The Philosopher of the Wiki-Conference

R. Stuart Geiger has a great blog post out on our recent Wiki-Conference New York.

He really gets all the weird and wonderful things we tried to do, which is amazing.

And good luck to WikiConference Bay Area!

Jimmy Wales Video at Wiki-Conference New York

A big thanks to the 100 or so attendees who joined us at Wiki-Conference New York, which we organized recently with Wikimedia New York City and Free Culture @ NYU at NYU Law School.

Our first video out is of Jimmy Wales' Keynote, where he touched on the general state of Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects, as well as the Biographies of Living Persons problem and Ann Coulter's surprising concerns, and also fielded several interesting questions from the audience.

Many more videos of the other presentations should be on the way, including our other Keynote, which went further into the BLP issue.

See the Opening Remarks and Keynote here:

Video of Jimmy Wales Keynote at Wiki-Conference New York

Organizers in China

Chapcom has just received word this morning that some interested volunteers are starting to organize a new chapter in China. This is very exciting news and I hope sincerely that this group is successful in their attempts and will be able to submit an application soon.

Information is slim at the moment, I will post more as I learn it

Wikimedia Finland

This morning the ChapCom has received an official application from a group of organizers in Finland. I haven't had a chance to read over the bylaws just yet, but if everything goes well we could have a WMF Finland chapter by the end of the year.

WM Ukraine, Denmark, Portugal

There hasn't been a lot of chapcom-related news recently because there hasn't been a lot of chapcom-related activity.

However, we've received word this morning that the WMF Board has approved applications from WM Ukraine, WM Portugal, and WM Denmark. Three new chapters, quite exciting!

The application from WM Macedonia is still slowly making it's way through the pipeline, and I'll try to get news about that as soon as there is anything to report.

Wiki-Conference New York in July

The 1st Wiki-Conference New York will be held over the weekend of July 25-26 2009 (confirmed!) at New York University, and hosted by Free Culture @ NYU and Wikimedia New York City.

Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales will be giving a keynote, and we will also have a second keynote speaker TBA.

Since this is an unconference, participants are encouraged to give your own ideas for topic sessions!

This is also a great opportunity for people who aren't so wiki-savvy to get a fun introduction. All are most certainly welcome.

Oh yeah, and we're having the Central Park picnic again too!

Register here:

http://bit.ly/wikiny

Wiki-Conference New York

The folks at WM NYC are planning a mini-conference this summer, Wiki-Conference New York. Similar in spirit, but smaller in scale then Wikimania, it will serve as a great alternative for people like myself who can't make the trip to Buenos Aires, and can't take a whole week off for a big conference. Dates aren't set yet, but the planning is going ahead at full steam.

I'll post more details as they get nailed down, but if you're going to be in the New York area this summer, it would be a cool event to attend. I hope to see a lot of other Wikimedians there.