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.

Wikimedia Canada Bylaws

The first draft of the Canada group's bylaws have been posted on meta. This is a pretty big step, and I am sincerely hopeful that we will see a Canadian chapter formed and approved sometime in 2009.

Wikimedia Ukraine

Short update today. The chapcom has received notification today that that group in Ukraine has had their first general meeting and elected a board of directors.

As a short disclaimer, the Ukraine group has not yet been approved as a chapter by the WMF board and has not signed the chapters agreement, so they are not yet a "chapter". When and if that status changes, I will write about it here.

Wikimedia Macedonia

I've just received word that the organizers from Macedonia have completed their bylaws and submitted them to the Chapters Committee for approval. Assuming the Chapcom approves the bylaws as-is, we could end up with a Macedonia chapter in the not-too-distant future.

Wikimedia UK Board Meeting

The next WM UK online board meeting will held tomorrow on IRC. Here's the announcement from the mailing list:

The next board meeting is tomorrow evening; Tuesday 12 May 2009,
8.30-10.30BST, in the #wikimedia-uk-board channel on
irc.freenode.net, with discussion in #wikimedia-uk. The draft agenda
is at:

http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/Meetings/2009-05-12/Agenda

Board members: please confirm whether you'll be present or not on the agenda page.

As they have done in previous meetings, they will be hosting two channels: One that is for board members only and one that will be open for all community members to participate. I think this is a particularly good system so that the board can get business done in an open and timely manner, and the community still has a forum to voice their opinions/concerns.

Trip to Norfolk VA

I'm taking a trip down to Norfolk Virgina to meet some people that I'm doing some Wikimedia-related work with. I'll be in town on May 30th and 31st, although we will be doing some planning work for most of the time. Are there any Wikimedians in the area that would be interested in meeting up while I'm in town?