Press release:General Public Registration opens for Wikimania

-- Press Release --

General Public Registration opens for Wikimania - Wikipedia editors' annual convention

Hundreds of Wikimedia Movement members from a record number of 48 countries are to arrive in Haifa for the Wikimania conference in August, among them the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, Wikimedia Foundation's Executive Director, Sue Gardner and members of the WMF board. August 4–7, 2011 - http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Hundreds of Wikipedia editors, free content promoters and activists of the Wikimedia Movement will gather in Haifa, Israel this August, as they do every summer, each time in a different corner of the world, to exchange views and ideas and learn about new trends in the field of knowledge sharing in the Internet age. Participants from no less than fifty-two countries, the highest number since the event first took place in 2005, have already registered to the event, to be joined by journalists, researchers, educators, jurists and any person with interest in these heatedly discussed topics, as the registration now opens to the general public.

In order to allow wide local and international participation, the registration fee was set at a relatively low price of US$ 120 for the entire three-day event, including the sideline activities, such as social gatherings, a beach party and tours around the Haifa Bay, the Galilee, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Participants from around the world who cannot afford the travel costs were granted scholarships by the Wikimedia Foundation, partially funded by donations collected by the worldwide Wikimedia chapters. This year will see significant participation from countries outside Europe and North America, such as India, China, Macao, Nepal, Uzbekistan, Bolivia, Venezuela and Chile.

Wikimedia Israel, the local Wikimedia chapter, which was entrusted with the organization of this year's Wikimania, sees it as a great opportunity to present Israel to the participants, many of whom are opinion leaders and, of course, engaged in writing of the biggest, most popular source of knowledge in the world today, namely Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The conference will therefore include an extra day of traveling around the Haifa Bay, as well as in the Galilee, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.

This year's event will include 125 sessions, in five thematic tracks, and numerous workshops dealing with free content, open source, Internet-age copyrights, web communities and networks, as well as education and knowledge acquisition. Early comers will hold several satellite meet-ups on the two days preceding the event, including a meet-up of programmers and developers to discuss the technical issues related to the Wikimedia projects, a symposium about the OpenZim mapping project and an open discussion about access to knowledge in the Global South. A gathering of representatives from Wikimedia chapters around the world is also planned for these days.

The event's schedule and further details are available here: http://wikimania2011.wikimedia.org/wiki/Schedule

Wikimania is held each year in a different city around the globe. The past events were held in Frankfurt am Main, Germany (2005), Cambridge, Massachusetts, the USA (2006); Taipei, Taiwan (2007), Alexandria, Egypt (2008), Buenos Aires, Argentina (2009) and Gdańsk, Poland (2010). This year's venue was chosen through a bid process, with Haifa being preferred over many other cities such as Montreal, New York City, Toronto, Tokyo and Barcelona. The Haifa bid was submitted by Wikimedia Israel, the local Israeli Wikimedia association.

The entire work is done by volunteers or funded with donations and sponsorships, within the organizational framework of Wikimedia Israel and the Wikimedia Foundation, both are non-profit organizations and with the full support and cooperation of the Municipality of Haifa.

Among the sponsors this year, the Israel Internet Association (ISOC-IL), Answers.com, the University of Haifa, the Sagi Internet Research Center, Babylon, East Jerusalem Development Ltd. and several other companies.

Participants on behalf of the Wikimedia Foundation:

• Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, who will also be a guest of honor at the Israeli Presidential Conference to be held in about two weeks. Jimmy Wales will deliver his annual talk about the "State of the Wiki" during Wikimania.
• Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation. This is her second visit to Israel since she assumed her position.
• Members of the Wikimedia Foundation's Board of Trustees, the body responsible for setting the vision and mission, as well as the long-run plans and the policy of the Wikimedia Foundation. The Board members will arrive in Israel several days before the event in order to hold a working meeting, and choose the position holders for next year.

Guest speakers –

• Prof. Yochai Benkler, Professor of Law at the Harvard University. Prof. Benkler, (together with Prof. Lawrence Lessig) is considered one of the pioneers and most influential figures in the field of human rights, intellectual property and copyrights in the digital age. In the famous wager proposed by Benkler in July 2006, in a comment to a blog post where Nicholas Carr criticized Benkler's views about volunteer peer-production, Benkler suggested that by 2011 the major sites will have content provided by volunteers, such as in Wikipedia.
• Joseph Reagle, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University. Author of Good Faith Collaboration: The Culture of Wikipedia (MIT Press, September 2010).

For further details, please contact:

Itzik Edri, spokesperson for Wikimedia Israel, +972-54-5878078, itzik@wikimedia.org.il