It's Monday the 8th and Wikimania is now over and of the over 400 visitors, only a couple are left in Haus der Jugend, bending over their computers and the still-active wifi.
Highlights (reverse order)
- Tour of [[!Die Deutsche Bibliothek]], a part of the national library of Germany
- Panel discussion with the Board, very interesting, sometimes amusing
- Talking and listening to Ward Cunningham
Stuff I learnt
- How important free/open content is to wikipedia, but even more how important it is to my handling and usage of information and media.
- I learnt alot by going to Eugene Kim's speech about collaborative tools. He
was supposed to tell us something about history, but instead spoke about what
those tools are, or really: what they do to help us. It made me think, and
recall my Work at KAR where I think I and my brother and cousin found a
great collaborative method. As I remember it, he listed:
- Permission to participate
- Visible pulse
- Shared display
- ?
- I learnt alot from first talking to Ward Cunningham first at dinner on
thursday, and then listening to his speech about the future of wikis/the future
of information sharing and/or collaboration. I don't think anyone really
understood what his idea would really enable, but he made us understand a few
points he emphasized.
- The things about looser structure is really interesting. Wikis have looser structure than conventional media and this begs for questions like Can I trust this?, What guarantees consistency,that it makes sense,that something productive can come out of it?:. Answers are that wikis give us a new media, that brings something extra, a win, that we didn't have before. What couldn't then even looser structure bring? This is what I believe Ward is saying, and he is probably on to something, even though I didn't think he could paint a whole picture where we could say -- whoa, that works. But we didn't say that about wikis beforehand, did we?
- That wikis/What comes after wikis should change the minds of it's users. Pretty interesting stuff, but again, we already know that wikis change our minds. But enabling the user to do stuff with information/media that he has never done before -- was exemplified by Ward with an example of puppets cut from images that could move and tell a story in a new medium -- is certainly a challange. Does the programmer have to develop something that is completely new, or is all he really have to do try something new? Can you find a new state of mind unintentionally, or do you have to be intentional about it?
- I learnt some about Conferences; this was the first one I've ever been at and it was nice to see all the contacts being made between all those who came there with publicized ideas or practical uses. This tells me one thing: coming back a later year, I should definitely come with lots of ideas and projects.
- The openness but also the importance and scope of our community. Wikimania Foundation is large. Jimbo said if we put google ads all over wikipedia, that will bring us $1,000,000 per month (breath-taking). However, we could all talk to them, the board, the irregularily social people of the community, everyone with interest in the project(s). But the fun in that the world is watching is great, wikimedia really means something to many people of the world. (Some nut at the panel with the board told us all that it was obvious that wikipedia and the like should be handled by UNESCO, because it's world culture.)