Submissions

Call for Participation, Wikimania 2012 – Washington, D.C. - Deadline: March 18

Wikimania conferences provide unique opportunities for the Wikimedia community and its projects (including Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wiktionary, Wikispecies, Wikimedia Commons, and MediaWiki) to come together, share their common goals, and develop better ways to work together on an international level. The Wikimania 2012 program structure is designed to create multiple opportunities for conference participants to actively engage with the subject matter, the environment, and, most importantly, each other. Washington, D.C, can play an important role in Wikimania 2012 as a locale that gathers interest in government, culture, media, and academia around the general goals of the Wikimania conference series.

In accordance with these goals and themes, the program will include traditional conference offerings such as paper presentations, tutorials, panels, and poster sessions; provide lounge space and breaks throughout for participants to gather; and innovate with an unconference day for attendees to design their own schedule and participation around common interests. Submissions will be reviewed and selected in advance by the program committee. Attendees are welcome to present in the open space track of the conference, regardless of whether their submitted presentations were accepted.

The eighth annual Wikimania will be held between 12th and 14th July, 2012 in Washington D.C. For more information, please visit the main site.

Due to the extensive amount of program submissions received in the previous years, we request your presentation be a maximum of 25 minutes, including time for questions. You may request more time, though shorter individual presentations are more likely to be accepted.

This does not apply for keynote speakers, panels, or workshops. 70 minute presentations must be submitted either as panel presentations to include at least three presenters or as workshops with a clear lesson plan.

Tracks are used by Wikimania to organize submissions and diversify audiences so that presentations of competing interest do not have time conflicts. Five tracks are proposed:

The Washington, DC, location for Wikimania 2012 provides a special opportunity for those working in the social good, policy, government, nonprofit, and disaster response arenas, to share their experience with collaboration on a local, national, or international level. Wikis and complementary technologies are proving to be critical in times of crisis and in ongoing work with citizen participation in government, as well as in long-term goals for education, public policy, social entrepreneurship, and development in the global south and throughout the world. The track also explores issues of intellectual property and copyright policy and law. This track will explore the ways that Wikimedia projects and related activities can be used to support citizens worldwide.

This track aims to support current outreach to Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums and build enthusiasm for continued work in this area. Presentations and panels will demonstrate effective outreach techniques and results from ongoing activities as well as envision the future path for these efforts. Topics of particular interest to this track may include: wiki technology as a tool for cultural preservation; use of wikis by museums and libraries for information management for the public good; legal and copyright issues; use of content in GLAM projects, education, journalism and research; conflicts between different laws that apply to the same wiki system simultaneously. This track may also incorporate “field trips” before, after, or during the evenings of the conference to visit Washington, D.C., organizations.

Why do people contribute to Wikimedia projects? How might the community grow and expand while retaining its inherent cultural ethos? This track will explore the sociology of wiki culture and community and provide a forum for practitioners and researchers to share insights and best practices for community management, engagement, participation, and conflict resolution. The assessment of different wiki cultures and demonstration of clashes and effects of those interactions between wiki communities and chapters is relevant to this track. A special focus will be a discussion of gaps between different community groups, most notably related to gender and age; within this context, submissions related to female and teenage participation, representative roles within the community, and the use of wikis as a tool for different gender and age group dialogues, are strongly encouraged.

The scope of research and analysis on wikis has grown significantly in recent years, and wikis are rapidly being introduced to educational institutions in the course of teaching and more formally through the Campus Ambassador Program. The scholarly atmosphere of the selected venue creates a special opportunity for researchers working in this area to present papers and panels to a well-informed audience. Subjects associated with the research component of this track can include a diverse range of topics including: technical development, philosophy and the humanities, communications, community management and collaboration, information science, and a broad range of other areas. The practitioner side of this track can include: expert participation and inviting expert contributions; Wikiversity and other higher education wikis; wiki sources deployed and implemented in academia and research practice; approaches to the improvement of collaboration in research institutions and universities; and contribution to content quality, among other areas.

Technology and infrastructure play essential roles in the success of Wikimedia projects and other uses of wiki technology. This track will incorporate research and practice to showcase technology applications and theories, demonstrate new uses of existing and evolving technologies, and focus on applying technologies to meet user needs and improve the overall user experience. Issues and areas particularly of note in this track include: OTRS, MediaWiki development, semantic wikis, wiki-based Augmented Reality (AR), the use of QR codes, Wikipedia on mobile devices, Wikipedia offline, User Interface Design, WikiLove, Liquid Threads and related technical focus points.

• All proposals and presentations will be welcome in the Lounge space of the conference or during the Unconference, whether or not they are accepted in this initial process.

Authors are invited to submit workshop, seminar, tutorial, panel, and presentation proposals by following the directions below.

By submitting a proposal, you agree that the text of your proposal, your presentation slides, and any video recordings can be distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License or a compatible license. You also agree that, under the terms of the license, recordings of your presentation may be broadcast live, recorded, and made available for download later. If you object to these requirements (for instance, if you would prefer not to be taped), please talk to a program committee member before submitting a proposal.

You will be notified through your contact information about the Program Committee's decision regarding your submission.

If your submission is not added to the preliminary schedule, please do not be discouraged: Wikimania 2012 will have time set aside in the schedule for participants and attendees to participate in lounge talks and to form unofficial, self-organized talks and working groups. You will have many opportunities to bring topics forward on-site.

Replace the text "[Your proposal title]" in the box below with the title of your proposal, and click "Create page". You will be directed to a self-explanatory wiki page, which you will have to save to complete your submission

Note: You need to login (or create an account here) in order to submit a proposal.

SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED. We hope to see you at Wikimania!

For a list of currently submitted submissions, see Wikimania 2012 submissions.