Grants:TPS/MarkAHershberger/SMWConFall2015

This Wikimedia Participation Support request was funded in the fiscal year 2014-15. A report is available.

statusFunded

Travel & Participation Support

SMWConFall2015

summaryInviting others to be involved in MediaWiki Stakeholders User group and talking about our accomplishments (e.g commons:File:2015_MediaWiki_User_Report.pdf Wikimania Presentation but more to be done by then)

event locationBarcelona, Spain

event websitehttps://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Fall_2015

event date(s)October 28 - 30, 2015

amount requested2000

home countryPennsylvania, USA

creator• MarkAHershberger

submitted on02:22, 23 July 2015 (UTC)

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Proposed participation

I will be trying to invite people who run their own wikis to be contribute their work back to the foundation. This may include content (e.g. Wikipathways has submitted this pathway for the Citric acid cycle), or wikis like Wiki Emergency Medicine which make emergency medicine techniques and methods publically available.

Contributions to projects or the MediaWiki software help make the platform that Wikimedia projects run on to be more robust, and, as a result, serve WMF's mission to make educational content available under a free license globally.

Even when the third party wiki is completely closed, users of those MediaWiki-based wikis begin to become comfortable with the software's structure and there is less of a learning curve for its use.

Goal and expected impact

I expect to help attendees become more comfortable with contributing to the MediaWiki core. I've already had success with developers at NASA, Mitre, and St Louis' Mercy Hospital in this regard and I plan to continue to reach out and grow the MediaWiki developer community in this way through my involvement in SMWCon in Barcelona.

Budget breakdown

• Travel (round trip airfare from PHL to Barcelonia): USD 900
• Accommodation: USD 55.31 per night x 5 nights = USD 276

Endorsements

• Mark is one of the lead organizers of the stakeholders' group. He is vigilantly working to help improve the involvement of the community around MediaWiki and the future of the software as a robust and stable platform for third-party developers and users. Ckoerner (talk) 16:12, 23 July 2015 (UTC)
• SMW and its extensions are bringing together a very diverse group of MediaWiki users, some of which are making significant technical contributions to MediaWiki and its extension ecosystem. Mark has been playing a key role in advocating awareness of MediaWiki development and packaging in this community, e.g., when presenting the work of the MW Release Team at SMWCon Spring 2014 in Montreal. European (Fall) SMWCons tend to attract a very different audience from American (Spring) ones, and Mark's participation in SMWCon Fall 2015 in Barcelona would therefore be an great contribution to reaching out to these users. I therefore fully support his request for travel and participation support. --Markus Krötzsch (talk) 09:16, 24 July 2015 (UTC)
• Having Mark at SMWCon promoting the MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group and developer contributions to our software is in my opinion a good travel investment.--Qgil-WMF (talk) 08:29, 27 July 2015 (UTC)
• Mark is very active in the MediaWiki community. He has been advocating the needs of Semantic MediaWiki for a long time and keeps bringing both SMW and MediaWiki community together. As a major player in the MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group, he can further is cause at the SMW conference and should definitely go there. --Mglaser (talk) 10:01, 27 July 2015 (UTC)