Wikimania online

Wikimania 2006 will include an online conference, so that those unable to attend can participate remotely. There will be audio and video streams of the conference, and text transcripts of the main sessions and IRC channels for those who wish to ask questions or interact with the speakers and other attendees.

At the conference

IRC

Wikimaniacs are chatting on irc://irc.freenode.net/wikimania -- see Participating via IRC.

Transcripts

There will be live transcripts of many sessions, thanks to gobby and blogs; see transcription for details. Transcripts will be posted to the wiki.

Blogs

Many bloggers are at the conference, see Wikimania Blogs.

Audio and video streams

Live audio and video streams of sessions will be available through RealPlayer. Archival audio and video of individual sessions will be available as well, soon after sessions end.

Audio and video archives are being made available on the Archives page.

Wikimania is on standard time zone: UTC/GMT -4 hours. See the actual time there now.

Facebook

If you're coming to Wikimania, or just participating online, add yourself to the facebook.

Be the conference

Discussions

Discussions will be held online around specific abstracts/presentations/workshops and proposed BOFs, leading up to and during the conference. If you are interested in moderating such discussions, or a particular discussion, let us know. To propose specific program ideas or sessions, see the discussions page.

Lightning talks

There will be a few sessions of short "lightning" talks at Wikimania, including a series of presentations each under 5 minutes about a specific project, group, or topic. The creation of a really great article or book, the development of a new process or policy, the progress of a wikiproject or group, and the history of a language-edition of a project are all excellent subjects for such a talk.

Please list potential lightning talks below (signing your name next to your suggestion), or send a abstract of no more than 100 words to cfp--at--wikimedia.org.

The Purpose of the Chinese Firewall -- I'd like to give a five minute talk on the motives of the Chinese government in setting up the Chinese firewall so that Wikimedia can more effectively circumvent it. Roadrunner 18:12, 24 June 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Wow that'd be awesome. I mean, the basic answer is because they want to control people and the information they get, but delving a little deeper into that could be very interesting.

It's actually more complex. I don't actually think that controlling the information that people get is main purpose of the firewall. There are two more basic reasons that it exists. For what they are - see my talk :-) :-) Roadrunner 18:06, 2 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
One thing that I think would be useful product of Wikimania is a practical wikibook howto on 1) getting around the Chinese firewall if you are in China and 2) making sure that your content isn't blocked by the Chinese firewall if you are on the outside. Roadrunner 05:39, 3 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Roadrunner, good idea. We can speculate and debate about the "purpose" per se, and it would be lively. But as for nuts and bolts - for a while I've wanted to talk about how to deal with blocks of Wikipedia, and this should be the perfect venue. Should we coordinate? I've got a list of "Seven Methods" of dealing with the block. -- Fuzheado 04:36, 28 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Sure. What I can talk about is the socio-political context of the blocks, and you can talk about how to get around them. The socio-poltical context is very important since it limits what the Chinese government can/can't do. Also, once you have an idea of the socio-political context, you can figure out that if the Chinese government is trying to do X, then its reaction to Y would be Z.

Roadrunner 09:08, 29 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Roadrunner, have you heard of peacefire.org? Just wondering. 24.20.177.147 09:35, 30 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Liquid Threads: Replacing the talk page in MediaWiki -- I'd like to give a five minute talk on the new structured discussion system that I am implementing as part of Summer of Code. MediaWiki's current talk page system has serious usability and maintenance problems. I would describe these problems, and show how Liquid Threads rectifies them. If it is welcome, I could also talk about what it's like to hack MediaWiki as a newcomer.
OpenWetWare: a Wiki For Biologists -- I'd like to give a talk about OpenWetWare - a MediaWiki-based effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and wisdom among researchers and groups who are working in biology and biological engineering. OpenWetWare started in an MIT Biology lab one year ago and has grown to include 60 academic labs from 24 institutions around the world. OpenWetWare has provided a forum for publishing the day-to-day research information that is unavailable in traditional, peer-reviewed journals and has become an essential tool for many of the participating labs. We are extending the MediaWiki software, and have developed a number of new tools specifically for scientific collaboration. Ilya 21:17, 10 July 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Build a skyscraper in 30 seconds -- I'm considering giving a live-demonstration of Google SketchUp, an extremely intuitive 3d-modeling software that's free (Google's quote: "3D for everyone!"), to build up a base of Wiki'ers interested in writing a SketchUp Wikibook --- or possibly to flag more interest from newer users in a MediaWiki incarnation -- SUWiki. -Yosofun 04:42, 28 July 2006 (UTC) (Noted: Interesting lack of entries here...)[reply]
The Green Commons Wiki - we wanted to present a Mediawiki project that is underway called (The Green Commons). It is grounded on the belief that environmental sustainability will be one of the largest issues our planet community will address in the coming years. We believe that the information and knowledge about how to live more sustainably belongs to everyone and there needs to be universal access to this information in addition to an ability to contribute to the collective wisdom. What better cause to harness the collaborating power of a wiki.

The focus of the effort is to help provide more sustainable options to the common person making everyday decisions. You and me. We've begun collecting sustainable techniques around food, building, landscaping, energy, mobility, justice and recycling. The wiki is currently being supported by a grassroots community of 30 people called the Great Lakes Green Initiative.

We would be delighted to provide a brief overview and examples of our success and struggles with forming a wiki community and beginning to build a collective knowledge base. We would hope it inspires others and we expect there are people out there that have ideas that could be most helpful.

Tom and Peggy Brennan(--Tom Brennan 16:33, 28 July 2006 (UTC))[reply]

Great Lakes Green Initiative