Fri, Aug 04, 2006
WikiMania 2006, Day One
#
Day one is over. Brain is overloaded. Very tired. Attending
conference during day/evening, then working late into night -- bad.
Law school dorms with no air conditioning in Cambridge in August
-- also bad. (KWO)
Still, much to share. And amazingly enough, I will -- at least a
bit. There's something about this conference that actually gets me to
blog, rather than simply promising I will. Besides, I'm going to set
a new record for responsiveness to TomMaddox, even if it is via
blog. (KWP)
It is incredibly surreal to be back at my alma mater surrounded by post-college friends and colleagues. What
makes it even more surreal is that folks from all facets of my
professional life seem to be here, not just Wiki folks. I
mentioned
having my fingers in a lot of pies, right? Well, all those pies are
unexpectedly well represented this weekend. It started yesterday when
I discovered that ChrisMessina and TaraHunt were on the same flight to
Boston, and culminated at dinner with GregElin (whom I first met at
the FLOSS Usability Sprint, and who
invited me to join him for dinner), DanielPerry (a lawyer who's been
an important contributor to recent IdentityCommons discussions),
TomMunnecke (first introduced to me by JackPark when I was just
starting BlueOxenAssociates), and DocSearls (who needs no
introduction). Also at the dinner: EllenMiller, MicahSifry,
DavidIsenberg, BrittBlaser, and YochaiBenkler. Quite a contrast from
last year, when I was hanging with grassroots Wiki peeps every night.
I'm not complaining, though. The conversation was fascinating, even
if we didn't talk much about Wikis. (KWQ)
Keeping with this theme, I didn't hear much about Wikis today, other
than my interview with WardCunningham. I kept my questions pretty basic, as
a lot of folks there had never heard him speak, but I managed to slip
in a few probing questions for myself. I asked Ward about the
evolution of Wiki culture, and I specifically mentioned the culture of
anonymity that he strongly encouraged in the early days, but that
seems mostly absent in today's Wikis. Ward seemed resignedly
ambivalent. I asked him about what makes a Wiki a Wiki, and he was
decidedly agnostic in his response: anything that facilitates a
permissive spirit and mode of collaboration. I'm not sure whether he
was being political or whether he truly feels this way. My guess is a
bit of both, but I'll press him on this if I get a chance later this
weekend. (KWR)
I showed up late to LarryLessig's keynote, but I was unconcerned, as I
had heard him give his Free Culture speech before. It's excellent,
but he recycles it often. Sure enough, he was doing the same speech,
and I started tuning out. Fortunately, my brain was paying partial
attention, or I would have missed what may end up being the most
intriguing development of the conference. (KWS)
Larry started talking about the interoperability of licenses, and how
it was silly that the FDL and
CreativeCommons BY-SA
licenses could not be relicensed interchangeably, even though the two
licenses were equivalent in spirit and intent. He then proposed an
interoperability clause as well as a neutral organization whose
purpose would be to classify equivalent licenses. His talk was
followed by a really good panel discussion between him and EbenMoglen.
This stuff is really complicated and important, but it looks like
Larry and Eben are serious about working together towards a common
solution. Apparently, JimboWales deserves a lot of credit for getting
these two to cooperate. Did I mention that I love this community? (KWT)
Quick hits: (KWU)
- I shared a flight and T ride here with ChrisMessina aned
TaraHunt. (Chris was presenting on BarCamp.) Chris extolled the
virtues of VoodooPad, which apparently has autolinking features a la
my MarkupFreeAutoLinkingWiki idea. (KWV)
- Was excited to see two of my roommates from last year: KurtJansson,
a German doctoral student and president of the German chapter of
WikimediaFoundation, and JuanDavidRuiz, a Chilean lawyer. (KWW)
- Saw ErikZachte in the morning, who does awesome Wikipedia
work. Erik immediately told me about two cool projects I had never
heard of: FON and Wikimapia. (KWX)
- Caught up with RoryOConnor after my
session with
Ward. Rory's a filmmaker who came to last year's WikiMania to make
a documentary on Wikipedia. What I didn't know was that he was so
inspired by the proceedings, he decided to release all 13 hours of his
footage under a
CreativeCommons license to encourage folks to mix their own
documentaries from the event. Check it out, and mix away! There's
some interview footage of me somewhere in there, and I make a cameo
in Rory's
11-minute rough cut, in the background of Jimbo's interviews
yukking it up with JohnBreslin. (KWY)
- Somehow, I got recruited by multiple Wikipedians to help with the
lightning talks due to my process expertise. My expert advice:
"Move those chairs into a circle, and be firm with the time limit."
Yes folks, this is why I get paid the big bucks. (KWZ)
- Briefly got a chance to chat with TimStarling about the OpenID
integration in MediaWiki. Tim explained that they're going to unify
the user databases across all the different Wikimedia properties.
This was further validation that Yoke's
identity proxy approach is useful. Of course, one of these days, I'm
going to have to actually write down what that approach is, so that
I can convince people of its utility. (KX0)
/events |
Posted at 10:09pm
EEK Speaks
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