Opening ceremony Greetings
Opening plenary by Prof. Yochai Benkler: From networked cooperation to human sociality: Wikipedia as the model for a new view of social relations
A decade ago Wikipedia burst into a world not ready to comprehend it. Thousands of people cooperating effectively, without price signals to offer “incentives” or managerial hierarchy to direct efforts was an impossibility. And yet, it moves. And as it moved it combined with a deep shift across many disciplines, from biology and neuroscience to organizational sociology, experimental economics, and social psychology to paint a very different view of who we are, as human beings, and what we are capable of when we build and inhabit systems that rely on our better selves rather than on the cramped, pessimistic view of traditional economic modeling. A decade ago our explanations of Wikipedia depended on the uniqueness of the Net. Today, we are ready to learn the deeper lessons: that we are more cooperative than we came to believe in the last half century, and that our challenges lie in learning how to build a new field of cooperative human systems design not only online, but for our lives more generally as the kind of social human beings we really are.
(Rapaport Hall)
10:45 – 11:15
Coffee break
11:15 – 12:45
Wiki Academy: Wikipedia in Schools (Hebrew)
Panel headed by prof. Judit Bar-Ilan
Using wiki to create a Mathematics school textbook
Plenary by Sue Gardner, Executive Director, Wikimedia Foundation Inc.
Wikimedia Foundation: The Year In Review and The Year Ahead. Wikimedia Foundation executive director will recap the Foundation's activities of the past year, and look ahead to the opportunities and challenges facing the Wikimedia projects in 2011–12. This presentation will be followed by a Q&A session with the Wikimedia Foundation WMF Board of Trustees. (Rapaport Hall)
12:45 – 14:00
Lunch break (foyer)
14:00 – 15:30
Wiki Academy: Wiki Technology: Uses in Education and Business
(Hebrew, translation to English will be provided)
Panel headed by Prof. Sheizaf Refaeli
The "Long Tail" Potential of Wiki Technology: Uses in Education and Business
Information behaviors and management of Wikipedians in the context of their involvement with Hebrew Wikipedia
The Africa Project - Briniging Wikipedia to Africa
Wikipedia And/Or: Prophecy Fulfilled, Happy Accident, Informational Apocalypse?
In light of Wikipedia's 10th year anniversary, Dr. Reagle will ask three different historical questions about Wikipedia. First, is Wikipedia an amazing novelty or the fulfillment of a centuries-old pursuit? Second, despite its founding mythology, wasn't Wikipedia, in fact, just an accident? Finally, is Wikipedia a beneficent undertaking or a harbinger of doom?
Plenary by Jimmy Wales, Founder of Wikipedia: "The State of the Wiki"
Ten years ago, Jimmy Wales typed Hello World! into a wiki, and Wikipedia was born. Today, Wikipedia is the fifth most-popular site on the internet, and the Wikimedia projects are collectively one of the world's largest and most useful repositories of human knowledge. In recent years though, we've begun to see signs that the Wikimedia community is less healthy than it used to be. The number of active editors is slowly declining, and community members report increased bureaucracy, unwelcoming behaviour, and growing barriers to participation. In this talk, Jimmy Wales will call for a renewed commitment to openness, that will revitalize the projects.
