[Foundation-l] Why should Wikimedians meet?

[Amir E. Aharoni]

I am thinking about making Wikimania 2011 as awesome as possible and
here's a little something that bothered me.

Wikimania 2010 was my first. It was a lot of fun to meet Wikimedians
from around the world. I also think that a lot of new ideas were born
thanks to the personal meetings in Gdansk, at least some of which may
grow to successful projects. Maybe it will be smarter use of machine
translation, maybe outreach to underprivileged languages, maybe
accessibility improvements. Maybe other things.

But all of the above are nice dreams about the future. Is there any
proven experience from the past that demonstrates why personal
meetings between Wikimedians are not just fun for them, but actually
beneficial to the Wikimedia community, the Internet, the Humanity? Can
anyone here give me solid examples of successful projects that were
born thanks to past Wikimanias?

I am sure that they exist and that i use their fruits every day
without realizing it.

-- 
אָמִיר אֱלִישָׁע אַהֲרוֹנִי
Amir Elisha Aharoni

http://aharoni.wordpress.com

"We're living in pieces,
 I want to live in peace." - T. Moore