Wikimania
Wikimania is the Wikimedia movement's annual conference, organized by the community of contributors and hosted by the Wikimedia Foundation. Topics of presentations and discussions include Wikimedia projects such as Wikipedia, other wikis, open-source software, free knowledge and free content, and social and technical aspects related to these topics.
Since 2011, the winner of the Wikimedian of the Year award has been announced at Wikimania.
Conferences
2005
Wikimania 2005, the first Wikimania conference, was held from August 4 to 8, 2005 at the Haus der Jugend in Frankfurt, Germany, attracting about 380 attendees.The week of the conference included four "Hacking Days", from August 1 to 4, when some 25 developers gathered to work on code and discuss the technical aspects of MediaWiki and of running the Wikimedia projects. The main days of the conference, despite its billing as being "August 4–8", were Friday to Sunday of that week, from August 5 to 7. Presentation sessions were scheduled all day during those three days.
Keynote speakers included Jimmy Wales, Ross Mayfield, Ward Cunningham, and Richard Stallman. The majority of sessions and conversations were in English, although a few were in German.
Sponsors of the event included Answers.com, SocialText, Sun Microsystems,, and Logos Group.
2006
Wikimania 2006, the second Wikimania conference, was held from August 6 to 8, 2006 at Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society in Cambridge in Massachusetts, United States, with about 400–500 attendees.Speakers included Wales, Lawrence Lessig, Brewster Kahle, Yochai Benkler, Mitch Kapor, Ward Cunningham, and David Weinberger. Dan Gillmor held a citizen journalism unconference the day after.
Wales' plenary speech was covered by the Associated Press, and printed in numerous worldwide newspapers. He chronicled how the Foundation evolved from him "sitting in his pajamas" to the maturing corporate structure that it is now; the frequent push for quality over quantity; Wikipedia will be included on computers distributed through One Laptop per Child; both Wikiversity and the creation of an advisory board were approved by the Foundation board; and that Wiki-WYG is in development thanks to private investment by Wikia, Inc. and Socialtext.
Answers.com was the Wikimania 2006 patron sponsor, while Amazon.com, the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, Nokia, WikiHow were Benefactors-level sponsors, Wetpaint, Ask.com, Yahoo!, and Socialtext were Friends-level sponsors, and IBM, FAQ Farm, Elevation Partners, One Laptop per Child, and the Sunlight Foundation were Supporter-level sponsors of the conference.
Three other teams submitted hosting bids, for the cities of London, Milan, Boston, and Toronto; only Toronto and Boston were passed to the second round of consideration by Wikimania organizers. In Toronto's case, the event would have been hosted in the University of Toronto's Bahen Centre.
2007
As announced on September 25, 2006, Wikimania 2007, the third Wikimania conference, was held from August 3 to 5, 2007 in Taipei, Taiwan. It was the first Wikimania event to hold a volunteer training course.Three other teams submitted hosting bids, for the cities of London, Alexandria, and Turin. Bids for Hong Kong, Singapore, Istanbul, and Orlando failed to make the shortlist. The winner was announced on September 25, 2006.
On August 3, 2007, New York Times reporter Noam Cohen wrote: "The conference has attracted about 440 attendees, a little more than half from Taiwan, who want to immerse themselves for three days in the ideas and issues that come up making an entirely volunteer-written encyclopedia. The workshops cover practical topics like how to collaborate peacefully; what importance to give 'expertise' in a project that is celebrated for allowing anyone to contribute, including anonymous editors".
2008
, the fourth Wikimania conference, was held from July 17 to 19, 2008 at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in Alexandria, Egypt, with 650 attendees from 45 countries. Alexandria was the location of the ancient Library of Alexandria. Three proposed cities were in the running at the end, the other two being Atlanta and Cape Town. Proposals for Karlsruhe, London and Toronto were also submitted, but later withdrew. There was a controversy about the conference, and even a call to boycott Wikimania 2008 because of Egypt's alleged censorship and imprisoning of bloggers during Mubarak's era. Mohamed Ibrahim, a graduate of Alexandria University who worked to bring the conference to Alexandria, told the BBC "I think we have the right to develop and to make freedom of expression on a larger scale." One of his goals was to help grow Arabic Wikipedia which he contributes to since early 2005. An Egyptian cabinet minister spoke at the opening ceremonies on Mubarak's behalf.2009
The fifth Wikimania conference was held at the Centro Cultural General San Martín from August 26 to 28, 2009 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, with 559 attendees. The city was selected over other bids from Brisbane, Karlsruhe, and Toronto.With keynotes from Richard Stallman and Jimmy Wales, the conference included a Wikimania Codeathon and an informal Chapters' meeting. It was organized in two scopes: Casual and Academic tracks, each comprising the same four themes: Wikimedia Communities, Free Knowledge, Latin American challenges, and Technical infrastructure.
2010
The sixth Wikimania conference was held from July 9 to 11 at the Polish Baltic Philharmonic in Gdańsk, Poland. The starting day on July 9 overlapped with the end of the WikiSym academic conference. Bids for Amsterdam and Oxford lost by a small margin. Wikimania 2010 was the first conference which included a big focus on the cultural aspects of the hosting nation, particularly a concert of a philharmonic orchestra, celebrating the tenth anniversary of the death of the most important contemporary Polish composer Władysław Szpilman and the premiere of the film Truth in Numbers?. At the conference, WMF executive director Sue Gardner said the foundation aimed to grow the number of visitors to Wikimedia sites from 371 million to 680 million a month, over the next five years.2011
Wikimania 2011, the seventh Wikimania conference, was held from August 4 to 7, 2011 in Haifa, Israel. The conference venue was the Haifa Auditorium and adjoining Beit Hecht cultural center on Mount Carmel. Keynote speakers at the conference included Yochai Benkler, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University and Joseph M. Reagle Jr. of MIT, author of Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia. Head of the Science and Technology Committee at the Knesset, Meir Sheetrit, also spoke at the conference, as did Yonah Yahav, the Mayor of Haifa. One of the sponsors of the event was Haifa University. The conference featured 125 sessions in five simultaneous tracks and was attended by 720 Wikimedians from 56 different countries, including some that have no diplomatic relations with Israel.In an interview with Haaretz, Wales noted that there had been boycott calls against the conference in Israel, as there had been against having it in Egypt in 2008. He said that despite conflicts among editors on the Israel-Palestinian conflict, and efforts by a pro-Israel group to recruit more Wikipedia editors, he believes Wikipedia articles largely remained neutral on the topic; he stated "NPOV is non-negotiable."
Wikimedia Foundation executive director Sue Gardner spoke to the conference about the Western, male-dominated mind-set characterizing Wikipedia. At the end of the August 7 closing ceremony, Wales was presented with the first day cover of the first-ever Wikimedia-related postal stamp, issued by the Israeli postal service in honor of the event. Among new projects discussed was collaboration with cultural institutions such as galleries, libraries, archives and museums.
After the conference, participants were offered a free tour of Haifa, Jerusalem, Nazareth or Acre. Shay Yakir, outgoing chairman of Wikimedia Israel, said that for Israel, holding the conference in Haifa was like hosting the Olympic Games.
2012
, the eighth Wikimania conference, was held from July 12 to 15, 2012 at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., with over 1,400 attendees from 87 countries. In conjunction with the conference, the U.S. Department of State hosted Tech@State:Wiki.Gov, which focused on "collaborative knowledge and the use of wikis in the public sector". Prominent conference themes were the need to update the old and "dowdy" interface with new Wikimedia tools in order to attract and retain more editors and to make Wikimedia sites more inviting and friendly to users, including especially women. The Atlantic featured charts displayed at the conference which showed how the number of new administrators has dropped precipitously over the last few years.During the opening plenary, Wales commented on Wikipedia blackout of January 2012, stating "When I go and visit government officials now, they're a little bit afraid." However he reiterated Wikimedia's commitment to political neutrality except regarding "the most serious things that directly impact our work." Wales agreed with keynote speaker Mary Gardiner, co-founder of the Ada Initiative, that Wikimedia had to do more to increase the number of women editors. She said, "As a project of social change, even if it's not an activist project, the Wikipedia community has a responsibility both to its mission and to the people out there in the world to always be on a journey toward diversity — to increase the size of the umbrella of the world."