[Wikimedia-l] [Wikitech-l] Fwd: Wikimedia/mapping event in Europe early next year?

[Sumana Harihareswara]

On 12/20/2012 06:56 AM, Cristian Consonni wrote:
> 2012/11/28 Erik Moeller <erik at wikimedia.org>:
>> WMF is not going to organize this, but we can help sponsor travel and
>> bring the key developers from our side who will work on this. Are
>> there any takers for supporting a 20-30 people development event in
>> Europe focused on mapping/geodata? I'm suggesting Europe because I
>> know quite a few of the relevant folks are there, but am open to other
>> options as well.
> 
> Hi,
> 
> Sorry for bringing up this thread again so late, anyway Wikimedia
> Italia has found a partner who is willing to organize such an event:
> the "Bruno Kessler Foundation"[1] (FBK).
> FBK is a research centre in Trento (Italy), which is already active in
> the field; they are also maintaining the Italian version of
> DBpedia[2]. The event will be held in Trento.
> They are rather flexible about the dates, but we are suggesting to
> organize it around the Wikimedia Conference  (the days just before or
> just after the conference) so to focus our efforts in that period; in
> this way we could also profit from the fact that some people from the
> WMF staff will already be in Italy (since the WMConf will be held in
> Milan).
> Also, we think that organizing it before April will not give a
> sufficient notice to other developers who may be interested in
> participating.
> We already contacted the Italian OSM community which will help to to
> get in touch the international community.
> 
> Is this ok for you, can we start make it moving? =)
> 
> Cristian
> WM-IT
> 
> [1] http://www.fbk.eu
> [2] http://it.dbpedia.org/

Sounds potentially good; the one bit of caution, I think, is that if you
can't have the event happen in March or early April, you will possibly
cause some participants to *choose* between the mapping event and the
late May WMNL hackathon,  because they can't take the time to travel to
both so close together.
https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Amsterdam_Hackathon_2013

Best of luck in the planning!

-- 
Sumana Harihareswara
Engineering Community Manager
Wikimedia Foundation