[FM Discuss] back from wikimania

Wed Aug 8 01:02:18 PDT 2007

On Wed, 2007-08-08 at 17:46 +1000, sophea wrote:
> hi adam
> 
> thanks for this report, sounds like a really constructive time -
> what's taipei like? -

I had very litle time to see it. Good food, and nice people, but
unfortunately I didn't get much time to see much of it.

>  n who r u talking with about hindi localisation
> btw?

actually he's a friend of yours...Ravi Kant was at the FM presentation
and said he was interested in taking this back to Sarai to discuss it. I
gave him a copy of the Audacity manual and he said he would also be in
touch with you. I am assuming he meant Hindi - would that be right?

adam

> 
> :)
> .sophea
> 
> 
> On 08/08/07, adam hyde <adam at flossmanuals.net> wrote:
> > hey,
> >
> > I just got back yessterday from Wikimania. The jet lag is still
> > lingering, but a few gins on the plane helped me with adjusting to the
> > timezones so I'm in not too bad shape.
> >
> > The event was pretty amazing. I will write up a really detailed report
> > of it and post it here and on the FM news blog. I think also all talks
> > are going to be put online in audio and video although I am not sure
> > when.
> >
> > So, for a quick report - the event was very focused on all things
> > wikimedia (the umbrella foundation for wikipedia and its associated
> > projects - wikimedia commons, wikiversity, wikibooks etc -
> > http://www.wikimedia.org/)  and mediawiki (the mediawiki tool that the
> > fouundation uses for all its projects - http://www.mediawiki.org/).
> >
> > The first day had some excellent speakers
> > (http://wikimania2007.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule). Every presentation
> > was very informative and some very inspiring moments. Lawrence Liangs
> > presentation about the 'authority of knowledge' was a highlight for me
> > on the first day. He spoke about how wikipedia could learn from the
> > demise of manuscipt culture at the birth of the print age. As I
> > understand it at the start of the print age, printed books were
> > considered as the most recent release of a body of work, and updating
> > these works and feeding into the content cycle of a book was common. As
> > an example Liang used Chaucers Canterbury Tales. The works were updated
> > by many people and were living breathing entities, however when he died
> > the works became his canon and were considered in some way 'frozen' by
> > the academics. Any edit of the text after his death was seen as
> > producing a defective edition. So the 'authoritative' point (the
> > canonisation of Chaucer by Academics) killed off the participatory
> > culture surrounding his texts. Liang was pointing this issue at
> > Wikipedia and the debate surrounding how Wikipedia might be striving to
> > attain an analogous 'authoritative' position. His point, I think, is
> > that the pursuit of wikipedia towards being an 'authoritative knowledge
> > object' is less interesting (and potentially troublesome as it may deter
> > contributions) than the methodology for creating knowledge that
> > wikipedia has established.
> >
> > Also on the first day was Masayuki Hatta, another excellent talk. It was
> > small but on the button. Masayuki is a debian hacker from Japan, and he
> > was talking about the troubled Free Documentation License (FDL) that the
> > wikimedia foundation uses for its projects. He argues that the license
> > is inappropriate (many people at the event agree with this position) and
> > suggested that there is a big problem with changing the license because
> > under the FDL the person that created the document holds the copyright
> > and only they can relicense the content. We went through this process
> > too with fm a few months ago and thankfully everyone agreed to change to
> > the GPL. Evan Prodromou (http://wikitravel.org) suggested it might not
> > be necesary to get everyones permission as there has been several large
> > open source projects that have changed licenses without getting
> > permission from all contributers - an interesting point, but I think
> > that if Wikipedia did this it would be followed by a great deal of
> > controversy as consultation and 'doing things the right way' (not just
> > the expedient way) seems me to be regarded very highly in wikimedia
> > projects. So Masayuki, being a hacker, suggested a hack to get out of
> > the license. He suggested that the Wikimedia Foundation send an envoy to
> > the Free Software Foundation to speak to the redraft of the FDL
> > currently underway. Masayuki had been involved in a similar process for
> > the GPLv3 and said he was surprised that the FSF actually listened and
> > made some notable changes as a result.  So, Mayasukis hack included
> > lobbying the FSF to make the FDL compatible with other licenses (such as
> > some Creative Commons licenses) - this would allow for license
> > interoperability between the FDL and other licenses but also it would
> > allow for content currently covered by the FDL to be distributed under
> > the compatible license. This in effect opens a backdoor for the
> > Wikimedia foundation to slip out of and ditch the FDL in favour of
> > something more interesting.
> >
> > I found this a pretty interesting strategy and Mayasuki and I will start
> > a mailing list to kick start this process.
> >
> > There were many other really great panels and presentations. Magnatune
> > (http://magnatune.com/) presented their interesting sales strategy for
> > CC licensed material. Essentially you can download the music for free of
> > buy it for a price you are happy with. This was interesting and I will
> > think of this further while I write the financial sustainability plan
> > for fm this month.
> >
> > Dominic Chen presented the c-shirt project which allows you to remix a
> > t-shirt design from cc licensed material and they print out a t-shirt
> > for you. I made a pretty clumsy t-shirt from a road sign that said 'gpl'
> > and the wikipedia definition of floss. It was admittedly a pretty geeky
> > design, but I really appreciated the c-shirts attempts to make this
> > whole world of open licenses live beyond the screen.
> >
> > I met some very cool people at the event and I found the 'wikimedians'
> > very supportive of non-wikimedia/non-mediawiki projects. The feedback
> > for what we are doing was immensely positive. I had taken a roll-up
> > banner to present fm with (will put some photos up), and printed some
> > 'free manuals for free software' t-shirts, had postcards, businesscards,
> > stickers, and buttons, and copies of the printed Audacity Manual...plus
> > I did 4 presentations of fm - 2 'poster sessions', 1 lightning talk, and
> > one workshop.
> >
> > The feedback on the design was huge. The buttons were so popular they
> > ran out in the first day. The stickers got stuck to everything from
> > laptops to the t-shirts of volunteers. I had a few people come up and
> > say the logo was 'hot'...hehe!...so, I think we can pat Lotte on the
> > back (I'll do it in about 30 mins when she wakes up ;).
> >
> > I had many people wanting the Audacity book, I didnt have many so I was
> > a bit hesitant to hand them out as it was good to have them to show
> > people what kind of work we are doing.  I gave 3 away and will send
> > another 4 to people that are interested.
> >
> > There was interest about the remixing function from quite a few people.
> > Christoph Sauer from WikiCreole (http://www.wikicreole.org/) took a very
> > close look at it and was very interested in how we did it and which
> > libraries we used etc. Also, Kim Tucker from the Meraka Institute in
> > South Africa was very interested in the HTML export functionality and
> > said he will be in touch to explore how we might work together.
> >
> > 2 discussions have begun to translate FM - into Hindi and Chinese.
> > Frankisy has emailed me a few times and he is forming a crew and a plan
> > to begin the Chinese translations.
> >
> > A few people asked me about which manuals were available and I was happy
> > to talk to a few people specifically about the blender manual and the
> > forthcoming puredata manual. There is also interest in a fast forward of
> > a Gimp manual (which I am working on today) and Inkscape manual, to
> > perhaps assist people who want to contribute content to wikimedia
> > commons. There are alot of other discussions to follow up such as the
> > possibility of hosting a mediawiki user manual on fm, fms involvement in
> > the one laptop per child documentation writing, a jumpstart in the
> > mplayer manual (which needs a lot more content in my mind) and many
> > other threads.
> >
> > So, it was excellent for fm to be there and I can't really overstate how
> > proud I was to be presenting us there. Being at Wikimania not only
> > opened my eyes to a lot of what is going on in the wiki world, but it
> > opened others eyes to the great job we are doing, and it reinforced my
> > belief that we are on the right track and doing a great job.
> >
> > So congratulations to everyone :)))
> >
> > We also have some new members to this list who I met at the
> > event...welcome!
> >
> > I will write up a full report. I have some jet lag to get through and a
> > huge to-do. Tomorrow I also go to Croatia for a week. I will use it as
> > an opportunity to write up the report and also to focus on the financial
> > sustainability plan for fm.
> >
> > So busy busy...
> >
> > :)
> >
> > adam
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> > adam hyde
> > floss manuals
> >
> > free manuals for free software
> > http://www.flossmanuals.net
> >
> > mobile : + 31 6 154 22770 (Netherlands mobile)
> > email : adam at flossmanuals.net
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
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> > Discuss at lists.flossmanuals.net
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> >
-- 

adam hyde
floss manuals

free manuals for free software
http://www.flossmanuals.net

mobile : + 31 6 154 22770 (Netherlands mobile)
email : adam at flossmanuals.net