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Who had the best time at Wikimania? Maybe my roommate
Me and my roommate, Professor Samia Ahmed El-Sheikh.
At the start of Wikimania I checked into my hotel room and wondered who my roommate would be. Within a couple of hours I found out – it was Samia from Cairo, who is a Professor of Weaving in the Artifacts and Oriental Traditions in Helwan University. She had a poster in the Wikimania poster sessions (which were sadly few and far away, from the main people area at least). She gave me a flier of her poster and started telling me enthusiastically about her idea: that Wikimedia could somehow form a database of information on historical textiles and weaving.
She told me about how she had visited museums around the world with blatantly incorrectly-labelled items (e.g. confusing embroidery and tapestry), many errors in identification and naming of various aspects of weaving. She had tried to get the museums to correct their displays but so far without luck. She had taken dozens of photographs of their works to correctly identify them herself.
She had been browsing Wikipedia and seen a notice about Wikimania registration, and decided to submit a talk to try and gather support for her idea. The program organisers advised her to submit her idea as a poster, so she did. On the Wednesday before Wikimania started her family drove with her from Cairo to Alexandria (when I met her she was saying goodbye to them in the hotel lobby).
She’s never edited Wikipedia. She just saw the notice and thought it would be an audience where she could gather some support for her idea, her dream. Now how cool is that?
Over the three days of Wikimania she went around to lots of sessions, talking to people, being introduced to others. I thought her idea might be best implemented as an en/ar WikiProject. She spoke to Cormac who thought her idea might be best suited to Wikiversity. Florence thought maybe Wikibooks + Commons for the images. Raoul Weiler sought her out to discuss — well, I’m not sure. Probably museumy stuff.
I hope that something will come from this. I hope that Samia will take up editing Wikipedia and that Wikimedia will embrace her ideas, in one form or another. I’m so pleased I was lucky enough to have Samia as a roommate. I look forward to meeting her again, one day, for a personal tour of Cairo at least. :)
Wikimedia Commons for Fun & Profit; an interesting job in Sydney
…well, far more fun than profit :)
Happily my Wikimania talk is now over. Slides, abstract
Jure Cuhalev wrote up his notes which was very nice. :)
And now, a brief interlude from Liam Wyatt: you can work for him!
The Dictionary of Sydney is hiring.
If you are based in Sydney and have experience in multimedia researching, especially within a historical context, then I encourage you to look into a new job being offered by the Dictionary of Sydney.
The Dictionary is an online history project covering the whole Sydney basin. To find out more about the project, visit: http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/
For the full details of the position, visit: http://positions.usyd.edu.au/ and search for position reference: 134833
Wikimania feeds
There are two categories on Wikimedia Commons for Wikimania-related content:
(I’m guessing eventually these will be merged together)
Slides from my Inkscape SVG workshop with Adam Hyde of FLOSS Manuals. It went quite well, despite being scheduled against Jimmy and the fact that virtually no one brought a laptop with them. In fact, we had so many attendees they had to bring in more chairs. :)
Quick update from Wikimania
I have tons to blog about, but I thought I would quickly relay that Wikimedia Commons has now reached three million files. :) We’re still working out what we think the 3 millionth file was. Maybe this metro station.
I’m going to write notes at http://identi.ca/pfctdayelise , and I suggest others to do so using the tag #wikimania2008.
Wikimania 2008 schedule is out
I could have missed it, but the 2008 Wikimania schedule has been published.
There’s some great looking talks, including one by the new Board member “Wing” (Ting Chen), called Keep the Community Open while Wikipedia matures. Some interesting ones by third parties too (LibraryThing, Open Street Maps). But I am most looking forward to seeing the talks by the local Wikipedians.
I have one and a half events. But they are slated against Jimmy and Florence, so pffft! Can I sneak out of my own presentation? :)
Wikimania 2007 videocasts now available
Woo, oggly goodness: ftp://memphis.iis.sinica.edu.tw/wikimania2007_DV_ogg/
Finally, the wider community can participate…
I started a page on meta so people can annotate and match up the files and sessions: Wikimania 2007 videocasts. Probably definition list is not the best format for it, but I’m sure someone will fix it if they figure out a better method.
Thankyou Chris for the heads-up.
Links for 2008-03-30
- Freebase commits to 3-monthly database dumps. Congrats, Freebase – this decision combined with your copyright policy makes you officially cool in the free culture world. My previous concerns are assuaged. Let’s do great things.
- Screencast on Wikimapia by Leigh Blackall:
(go kiwi accents. direct link)
- Has anyone ever seen Semapedia out and about in the real world?
- WMF Advisory Board member Teemu is giving a talk at the Helsinki Media Conference called Wikimedia – Media for All.
- Wikimania 2009 will be in Buenos Aires. Congrats to Wikimedia Argentina. I am happy that this beautiful artwork will serve a purpose!
Links for 14-01-2008
Grab bag of links, some of them are not new but just new to me.
- GPS mapping court case n Singapore. ‘‘The central issue in the case is to what extent Virtual Map used SLA’s maps in creating its own maps.’‘ Could be a bad harbinger for friends such as Open Street Map (CC-BY-SA).
- Inkscape ‘about’ screen contests – awesome combination of coders and artists. Pity there’s no decent sized gallery.
- Interview with the founder of the Swedish Pirate Party. Quote:
In short, you cannot stop file sharing with any less than undoing digital communications and/or monitoring all of it. The Internet was created as the world’s largest copying machine, as the makers of Steal This Film II put it so succinctly. File sharing happens simply because it is possible, as sharing knowledge and culture has always been, although with different media.
What really upsets me, though, is how politicians are humming along with the copyright industry’s every demand. The industry lobby is just doing their job, basically: demanding better conditions for their industry, at the expense of other parts of society. It is the politicians which have failed abysmally at understanding the big picture of their demands.
- BitNami ‘easy install’ MediaWiki package. Tempting. Anyone tried it?
- PublicDomainReprints.org. (For Wikisource they say ‘‘Take a look at PediaPress as an alternative.’‘ Since it’s all free content there’s nothing actually stopping them doing this as well, is there?)
- Some pretty MW skins. I assume they’re GPL?
And from the mailing lists:
- Interesting discussion on wikisource-l about different language Wikisources’ attitudes to scanned-texts-as-references.
- Excellent State of technology: 2007 summary by Domas Mituzas
- WMF staff update by Sue
- Looks like Wikimania 2009 bids are now closed.
- Bogotá (Colombia, South America)
- Toronto (Ontario, Canada)
- Kathmandu (Kathmandu, Nepal)
- Buenos Aires (Argentina, South America)
- Brisbane (Queensland, Australia)
- Karlsruhe (Germany, Europe)
Of these, Bogotá, Kathmandu, Karlsruhe and Brisbane will be knocked out quickly. That leaves as serious bids, Toronto and Buenos Aires.
Toronto has 16 people signed up on its bid page as organisers, although it’s hard to tell how committed they really are. Buenos Aires has Wikimedia Argentina behind it, which should be good for organisational reasons. Argentinians also seem to love open source so it would be a good fit. Whoever wins, the North Americans will be happy, since although Toronto would be a lot cheaper airfare than Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires would still be in the realm of reasonableness, and other costs such as accommodation could be expected to be lower. Whichever way it goes, they both look like competent bids, so best of luck.
PS, if you use del.icio.us, please feel free to share me interesting links. :)
