[FM Discuss] wikimania '08 report

[Elisa]

Adam,

Thanks for this interesting mail.

I have to study more this mail, and see some french links to study more in 
deep some point you have begining.

Quicly, when you speak about professionnal writers wrote with 
non-professionnal writers. My feeling.
Just because i have write a book printed in house of editor copyright i was 
considered like a professional ? And what about people who wrote every day 
good articles on their blog or on Wikipedia or on FM ? ;)
What i have see, it's during the booksprint, very professional work : creation 
of the TOC, creation of the "style" (how to organize the content, the h1, 
h2..h6, .dialog etc), and after writting content. Congratulation all. Every 
people begin one day, every author begin one day. 

When you wrote for a house of editor they "command". In a part it's much 
easier than write in GPL which require more thoughts and large management 
(how write and for who, wich file format, which tools, the style etc).

Writing with others is more rich than writing alone, and faster. I'm actually 
writting a new book (in house of editor standard) with a professional author, 
is rich and faster than writting alone. But i don't have see the difference 
with the booksprint, a part, obviously, the deadline.

I think documents by community is more rich, reflecting more point of view. 
For manual is obviously more rich and give to the reader a good estimation 
for the quality of the document.  

If the document writing by several people it's about psicology or etnologia or 
history, the pb is another : each point of view by professional people or non 
professionnal people can be in conflict and if some content was deleted 
because it no receive the agreement by all. I think you see the danger. 
Common vision are just keep. But this problem can found an issue in 
administration the group.

Here is my first reaction.

Elisa

Le Sunday 20 July 2008 18:43:49 adam hyde, vous avez écrit :
> hi,
>
> [note: this is a draft, I will check URLs etc when I return to Amsterdam
> and resend to the list. I thought it was of interest to sent his now in
> any case]
>
> So, Wikimania '08. It has been an interesting event. Held in the New
> Great Library of Alexandria on the sea front of the beautiful
> Mediterranean. The site is infront of the old Great Library which is now
> under the sea.
>
> I was here to represent FM and the good work we have all done, and learn
> as much as I can from as many people as I can to further assist FMs
> growth and development
>
> I attended last years event in Taiwan so its interesting to compare. On
> the whole I'd say this event has a taint more formality, due pretty much
> to the venue. It is a prestigious housing for this event and while
> impressive it does lessen the ebb and flow of casual meetings which was
> a little easier last year in a more relaxed space.
>
> Each days events were held across 5 parallel streams. There was no
> attempt to harmonize streams, rather it seemed a little bit muddled with
> no conscious emphasis on any specific themes. It felt a little bit like
> a grab bag of ideas rather than a curated symposium. This feeling is
> also enhanced given that each block is only 45 minutes which doesn't
> give much time for discussion or in-depth investigation so I left many
> presentations feeling that I got only a sampling of the promised topic.
>
> Even so, there has been some interesting stuff, so below is a short
> report of what I found of interest.
>
> First up, I missed the opening presentations as Brianna and I had to
> prepare for a workshop later in the day, so the first thing I got to see
> was Ruediger Glott and Rishab Ghosh (in the 3rd session) talking about
> the forthcoming survey about motivations of Wikipedia contributors. I
> have read many articles from Rishab Ghosh as he is one of the few clear
> voices commenting on the motivations of free software developers and
> free content contributors. You can find some of his work on the
> excellent opensource.mit.edu resource for academic writings on open
> source/open content.
>
> Unfortunately however, the survey has not taken place yet so we did not
> get the presentation of the results. This would have been OK, but
> instead of an interesting drill-down into the issues at hand (motivation
> etc) we got a brief overview of the survey itself, how it was formatted,
> who should fill it out, and what it is trying to explore. The
> presentation contained a disappointing lack of real substance.
>
> Next up I attended the "Wikipedia Offline" presentation by Manual
> Schneider. Manuel is working on the development of offline distributions
> of Wikipedia on CD/DVD/USB drives etc. It was perhaps a little too dense
> on the technical detail. I was also left with a nagging lack of
> understanding for real world use for such a system. The work is quite
> advanced, essentially focusing on optimising a usable (searchable)
> offline snap shot of Wikipedia. However, there is no real work (as far
> as I could see) into how to update the snapshots (eg writing to a flash
> drive) or how to contribute and synchronise content written offline.
> These two issues seemed to me to be the most interesting but were
> entirely unattended to by the project.
>
> Then we broke for lunch and afterwards Brianna and I lead a workshop on
> using Inkscape with SVG and Wikimedia Commons. We had the joy of
> competing with Jimmy Wales in his keynote. This fact was announced over
> the intercom twice in Arabic and twice in English during the first 15
> minutes of our workshop - but we weren't deterred! Brianna did the bulk
> of the workshop, I demonstrated FM and introduced our series of Book
> Sprints with special emphasis on the Inkscape Book Sprint and the
> results, and then demo'ed Inkscape for tracing a bitmap. Brianna talked
> about SVG, demo'ed the svgtranslate online service (more on this later)
> and Wikimedia Commons. I was pleased Brianna and I had been slotted an
> hour and a half (the only session to have such a generous allocation) so
> we could get into some detail and discuss issues.
>
> I think Brianna did a fabulous job and we maintained an audience of
> about 40 people - most returning after the coffee break in the middle
> which was a very good sign :) Congrats to Brianna, she did the vast
> majority of the work and I think the audience was very impressed and
> satisfied.
>
> Incidentally - my room mate at the hotel (Carlos) is also part of the
> organising committee for the next Wikimania (to be held in Argentina)
> and I discussed the possibility of having more free software workshops
> next year - it would be good to have workshops not only on free
> softwares but on some of Wikimedia Foundation projects. Lets see if they
> come back to us.
>
> Next...the Wikimedia Foundation Board Panel. Seated like Egyptian
> Pharaohs in a semi circle (remembering the legacy of the venue...) the
> Board were actually pretty down to Earth. Its pretty great to see that
> there can be an open panel discussion where the agenda is for the board
> to update everyone on what has happened since the last Wikimania and
> then open the mic for any questions on any topic. Remarkably egalitarian
> in appearance although I am not close enough to the internal dynamics to
> know how this is in reality. Still, its a good look.
>
> Large on the discussion agenda was the question of a Volunteer Council.
> This was explored in (sampled) detail in a panel the following day which
> I also attended.
>
> I left the first day feeling like I really didn't get much out of it
> although a highlight was the workshop and meeting some friends I hadn't
> seen for a while. However the content of the presentations seemed a
> little superficial because of curation and the short length of each
> session.
>
> I did have a great felafal (1 Egyptian pound, or about 15 euro cents).
> and a few beers with Shunling Chen (FM Advisory Board) and a nice walk
> along the stony storm break.
>
> The next day it was back into it with an opening panel entitled
> 'Wikipedia Lectures'...the blurb read that it had something to do with
> the organisation of lectures on all-things-wiki to be held in
> irc...sounded good to me (I am involved in organising a 'sustainable
> immobility' festival in Amsterdam in 2009 so I thought it might also be
> interesting from this point of view). However, the topic advertised had
> no relationship to the panel, although the panel was still very
> interesting.
>
> 4 old timers (Andrew Liu, Cat, Christopher Mathews + ?) presented their
> point of views on the challenges facing Wikipedia due to the scale of
> the project. One nice quote from a post (I think) from a wikipedian
> named 'Durova' was put up on the beamer and seemed salient (the
> following is paraphrased):
> "At the beginning an organisation is based on relationships, as it grows
> it develops policies until the point that these become too complex and
> unsustainable, then the organisation reverts back to relationships"...
>
> one of the panel suggested the last phrase should be "reverts to
> politics"...an interesting point and it summed up a lot of the
> frustration inherent in the points the panel was making.
>
> The topic quickly narrowed itself down to the problems of becoming an
> 'Admin' in Wikipedia (there are 1500 Admins for Wikipedia English) and
> how it is necessary to retain some kind of sane filtering process for
> appointing admins but at the same time the sheer scale of the
> organisation means the filtering process is now much more formal and not
> as cosy as some would like. One panel member went as far as to say the
> application process for Admins was emotionally traumatic and he would
> not recommend anyone for an Admin because he didn't want them to go
> through this process. Eeek! I don't see how these issues can be
> harmonised, but once again (as per the board panel) it was refreshing to
> see these issues discussed openly with no defensiveness apparent and a
> short but good input from the audience.
>
> So, I was thinking - at last some interesting stuff! The rest of the day
> built on this and I was very pleased in general with this day.
>
> The next session was for Lightning Talks. These are a series of 5 minute
> presentations on any topic. I got there early looking forward to seeing
> something unexpected, and unexpectedly I was asked if I wanted to
> present FM. I jumped at the chance and did a quick 5 minute presentation
> on FM, an overview of the manuals, FM Farsi, and our Xchange (the tool
> we use to transfer manuals between FM language sites) and Objavi (our
> beta print on demand tool) tools. Afterwards I had a lot of good
> feedback about FM so I was pleased to have had the opportunity. Of the
> talks by other presenters I was most interested in points raised by an
> Arabic speaker (I think he was Egyptian) about the need to grow the
> Arabic Wikipedia and take pride in Arabic as the language (many Arabic
> writers for Wikipedia prefer to contribute to the English site
> apparently). It was very interesting discussion and great to see local
> voices taking the floor - it turned into a passionate discussion that I
> believe was followed up in another session.
>
> After lunch I attended "Is the law an ally?" by French Wikipedia lawyer
> Olivier Hugot. A very interesting presentation. His greatest piece of
> advice is that if you receive a legal letter asking you to remove
> content don't take it down until you have talked to a lawyer. This is
> mainly because if you make efforts to remove the content this may
> actually be seen as an 'admission' of culpability if the matter goes to
> court. He also said the most common legal issues were misuse of
> trademarks within Wikipedia, copyright infringement withing Wikipedia,
> and defamatory comments within Wikipedia.
>
> Olivier believes the main threat to the WMF (he was talking mainly on
> behalf of French law but was making a general point) would be a case
> setting a precedent that considers the Wikimedia Foundation to be a
> publisher. This is because publishers _can_ be held liable for the
> content of their publications. He believes if this happened then it
> would probably be a burden that could bring about the end of Wikipedia
> as it would require unsustainable processes to filter content before it
> made the public web.
>
> He likes to argue that the WMF is not a publisher but more of a channel
> for other peoples content. The analogy he used was of talk radio or a
> speaker in a venue. If a speaker says something defamatory then the
> venue is not held liable. He believes this is the argument to make - to
> classify Wikimedia Foundation projects as custodians of a channel, and
> hence having no (or very little) responsibility or culpability for the
> content posted.
>
> In this way he tries to drive a wedge between 'channel' and
> 'publisher'.
>
> I asked him, but perhaps not in the most eloquent manner, at what point
> might Wikipedia be considered a publisher. Specifically I was interested
> in the new PDF creation tools wikipedia is experimenting with. The tools
> are supplied by Wikipedia and enable users to create 'collections' of
> pages that are then rendered as PDF. These tools, as far as I can tell
> through talking with Eric Moeller (involved with developing these
> tools),  is to tie Wikipedia into print on demand services. Given that
> ebook readers are on the rise (some read PDF) and PDF is the source
> format for print on demand - does this tip Wikipedia over this fine line
> into the role of a publisher?
>
> However I don't think he understood my question so I can't report any
> interesting conclusion on this. ugh. Maybe Shunling would like to
> comment on this?
>
> Next...Brion Vibber - lead developer for MediaWiki (the software that
> drives all Wikimedia Foundation projects). His presentation was weirdly
> similar in feel to a Steve Jobs MacWorld presentation (although
> possibly a little geekier). Brion is something of a star in this arena.
> First up some very interesting stats:
> * across all WMF projects there are 10,000,000,000 page requests a month
> * there are 50,000 http object requests per second
> * hardware for hosting costs 1.5 million (USD)
> * 25,000 USD is spent on bandwidth per month
> * hosting (housing) costs $10,000 a month
> * there are 4 paid programmers/system administrators and 3 volunteers (a
> herculean ratio)
> * all servers are standard x86 (64 bit) servers running Ubuntu
>
> The presentation was, once again, rather upfront. His summary is that
> Wikimedia Foundation is now out of the 'panic mode' and is now a
> sustainable technical enterprise. He outlined some of the most recent
> achievements as being:
> * single user login (you can create one account which can log you in
> across all WMF projects).
> * an experimental mobile version (you can see it at
> http://mobile.wikipedia.org)
> * a new localisation service for WMF projects
> (http://translatewiki.net). I believe Wikimedia projects use 'gettext'
> for localisation which is a unix tool that creates a specific kind of
> format for translation strings (sometimes called the 'gettext
> standard'). FM uses the same syntax and I was cornered by one of people
> involved in this translatewiki project to see if FM would use the
> service...no need as we have our own very nice tools (see the
> localisation chapters in the FM manual)
>
>
> Things that are not on the cards for MediaWiki include:
> * no WYSIWYG editor. this is largely due to the fact that WMF syntax
> (mark up) is also used for formatting templates and it is hard to break
> the two issues apart.
> * no p2p wikipedia (an ongoing, old, issue)
>
> In the pipeline:
> * the PDF generation is still in the works but in beta mode. Largely due
> to syntax rendering as far as I can see. I believe the developers are
> called 'PediaPress' and they have some information on their site
> although I haven't checked it yet.
> * bulk upload and simplified meta data entry for Wikimedia Commons
> * possibility of embedded ogg theora in wikipedia articles. They are
> working closely with Metavid (http://www.metavid.org) on this.
>
> Next was the Volunteer Council meeting. This is largely about the
> internal workings of Wikipedia. The Wikimedia Foundation has a board,
> which is soon to have two chapter members (a 'chapter' is a language
> project) and two community members. It also has some other elected
> members including a chair and the 'honorary' position for Jimmy Wales.
> The board promote themselves as outside of the daily operations of
> Wikimedia Foundation projects and say they actively try to 'get out of
> the way' of Wikipedia et al. I can't comment on whether this is actually
> the case. However there seems to be murmurings within the
> 'community' (the nature of this in itself is hard to define) towards the
> establishment of some kind of Volunteer Council (VC) that will represent
> concerns to the programmers (who are mostly paid staff) and the board
> etc.
>
> What the mandate is for the VC, what it should do, how it is
> appointed/elected, and how it operates is all in the air. So this
> meeting was really a realspace catch up and attempt to synthesize
> discussions that have occurred online.
>
> Brianna may wish to comment on this further. I found that the discussion
> was interesting but it was pretty much impossible for it to get very
> far.
>
> Lastly I attended a split presentation about 'the wikisation of images'
> by Nikola Smolenski and 'metavid'  by Michael Dale. Both were technical
> presentations. Nikola spoke about the need to develop a wiki syntax for
> image creation. The idea is that images could be augmented/scaled etc
> which as defined by the wiki mark up. In addition he spoke about the
> ideas Brianna has been discussing in our workshop about how SVG is the
> most 'wiki-like' image format in that it is a editable text file and so
> its easy to manipulate programmatically.
>
> Nikola developed his svgtranslate script which is online and it enables
> you to enter a url for a svg, it then parses the svg for text components
> (these are stored as plain text in the file) and then creates empty form
> fields for each text block. You then can enter new texts and the script
> will replace the old text with the new. The final result being an SVG
> with the new text. Great for translations etc. Brianna had previously
> demonstrated this during our workshop but it was great to see the guy
> that made it present the rationale etc.
>
> Nikola had also worked on scripts that will take regional maps and add
> highlighting to specific areas according to the mark up used. For
> example you can produce a map of europe with any country highlighted,
> all created in the fly and all done via SVG templates and wiki mark up.
>
> It was a great presentation and really opened my mind to the
> possibilities for SVG.
>
> Next was Michael and Metavid. Metavid started as a US Congressional
> video archive with very sophisticated indexing and searching.
>
> However metavid is now a content agnostic video 'cms' (wiki) of sorts.
> It is based on Mediawiki and Semantic Mediawiki but it has really taken
> it to a whole new level.
>
> The feature set is extensive but some highlights include:
> * inbrowser video editing
> * potential for integrating speech -> text transcripts
> * inbrowser subtitle (transcript) editing
> * huge list of supported codecs
> * smart plugin detection and manipulation
> * time based url syntax
> * ability to embed 'snippets' using their url syntax and embed api
>
> and more...
>
> A hugely impressive project. My only, and minor criticism, is
> that it lacks good design. Infact it falls into the category of bad
> interface design. This is really a shame and I hope they address it as
> Metavid is a fantastically extensive and sophisticated approach to video
> hosting.
>
> In the evening I met with Samuel Klein from OLPC about the documentation
> of OLPC and Sugar in FM. It was an interesting discussion, more about
> this in another email. Also I received an email from Lotte saying the
> book Brianna wrote during the sprint (see the new Wikimedia Commons
> manual linked from the front page of the English FM) arrived and looks
> beautiful. This is the first book made using our Objavi automated
> FM->print pdf generator. Cool! Can't wait to see it :))))) With luck one
> might arrive before we leave Wikimania but its unlikely...
>
> So! Day two, was done. Much more interesting than day one but still
> needed more time in each of the sessions.
>
> Next day (day 3)...Mako (FSF) started with a presentation about free
> network culture. A short introduction into the issue of network services
> and what 'free' means in this context. What does 'free' mean for network
> services like Google, Facebook etc...do we talk about privacy, free
> code, free information, transparency? The GPL v3 does not address this
> critical issue although there is the AGPL which is considered by some to
> go someway towards addressing the issue but not far enough. It was a
> great presentation but no time for questions.
>
> Then there was a (hohum) Creative Commons panel. ra ra ...CC is a dull
> topic these days if not given some critique. The panel focused just on
> what CC is, and Mako introduced how CC applies to Wikipedia. In short,
> CC doesn't apply as Wikipedia is covered by the FDL (which is a License
> that masquerades as 'free' but is infact a jail for content). Its an old
> story but essentially Wikipedia want out of the FDL so they are trying
> to get the FSF to make the new draft of the FDL compatible with the
> CC-BY-SA license. This would mean Wikipedia could slip out of the FDL
> and into CC. Questions remain - should the nature of a license be
> influenced by the needs of one user of that license? NO is my answer.
> They have done this kind of stupid thing before with the FDL. The
> rationale for the license includes a paragraph about how the license was
> originally written to protect the business interests of small publishers
> that wanted to publish manuals on free software. It is silly, if you ask
> me, to write a free license to such a specific context. It looks like
> the FSF is about to do the same thing again by changing the FDL to suit
> the interests of the Wikimedia Foundation.
>
> I believe the FSF should just think of the license and its needs. What
> constitutes a free license in this context? In my opinion a really free
> license for documentation (and I actually don't think there should be a
> special license at all for documentation) is the GPL. It does the
> job..whats the problem? By having a non-free license paraded as free in
> the FSF license stable just weakens the trust in the FSF. If something
> isn't free, and the FDL does not preserve freedom, then two things need
> to be done: first - don't call it free, second - dump it.
>
> What the FDL needs is to be written so that it is scheduled for being
> outmoded and give anyone that uses it the opportunity to stay with the
> old outmoded license, or move to the GPL. But...no...no time for
> questions...time taken up by someone asking if they should use a
> CC-BY-SA-NC or CC-BY-SA license...note to next programming committee :
> hold intro courses on all WMF projects and free licenses so that panels
> don't get stuck on the basics.
>
> Next....Brianna on Wikimedia Commons. You may not know Wikimedia
> Commons. If you don't then read Briannas manual
> (http://www.flossmanuals.net/wikimediacommons) Essentially Wikimedia
> Commons is a media library for Wikimedia projects. It has a special
> focus on images but also extends to audio and video.
>
> Some interesting notes:
> * 5000 files are uploaded to Wikimedia Commons daily.
> * 3 million files are in WC as of the day before the conference began
> * the contributions are growing faster than new articles in the english
> wikipedia
> * the single user login is expected to accelerate this uptake even more
>
>
> Brianna gave an overview of WC and where it is going. The point I noted
> most of all was that WC is the only WMF project that works with all
> other WMF projects. This is because many of the WC images get used in
> the WMF projects.
>
> It seemed to be that next to Wikipedia english (arguably the flagship
> project) Wikimedia Commons is pretty much the next most important
> project on the table. Although this may or may not be the case
> (interested in Briannas thoughts on this) it certainly seems that its
> importance is not reflected in the attention accorded to it by the WMF
> or its programmers. As I understand it, from the bug list presented by
> Brianna, the project has some severe usability issues that hinder its
> uptake and usefulness. Most notable are:
> * you cant rename/move images
> * there isn't a workflow management system for classifying/clearing
> images
> * the upload process is just too hard to use
> * there needs to be clean batch uploading
> * it isn't really usable in many languages other than english
>
> Also, it seems the default set-up for all new WMF projects enables users
> to upload images etc to the 'local' project and hence many images are
> being uploaded to each projects repository instead of to the shared WC
> repository. It would seem reasonable to require new projects to have
> this 'local uploads' feature turned off by default so that all projects
> upload to WC and share images etc.
>
> They seem like pretty critical issues to me. On the up side is that
> despite all of this, WC is still being used by a tremendous number of
> people.
>
> Ok...moving on...WikiTravel presentation...WikiTravel are a wiki
> (mediawiki) for travel guides that dovetails into a print on demand
> process. Interesting interesting. Very similar themes raised to those
> here at FM...
>
> First...WT pay editors to write and edit documents. As I understand it
> anyone can contribute but the editors get paid to maintain the bulk of
> the content and ensure its clean and ready to print. Paying people for
> content goes against the flow in the WMF world (at the moment at least,
> although there was some mention of grants from the WMF for developing
> people etc but I'm not sure that is the same thing).
>
> The received wisdom in this is that paying people decreases motivation
> and increases discontent within those that don't get paid. WT believe
> there is no problem paying people (and I agree). WT believe the role of
> the paid contributors is clear and specific. It is WTs belief that this
> is enough to justify paying them and not others. I don't think I quite
> agree with this. My feeling is that it is a matter of organisational
> culture. If its clear from the beginning some people might be paid (and
> it could be anyone) for some task, but volunteering is also encouraged,
> then I believe this can work well. We have been doing this within FM and
> so far I haven't heard any grumbles...(speak up if there are!)
>
> Next WT investigated what do 'real travel writers' think of contributing
> to WT. Answer : they hate it. Well, that's upfront I guess. According to
> WT professional travel writers hate using a wiki. They think the mark up
> is too hard and would prefer WYSIWYG editors or, preferably, to write
> material offline in word processors. WYSIWYG is too difficult to
> implement in MediaWiki (as per Brion Vibbers comments) so that's not
> going to be solved early. Also, travel writers apparently feel a loss of
> ownership of the content (ie. their perceived authorship is diminished
> if the document is written collaboratively).
>
> So WT don't worry about the professionals but choose to work with 'non
> professionals' that are comfortable in wiki-space. Interestingly,
> professional documentation writers do use FM - how do you feel about
> this issue Anne/Elisa/Cedric (and others)?
>
> Next...how does the commercial book market react to print on demand?
> Answer : not very well. According to WT, book sellers do not recognize
> 'wiki output' as 'books'. I am not sure I agree. There are some computer
> book publishers (PAKT) that write (closed source) manuals and publish
> via print on demand. Book sellers buy them...seems to be no problem. I
> also asked one book seller in Amsterdam about the fact FM produces
> content in a wiki, he had no problem with it and would consider buying
> books produced this way.
>
> One issue however is that of ISBN. These are the numbers that identify
> each book. An ISBN costs $225 (USD). If you release a new edition you
> need a new ISBN. ISBN is used by all book buyers and distributors for
> inventory control and ordering.
>
> The big hang-up here is that content produced in a wiki and delivered
> via print on demand doesn't really hold with the idea of 'editions'. If
> you are editing in a wiki and updating the print source constantly, then
> what on earth is an 'edition'?
>
> So...is there an alternative? Well...ISSN exists. Which is ISBN but for
> serial publications like magazines. So is this ok to use? It seems,
> according to WT, that book sellers think magazines are magazines and
> books are books, and books cannot share the same identification system
> that magazines have. That would be just too confusing for the poor book
> buyer.
>
> So..it could work, but might have some resistance by some book buyers...
>
> There is also the Amazon Standard ID Number (ASIN). But this is only for
> distribution via Amazon partners, hence if you use this you will never
> get your book in Barnes and Noble (etc).
>
> WT advocates a free ISBN/ISSN/ASIN alternative. Sounds good.
>
> I asked them in question time about their PDF rendering process. They
> need to get from MediaWiki to Print and PDF is the intermediary format.
> Ok...is it open source? No. Ok...is there plans to make it open source?
> Sort of. (right). I don't think this is a good look.
>
> Then later the PediaPress chap stood up and said they provide the tech
> for WT and it is open source. I asked him afterwards for a demo and the
> source url and he delivered both. Goodo (->http://code.pediapress.com)
>
> Ours is better ;) (yay Objavi!)
>
> Ok...last up - end of event pat on the back to everyone (literally), group
> party and final goodbyes.
>
> So...my impression overall..it was a good event. I enjoy Wikimania
> mainly for the people. You learn more talking to the person sitting next
> to you at lunch than from most presentations. With regard to FM - if I
> can at all talk on behalf of others I met then I would say that people
> are impressed by FM and what we have done. I met many that love the what
> we do and some that have used our manuals and benefited from it :) I
> feel very proud representing the project here and I learned a great deal
> which will I believe will help us improve what we do.
>
> As for Wikimania improvements.....I think that WM could certainly be
> improved. Mainly I would say :
> * longer sessions
> * workshops on WMF projects and licensing
> * clearer classification of sessions (you would have thought that the
> WMF of all ppl might have got this right...)
> * ensuring all presentations were about the subjects advertised
> * a better communal hang out space
> * power plugs for all
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> Ok..those are the bugs. On the whole, a very worthwhile and enjoyable
> event. As last year, I enjoyed the openness of everyone and the
> generosity of spirit. Its a pity more projects don't come that are
> interested in Wikis in general as I found that while the event is
> obviously WMF-centric I found everyone willing to talk about other
> projects outside this scope and free culture in general.
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> On a note about the people...the event was great for meeting people as
> it was last year. However I have to say, the local Egyptian people are
> incredible. Very open and generous and very very kind.
>
> all for now :)
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> adam
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> _______________________________________________
> Discuss mailing list
> Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
> http://lists.flossmanuals.net/listinfo.cgi/discuss-flossmanuals.net



-- 
Elisa