Wikimania

Wikimania
Status	Active
Location	Gdańsk, Poland (2010) Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009) Alexandria, Egypt (2008) Taipei, Republic of China on Taiwan (2007) Cambridge, Massachusetts (2006) Frankfurt, Germany (2005)
First held	2005
Organizer	Wikimedia Foundation
Filing status	Non-profit
Official website	http://wikimania2010.wikimedia.org

Wikimania is a conference for users of the wiki projects operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia Foundation projects, other wikis, open source software, and free content.

Overview

Wikimania conferences

Conference	Date	Place	Continent	Attendance
Wikimania 2005	5–7 August	Frankfurt am Main, Germany		380[1]
Wikimania 2006	4–6 August	Cambridge, United States		400[2]
Wikimania 2007	3–4 August	Taipei, Taiwan		440
Wikimania 2008	17–19 July	Alexandria, Egypt		625
Wikimania 2009	26–28 August	Buenos Aires, Argentina		559 [3]
Wikimania 2010	9–11 July	Gdańsk, Poland		N/A
Wikimania 2011	5–7 August	Haifa, Israel		N/A

History

Wikimania 2005

Global Voices Panel at the 2005 conference. Shown are Hossein Derakhshan, Ting Chen, Isam Bayazidi and Milton Ainehuranga.

The first Wikimania conference was held in the Haus der Jugend at Frankfurt, Germany, August 4 to August 8, 2005.

The week of the conference included four "Hacking Days", from August 1–4, when some 25 developers gathered to work on code and discuss the technical aspects of MediaWiki and of running the Wikimedia projects. The main days of the conference, despite its billing as being "August 4–8", were Friday to Sunday of that week, August 5–7. Presentation sessions were scheduled all day during those three days.

Keynote speakers included Jimmy Wales, Ross Mayfield, Ward Cunningham and Richard Stallman (who spoke on "Copyright and community in the age of computer networks"). The majority of sessions and conversations were in English, although a few were in German.

Sponsors of the event included Answers.com, SocialText, Sun Microsystems, DocCheck, and Logos Group.

Wikimania 2006

Attendees break for lunch.

Wikimania 2006 took place from August 6 to August 8, 2006, at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in Cambridge, Massachusetts in the United States. It had about 400^[2]-500^[4] attendees.

Speakers included Jimmy Wales, Lawrence Lessig, Brewster Kahle, Yochai Benkler, Mitch Kapor, Ward Cunningham, and David Weinberger. Dan Gillmor held a citizen journalism unconference the day after.

Wales' plenary speech was covered by the Associated Press, and printed in numerous worldwide newspapers. He chronicled how the Foundation evolved from him "sitting in his pajamas" to the maturing corporate structure that it is now; the frequent push for quality over quantity; Wikipedia will be included on computers distributed through One Laptop per Child; both Wikiversity and the creation of an advisory board were approved by the Foundation board; and that Wiki-WYG is in development thanks to private investment by Wikia, Inc. and Socialtext.^[5]

Answers.com was the Wikimania 2006 Patron sponsor, while Amazon.com, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, Nokia, WikiHow were Benefactors-level sponsors, Wetpaint, Ask.com, Yahoo!, and Socialtext were Friends-level sponsors, and IBM, FAQ Farm, Elevation Partners, One Laptop per Child, and the Sunlight Foundation were Supporter-level sponsors of the conference.^[6]

Three other teams submitted hosting bids, for the cities of London, Milan, Boston, and Toronto; only Toronto and Boston were passed to the second round of consideration by Wikimania organizers. In Toronto's case the event would have been hosted in the University of Toronto's Bahen Centre.

Wikimania 2007

The press conference for the Chunghwa Telecom sponsoring Wikimania 2007 in Taipei

As announced on September 25, 2006, Wikimania 2007 was held in Taipei, Republic of China on Taiwan from August 3, 2007 to August 5, 2007. It was the first to hold a volunteer training course.^[7]

Three other teams submitted hosting bids, for the cities of London, Alexandria, and Turin. Bids for Hong Kong, Singapore, Istanbul, and Orlando failed to make the shortlist.^[8]

On August 3, 2007, New York Times reporter Noam Cohen reported: "The conference has attracted about 440 attendees, a little more than half from Taiwan, who want to immerse themselves for three days in the ideas and issues that come up making an entirely volunteer written encyclopedia. The workshops cover practical topics like how to collaborate peacefully; what importance to give 'expertise' in a project that is celebrated for allowing anyone to contribute, including anonymous editors".^[9]

Wikimania 2008

Wikimania Alexandria 2008 banner

Wikimania 2008 was held in Alexandria, Egypt from July 17 to July 19, 2008. The venue was the Bibliotheca Alexandrina. Three proposed cities were in the running at the end, the other two being Atlanta and Cape Town. Proposals for Karlsruhe, London and Toronto were also submitted, but later withdrew. There was a controversy about the conference because of Egypt's alleged censorship and imprisoning of bloggers.^[10][11]

Wikimania 2009

Wikimania 2009 was held in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on August 26–28, 2009. Final selection was made between Buenos Aires and Toronto. Brisbane and Karlsruhe were formally proposed, but later withdrawn from consideration.

Wikimania 2010

Wikimania 2010 was held from July 9-11 in the Polish Baltic Philharmonic in Gdańsk, Poland. The starting day on July 9 overlapped with the end of the Wikisym academic conference. This is the second time Wikimania was held in the European Union. Bids for Amsterdam and Oxford for Wikimania 2010 lost by a small margin.

At the conference, Sue Gardner, executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation, said that the foundation's aim was to grow the number of visitors to Wikimedia sites from 371 million to 680 million a month, over the next five years.

See also

• WikiSym

Notes and references

External links

• Wikimania at Meta-Wiki, a Wikimedia project coordination wiki
• Videos of Wikimania sessions on Kaltura's devwiki

News reports

• "Worldwide Wikimania" Sean Dodson, The Guardian, August 11, 2005
• "Rewriting the rule books" Alan Connor, the BBC, August 15, 2005
• "The Many Voices of Wikipedia, Heard in One Place" Robert Levine, The New York Times, August 7, 2006
• "Anybody can edit: A weekend of Wikimania" Ian Sands and Jess McConnell, The Boston Phoenix, August 11, 2006
• "The Neutrality of this Article is Disputed" Katherine Mangu-Ward, Reason, August 15, 2006
• The China Post - "Wikipedia founder rewards volunteers" Monday, August 6, 2007 - By Dimitri Bruyas