Call for Participation
Please keep in sync with {{Translation/Call for Participation/Plain text}}
Call for Participation
Wikimania is an annual global event devoted to Wikimedia projects around the world (including Wikipedia, Wikisource, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki). The conference is a community gathering, giving the editors, users and developers of Wikimedia projects an opportunity to meet each other, exchange ideas, report on research and projects, and collaborate on the future of the projects. The conference is open to the public, and is a chance for educators, researchers, programmers and free culture activists who are interested in the Wikimedia projects to learn more and share ideas about the Wikimedia projects.
The seventh annual Wikimania will be held between 4th and 7th August, 2011, at the Haifa Auditorium Complex in Haifa, Israel. For more information, please visit the official Wikimania 2011 site.
Wikimania 2011 will be a mix of submitted presentations, panels and workshops, open space meetings and lightning talks. Submissions will be reviewed and selected in advance by the program committee. Everyone is welcome to present in the open space track of the conference, regardless of whether they were accepted by the program committee.
Important dates
- Deadline for submitting workshop, tutorial, panel, and presentation proposals: 30 April, 2011
- Notification of acceptance: 15 June, 2011
- All proposals and presentations will be welcome in the Lightning Talks track of the conference, whether or not they are accepted in this initial process.
Tracks
This year Wikimania will offer five tracks for submissions:
Wiki Culture and the Community
The effects of wiki culture on the community - a forum for discussing topics related to the cultural, communal, societal and demographic aspects of wiki culture and its interaction with the general public. Relevant topics include the following:
- Wiki Outreach: Promotion of wikis and Wikimedia projects among the general public;
- How will the wiki technology change the world in the future?
- Wiki Community: Conflict resolution and community dynamics; reputation and identity;
- Different Wiki cultures - clashes and effect between cultures in the wiki community - Can people of different cultural backgrounds create an encyclopedia according to common rules? Same subject in the eye of different cultures;
- Special: Wikipedia in the Israeli-Arab Conflict - can wikis be a tool for promoting cultural understanding and cultural acceptance in the Middle East; Wiki as a tool for cross-national and cross-cultural dialogue.
Wiki and Education - Wiki in Knowledge Collaboration
The Knowledge and Collaboration track aims to promote research and find exciting ideas related to knowledge and information management, as well as to collaboration and participatory projects.
- Wiki Content: New ways to improve content quality, credibility; and especially the use of the content in education, journalism, research;
- Semantic Wikis: The use of semantic web technologies, linked data; semantic annotation and metadata (in particular manual vs. automated approaches);
- Wikiversity and other wikis related to higher education: investigating ways of how wiki sources are deployed and implemented in academia and research practice, exchanging ideas for the improvement of collaboration in research institutions, universities and their contribution for the content quality;
- Wiki technology as an educational tool in school systems;
- Wiki as a tool for museums - management of information for the public benefit;
- Wiki technology as a tool of cultural preservation.
Wiki Infrastructure and Technology
The Infrastructure and technology track at Wikimania will provide a forum where both researchers and practitioners can share new approaches, applications and technologies, and explore how to make Wiki access ever more ubiquitous:
- MediaWiki development: issues related to MediaWiki development and extensions;
- Moving beyond MediaWiki: what other Wiki-like platforms exist; what tools and features do we need for collaboration on different types of knowledge?
- Mobile Wikis: The Web is moving off the desktop and into mobile phones, how we use wikis on mobile devices?; wiki-based Augmented Reality (AR) applications, location based services
- User Interface Design: Usability and user experience; accessibility, adaptive interfaces and personalization; novel UI designs.
Wikis, free knowledge and copyright law
Wiki technologies may be operated in the multinational level and various legal systems may apply to its usage. These legal systems may clash and contradict each other resulting in limits that are placed on the gathering of free knowledge within wiki systems and technologies. This track will explore these questions and suggest solutions:
- Copyright laws and wiki: conflicts between different laws that apply to the same wiki system simultaneously
- Copyright licenses, their applicability and their problems
- Legal problems in wiki practice: slander, anti defamation laws, right to privacy, biographies of living persons.
Wiki Technology - Communication and Business
Wiki technology may be used also as a tool in the corporate and media sector. This track will discuss uses of wiki technology as a business and commercial tool.
- Wiki systems as a news media channel
- Wiki systems as a corporate tool
- Wiki systems as a commercial tool: knowledge gathering and sharing in commercial bodies, and as a tool for commercial outreach.