So, goodbye Mexico! Goodbye Wikimania! You were great. So after too many Tequilas, too little sleep and just enough of dancing I apoloize for even more unrthodox orthgraphy and grammar than normally.
Lambada in a (former) church building. The Haifa (Wikimania 2011) closing party has finally found a worthy successor.
The last day. Let's start at the end. The Party was awesome. At a former church building, now some kind of government owned cultural place, there finally was Tequila (and they were not shy on it), many happy people and dance. Mood imrpoved after the DJ switched from Electro-whatever to Latin-Sounds, and oh it was fun. Worth every bit of pain I'm feeling right now :-)
Did I mention the great food already?
So again, a BIG BIG Thank you by me to all the organizers, volunteers and whoever made this possible. I have to admit: previous of Wikimania I hesitated a bit if this was really worth all the hassle, the taken vacation days and the money (I got a scholarship - thank you Wikimedia Deutschland, but you always still pay a lot of stuff private as well. But in retrospect it was really worth it.
THANK YOU!
So let's talk about program again. Sunday was my fanboy day. I started with a talk about the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - of which I'm a fan for several years now - saw a presentation of the Foundation.Video-guy Viktor Grigas (I've been a fan for years) and a talk by Rebecca, of whom I'm a fanboy as well.
But first lets talk about a talk I didn't see. While yesterday I complained about the lack of unexpected, unusual and just simply unique and great talks - exactly that seems to have happened. So many people were raving about "My life as an autistic Wikipedian" - clearly the conference highlight.
The Stanford Encyclopedia is in my opinion the best source on Philosophy in the internet since the late 1990s, so I was really curious to see how it is made. On the one hand it was interesting, on the other hand it felt like time travelling to 1997. Nothing has changed there much: from the layout of the encyclopedia to the layout of the slides or that they are talking about CD-Roms.
Viktor showed his neat video about "2014 on Wikipedia" and talked about he liked to make "2015 on Wikipedia" more community based and collaborative. But, as already said in another talk, doing video collaboratively still has enormous technical obstacles in its way.
Rebecca did dome neat playing with data about what grants work and what don't and what's the best way to reach grantees.
It is more effective to talk to people at they place where they are.
Stanford encyclopedia. "This doesn't happen"
And I can't really say that I'm a Jimmy Wales fanboy: but by now, his speech at the closing ceremony felt like home: Yes, it was the same as always, yes, the slides were horrible as always and I'm still not sure about the value of choosing somebody more or less randomly as Wikipedian of the year. But, hey, in this rapidly changing Wikimedia world right now, it gives a sense of continuitiy and belonging,
Change: talked to some people about my perception of change at the Foundation. I'm not the only one feeling this it seems. Some guy "The talked to me. And they were interested what I had to say. This has never happened before." Still a long way to go - and of course I could cite several examples of were it doesn't happen. But after three days still convinved: change for good is real.
And then: Mariachis, Barbacoa, and BIG thank you again to all the totally sweet and helpful volunteers. And for 2016. Need I say more:
YES!
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