Wikimania 2008 Discusses Free Access to Knowledge and Open Source Projects
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Alexandria—
With the participation of enthusiastic volunteers, and with the collaboration of the Wikimedia foundation, the BA is co-organizing the fourth annual Wikimania Conference, 17-19 July 2008.
The Conference starts out this year with the promise to “Change the Shape of Wisdom”, and will include several tracks and sessions discussing various issues related to free access to knowledge and open source projects, especially those of the Wikimedia foundation, which have become widespread during the past few years.
Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit organization based in San Francisco, California, USA, with local chapters in several cities worldwide. It was founded in 2003, and acts as a portal for developing and maintaining multilingual open content through several Wiki based projects. The foundation’s projects include Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Wikiquote and Wikimedia Commons. These wiki projects have revolutionized the ideas of knowledge sharing and continue to rank among the most frequently visited sites on the web.
The Foundation’s Wikimania conference is intended to provide a venue for discussing various Wiki projects, their possible evolution, and to discuss several topics related to open source and free content. The Conference also acts as a meeting point for Wiki users, providing them with an opportunity to interact and exchange expertise.
Eminent speakers, who will participate in this year’s Conference, include Ahmed N. Tantawy, Technical Director of IBM in the Middle East and Eliane Metni, Founding Director, International Education Association. Invited speakers include Tim Spalding, Founder and Lead Developer of LibraryThing; Eric M. Johnson, Team Leader for the Knowledge Management Action Team at the U.S. Department of State; and Usama Fayyad, Yahoo!'s Executive Vice President of Research & Strategic Data Solutions.
The success of the Conference is also guaranteed by the generous support of Raya, ACT, Microsoft, HP, Cisco, and Intel, who are sponsoring the event.
By hosting Wikimania 2008, the BA hopes that the third world and Middle Eastern countries will be involved in the new digital realm, and encouraged to actively participate in this new revolution. In propagating for open source material, Wikimania paves the way to allow knowledge to be available to all, and will give people in the region the chance of getting acquainted with such a rich database of freely available knowledge. Third World countries will finally get the chance not only to have access to a vast amount of knowledge, but also the chance to write and rewrite knowledge of their own concerns and culture.