WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION ANNOUNCES WIKIMANIA 2006 CONFERENCE
Sets Stage for Annual Global Gathering of Wikipedians,
Internet Luminaries, Scholars and Industry Personalities
June 9 -- The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce Wikimania 2006,
the second annual international Wikimedia conference. The three-day
conference, focusing on Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the use of
wikis to organize knowledge, will be held August 4-6 at Harvard Law School
in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Last year’s inaugural Wikimania, held
in Frankfurt, Germany, drew 380 people from 50 countries. This year's
event will bring together Wikimedia contributors and wiki enthusiasts,
Internet visionaries, and academics from a wide range of fields.
Registration is available online, with discounted rates for community
members; help is available for overseas travelers in need of US visas.
Website : http://wikimania2006.wikimedia.org/
Registration : http://wm06reg.wikimedia.org/
ABOUT WIKIMANIA
New tools for collaboration and peer production are changing the way the
world develops and organizes information. Wikis are at the forefront of
this change, an increasingly prominent part of consumer and corporate
computing environments.
Wikimania highlights the latest Wikimedia project developments, wiki
research, and practices in peer production, as well as the people behind
this work. Community and outside experts will discuss the growth and
goals of the Wikimedia projects with analysis and criticism, in workshops,
panel discussions and presentations. Speakers will include Lawrence Lessig,
free culture advocate and chair of Creative Commons; Brewster Kahle,
founder of the Open Content Alliance and co-founder of Alexa Internet;
author and lecturer Clay Shirky; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; and
more than 50 other presenters from the project and research communities.
The Harvard Law School campus is providing generous space for Wikimania
activities, with support from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.
The law school will also provide housing for attendees from around the
world. A smaller Hacking Days event for wiki developers will be held
prior to the main conference, with support from the MIT Media Lab.
ABOUT THE WIKIMEDIA FOUNDATION
The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an international non-profit organization
dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free,
multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based
projects to the public free of charge. The Wikimedia Foundation operates
some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects anywhere,
including Wikipedia, one of the 20 most visited websites in the world.
The Wikimedia Foundation was created in 2003 to manage the operation of
existing projects, and is based in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. Wikimedia
has local chapters in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Serbia
and Montenegro, and Poland. Most of the Foundation's operations are funded
by reader and contributor donations.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
For more information about the conference, contact wikimania-info@wikimedia.org
For other press coverage, see the Foundation press page:
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Press_room
