#wikimania 2011, second day

Haifa smells better than Berlin.

As you can guess, I have new results in the language poll. It is English 2, German 1.

Organization: Still just wow. This is so almost perfect, maybe we should just stop Wikimania forver because it can't be better.

Sleepless in Haifa: Even when I'm early in bed. Okay, even when I'm in bed and it's not terribly late, there's just so much new, so many impressions, so much to think about, I can lie awake in bed for hours and just contemplate what happened.

Gossip: Heard great gossip about some German Wikipedians yesterday and I'm really sad that this blog is to uptight and to Protestant to even think about mentioning personal gossip.

Talks and presentations: My personal winner yesterday: Nicole Ebber. Nicole talked about Awards and Incentives in the German Wikipedia, which - Nicole, I hope you don't mind - were nothing new to me. But afterwards she was able to motivate about a dozen people to come to stage and talk about their native contests, awards, and experiences. This was so interesting. The other talk of the session was about Wikiguides (similar to the German Wikimentors), the slides were on a down-to-earth-brown and so was the talk.

A bit of an eye-opener What place for companies on Wikipedia? Where Christophe Henner proposed the idea to treat companies just like museums as possible partner in GLAM-like projects. The companies are by now much closer to accepting NPOV and several other wikipedia-rules than Wikipedians even thinking companies in such a way. Not an eye-opener but instructive: the russian presentation of the incubator. Which is, I think, a epecial namespace where newbies can work for a month without some experienced editor destroying their work. They had a live-presentation in English, and I hope this will catch on in other Wikipedias.

Down to earth: yesterdays keynote was bit disappointing. I'm a huge fan of Joseph Reagle, so my expections were high. And his talk was insightful and really learned, but I am afraid, 80% of his audience already knew 90% of the quotes his was bringing, so this was a bit un-challenging. More challenging Wikilove/Human empathy etc. Talk by some of the Foundation staff about all this projects. When Brandon Harris says "Wikilove" Barry White would be proud on him; I learned a lot and really want to have most of it implemented in the German Wikipedia. (But I do see a war of cultures coming..)

The Gap. After some people talked to me about it, maybe some clarification about my foundation-community-gap posting yesterday. On a continuum between a hot Israeli Girl dancing in high high heels in a tacky club last night and a grumpy German sitting educated in his library, both foundation and community are ideologically and emotionally closer to the grumpy German. But the foundation just sits a bit closer to the middle and there is a gap between those two. I am mostly with the foundation on this one - Wikipedia, given enough time and left alone to itself, will drift into grumpy oblivion - but if it doesn't see this gap and the problems it will cause, this can bring some damage.

Shabbath: works differently than I thought. Public buses for example don't stop at sunset but some hours earlier. Which means I had to take a speed-climb on the mountain of endurance between hotel and venue to be on time. And yes, Haifa in August is still hot and humid in the afternoon. Electrical doors are turned off everywhere, most bars and clubs were open last night. The breakfast just some minutes ago looked mostly similar to yesterday. I'm really curious how this works.

My Chiara presentation. Sorry, to mention it again, but the first day a lot of people talked to me afterwards who were at the presentation. Yesterday people talked to me about it who weren't even there. This is so awesome.

German colony Haifa: is not German at all anymore and as s sightseeing-spot a disappointment. But no problem to find a decent restaurant and a funny waiter at a bar. (Who was actually sorry he couldn't go to the Wacken festival this year.) And, along the way down the mountain: just lots and lots of stunning views of Haifa and the mediterranean.

I'm a bit exhausted: "Hi I'm Brad/Janet/Enrico (*) from Wikimedia Foundation/Uruguay/Deutschland [Logo] and I will talk about our project Wikimedia in School/University/Museum [picture of the institution and smiling people]. At the beginning we were really enthusiastic [more smiling people], but than we faced some obstacles [black-and-white picture of institution], which were not enough ressources/misunderstandings/lack of motivation [insightful quote]. But luckily we [thanks to someone in the audience] could overcome them by changing our project. Now we are back on track [funny quote], and we could increase quality/activity/vandalism by 200%/4%/dunno [impressive looking graph]. We would recommend some lesson. [Thank you to somebody you have never heard of and who is not in the audience anyway]. [Applause]"

(* I tried to choose names which are plausible but not actually in use. If you are BRad/Janet/Enrico I am terribly sorry, I did not see your presentation and I am not talking about you)

Sleepy. Actually, I tried to go the German-award-session, because this is a nice dark and cold cinema where hopefully nothing new would be told to me and I could get some rest, and then came the most interesting session of the day. Amazing. But Martina, when I'm struggling hard for some talk-listening-motivation it's just not fair telling me, you are going to the beach :-)

Giant cockroaches: Seen close to the harbour.

Clean: In case you wandered: Haifa is really clean. And at least the caterer employs a team which take your plates and glasses away from you the minute you finished using them. Did I talk about almost perfect organisation?

Beach-party. Tonight. Yeah!