ministry that started in 2000 and focuses on a 
different discipline each year. The conference will be opened by Doris 
Ahnen, Minister of Education, Research, Youth und Culture in 
Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, and Elke Lütjen-Drecoll, President of the 
Academy of Sciences and Literature.

One of the conference highlights will be the award ceremony for the 
"Johann Heinrich Zedler Medal". Wikimedia Deutschland and the Mainz 
Academy of Sciences and Literature award this prize for an outstanding 
encyclopedia article in the area of the humanities. The Zedler Medal 
comes with 3,000 Euro and is sponsored by the German scientific journal 
"Gehirn&Geist". The selection jury consists of seven renowned scientists 
(among them Johannes Fried, former president of the Association of 
German Historians, and Michael Stolleis, former president of the 
Max-Planck-Institute of European Legal History), a journalist of 
"Gehirn&Geist" and a German Wikipedian. The award ceremony starts with a 
lecture by Professor Ulrich Johannes Schneider, director of the Leipzig 
University Library, on "Johann Heinrich Zedler's Universal-Lexicon and 
the premature attempt to start Wikipedia in the 18th century".

On Saturday, August 25th, the conference will end with a panel 
discussion on "Perspectives to communicate sciences for a large audience 
in the New Media".

More information about the second Wikipedia Academy:
http://www.wikipedia-academy.de (official website)
http://www.wikimedia.de/2007/07/wikipedia-trifft-geisteswissenschaftler/ 
(in German)

More information about the Zedler Medal:
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Zedler-Medaille (with photo)
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Heinrich_Zedler (featured article 
about Zedler)

Regards,

Frank Schulenburg
Wikimedia Deutschland e. V.