[Wikipedia-l] Re: Has someone done a presentation on Wikipedia to a large group?

[Ashar Voultoiz]

ilooy wrote:
> Hi fellow Wikipedians,
> 
> I'll be doing a presentation on Wikipedia for 
> the McAuliffe Conference and the NHAWLT
> Teachers' Conference in the coming weeks
> and was wondering if anyone else has done
> a presentation to a large group... what features
> would be good to highlight... and what seems
> to work well with a group that has not heard
> much about the project yet.
> 
> If you have some ideas as to what might
> be good points to bring out please let me
> know. I appreciate any insights you may
> offer on this subject.
> 
> with sincere regards,
> Jay B.
> [[w:en:User:ILVI]]

Hello,

I presented "MediaWiki as a collaborative tool" using Wikipedia as an 
example. Auditors were professional from education / training , or came 
from companies that either sale collaborative tools or use them (like 
lotus notes).

I briefly presented the concept of wiki (everyone can edit, edit are 
instantly available, no moderator ...). Explained that a project use it 
to build a free encyclopedia (wikipedia) and that despite a lot of 
objections it works.

You will probably have to read several time:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Replies_to_common_objections

Comparing wikipedia to the linux kernel helped me a lot ('it will never 
works', 'we can trust that').

Basicly it was:

1/ introducing the wiki system
2/ examples using wikipedia (how to view, edit, save a page, talk)
3/ giving a table of some objections and our answers (like vandalism is 
fight by having 20x more people willing to fix them)
4/ Questions / answers


cheers,


-- 
Ashar Voultoiz - WP++++
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Hashar