j’s scratchpad

I experienced an “Oh, shoot! That’s this weekend, too!” moment this morning when I realized I procrastinated posting news about extended deadlines for Wikimania’s Call for Participation far too long.

* The proposal deadline for workshops and tutorials is Saturday, 15 April 2006: Notification of acceptance: by April 30
* Abstracts are due for panels, papers, posters and presentations on Sunday, 30 April 2006: Notification of acceptance: by May 15

From what I understand, the sessions don’t necessarily have to directly relate to Wikipedia or the other Wikimedia Foundation projects: they just have to be of interest in the Wikimedia community, be at least somewhat tangentially relevant, and fall into one of five tracks:

* Technical infrastructure
* Wikimedia projects and content
* Free knowledge and access to information
* Wiki social science
* Law and Policy

I learned a few days ago that a group we were hoping could put together at least one panel featuring librarians and other similar information professionals will not be able to do that. I really hope someone can come up with at least one panel featuring librarians/archivists/information professionals. My biggest challenge in doing it alone is time (especially since the deadline to propose a workshop is Saturday), which is why I’m turning to you for assistance. Would any of you like to either put together a panel, workshop, or session or help me create one?

Here are some ideas I’ve been mulling:

Wikimania planners chose the track “Free knowledge and access to information” keeping in mind that the Boston area is full of librarians who might be interested in attending the conference and sharing their perspectives about, well, free knowledge and access to information. The description of the track even says “… related library and archival projects around the world and input from librarians and archivists …” Would anyone like to contribute to a panel about this topic?

Also, I personally think it might be a good idea to have a panel of librarians/archivists/other information professionals discussing what we love and hate about Wikipedia and other Wikimedia Foundation projects. The conference provides a great opportunity for us to interact with the people behind the projects.

Librarians/archivists/researchers are also known for their amazing research skills. I know there’s interest in the Wikimedia community to learn how to do really good research and fact checking. Do any of you have bibliographic instruction or other kinds of presentations about conducting research you could share during Wikimania? The workshop and tutorial deadline is Saturday.

Some of the Wikipedia contributors and I have talked about taking a field trip to a library and working with at least one librarian on staff to learn about good sources, evaluating information, and possibly doing some research for Wikipedia. Having something like that coincide with Wikimania would be fabulous. Would any of you be willing to help out with a project like that?

What about copyright, the GFDL, Creative Commons, and other content licensing agreements? What about other laws and policies librarians deal with that might be relevant to the Wikimedia Foundation projects?

Are any of you doing nifty things with wikis or working in a company that is?

Do you have a completely different idea for a panel, workshop, or session? Even if you don’t want to help with a session, but you can recommend someone who would be a great speaker or who might be interested in helping, please let me know.

I plan to submit a proposal for a Birds of a Feather session with librarians/archivists/researchers/similar information professionals where we can just come together and chat about Wikipedia, other Wikimedia Foundation projects, and similar topics.

Addenda: I forgot another session or workshop idea: Librarians are great at organizing things, right? We could have a panel discussing ways to organize information on the Web and on wikis to make it easy for people to find things.

4/14: For those of you who would like to propose yourself as a speaker on a panel and would like to connect to other potential speakers and moderators to form a session, the Program discussion page is one place to do that.

6:35 p: I submitted one workshop proposal. Whew! Now I can mark that off my list. Two more to go. The system is incredibly easy to use. Writing the submission really wasn’t that bad. It took me less than an hour. I’m cheating, though. I’m, uh, repurposing a presentation I gave a few weeks ago.

7:37 p: I just submitted proposal number 2: a field trip to a library to get a lesson in researching and sources and to do some work on Wikimedia Foundation projects. I need help with this one, though. I need at least one librarian and a library who can host us. I recommended limiting participation to about ten people, so we aren’t invading and taking over a library. The conference begins on Friday, August 4, and ends on Sunday, August 6. It could be possible for us to make the trip on Thursday, August 3, or Monday, August 7, too. Any volunteers? = )

(C’mon, librarians! We often whine about how people don’t know how to do research. Now’s our chance to teach some of them!)

4/16: I really meant to submit a third proposal for a Wikimania workshop Saturday, but I got distracted and didn’t get back to being near a computer until it was after the deadline. It’s ok. I was basically going to do it as a way of saving space in case I could round up another librarian or librarians–maybe a subject specialist or two–who could teach a much more specific workshop on navigating through particular subject sources. I really don’t mind not having one more thing to coordinate right now.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 12th, 2006 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Professional Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.