Dear Wikimaniacs.
Please excuse the provocative title. As you might know Wikimania2014 is over right now.
And it was a great event and a big success. The program was very comprehensive and had
something for almost every taste. But meta themes, technical and abstract topics imho
played a dominant role.
I think the most important part is still missing: program offers of (and for)
contributors. There were some, but very few. The reason is undoubtedly not that there is a
lack of submissions. There were a lot, but most of them were rejected. This is exactly
what I do not want, and I believe it to be a development in the wrong direction. A welcome
exception to this was Diego Delsos lecture "How Commons made a quality photographer
out of me". Hopefully there are more such events in Mexico. In London we had a lot
of sections, such as Education, GLAM, Technology, Open Data and Free Culture. Maybe we
should add a fixed "Contributors Area" if only to ensure that events of (and
for) contributors become an integral part of a Wikimania and have a guaranteed place at
future events.
Let's go back to the roots. I would be delighted if it were possible for Diego to hold
his lecture again next year. It would imho also be an excellent idea if there were events
like
-how to take cheap images with a quality camera erm - I mean, how to take quality images
with a cheap camera.
-How to adopt a foreign country
-Creating a bot for dummies
-my first edit in Wikipedia ever. How people come to Wikipedia and why they stay.
Workshops for Wikipedia editors, photographers, cartographers, illustrators and so on to
mention only a few.
Many people I spoke with demonstrated great enthusiasm, but they had the same questions as
I. What do you think?
Yours,
Matthias Süßen
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Matthias Süßen
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