Wikimedia Conference Japan 2009/en

The official site was opened: Wikimedia Conference Japan 2009

This page is for international coordination of Wikimedia Conference Japan 2009, an event covering all the Japanese editions of Wikimedia projects planned in the fall of 2009 at Tokyo, Japan. We would like to have this page provide translation of Wikimedia_Conference_Japan and related documents, and serve as an aid for non-Japanese speaker regarding this event in general.

Although we expect that a majority of participants is going to be Japanese speaking people, we would like to make it as international as possible. In particular, we would like to have some lectures/sessions by non-Japanese presenters, and to provide language aid on the spot. If you have anything to ask, please do not hesitate to do so. Questions and proposals are welcome at talk pages, or you can also drop us a line by wikimail.

Objective

Many of the Japanese edition of Wikimedia projects are now well advanced and very popular in Japan. Nonetheless, there has been hardly any occasion to help form a thorough understanding of, and have conversation about them and so far. Thus, we would like to hold a conference covering all the Wikimedia projects in order to have an occasion to communicate with people in and outside of the Wikimedia projects.

Wikimedia Conference Japan Manifesto

Intention

The Japanese editions of Wikimedia projects, most notably the Japanese Wikipedia, have great possibility and have been subject to a wide variety of interest. Still, they remain mysterious to both of the actively involved users and the people just browse through the articles from time to time.

Thus we propose people to get together and get to know each other, to meet others from various Wikimedia projects who have less in common otherwise. We hope you obtain hints for yet new involvements by presenting what you work on to the others and by knowing what other people are doing.

We look forward to have an opportunity to listen to outside researchers and journalists, to have a discussion with fellow Wikimedians, which would shed a new light on the possibilities and problems of our daily activities. At the same time we also hope to have a good publicity to the outside world about the Wikipedian way of execution and authoring.

In addition, this will be a great opportunity to advertise various wikimedian projects to people who are new to, or to the ones who are considering participating to these projects, which will nurture further development.

Toward these objectives, we propose to hold an event in the autumn of 2009 at Tokyo, Japan by wikimedians themselves. In a sense, this is going to be a localized version of the Wikimania conference held worldwide each year.

We are not accustomed to hold such an event, and this is going to be the first large scale one by Japanese speaking Wikimedians centered around Japanese edition projects. We look forward to continue this event in the future by starting from what we can achieve now, eventually exploring more possibilities.

Details

We are planning to rent a big hall and/or conference rooms somewhere in Tokyo area, to have various lectures and socializing events.
The duration is going to be one-day.
We estimate the number of participants to be from 150 to 200.
The date shall be around holidays in the fall of 2009. The candidates are 9/19-23 (Sat-Wed), 10/10-12 (Sat-Mon) and 11/21-23 (Sat-Mon). November 22 is the most likely as of now, although this might change due to the availability of the location.
The staffs running this event are volunteers from Wikimedia projects, a body of 10 to 20 people (can be more).

We are considering to have three parallel sessions, "philosophic" ones, technical ones and the ones about various Wikimedia projects. Possible themes are as follows (of course something which does not fit into this is always welcome):

Brief on The Foundation
Wikimania report
Report on the authoring workshop (which is going to be held before the conference)
Functions of MediaWiki
Introduction to the Japanese editions
CC, GFDL and Wikipedia
On other language editions
Similar projects (Chakwiki, Uncyclopedia)
MediaWiki: Using and running MeediaWiki software
going to use: one classroom
Tech talks
Tips
Dialog between conventional paper encyclopedia editors and Wikipedia users / Invite editors of magazines
Involved talks on copyright
Talks on the similar projects (Uncyclopedia, Chakuwiki, etc.)
Conversation between different language projects
Proper way to write about subculture
Classes using Wikipedia
Wikimedia for Academia
Workshops by participants
- workshop on writing articles
- workshop tidying articles, making/using templates
- photographers' workshop
lightning talk
poster session
commons photo gallery

Request for participation and further execution

Currently we are trying to estimate the location and budget. Please utilize the talk page of Wikimedia Conference Japan for discussions on overall orientations and goals. We also need to prepare a closed place in order to handle (possibly) confidential information such as the selection of location and lecturers.

We would like to have many options as possible on what to do in the event and preparations beforehand. If you have a proposal, you are welcome at the talk page. If you feel like to keep it under the hood, please send one of us a wikimail.

Proposal signed by: Hatukanezumi、Ninomy、Tomos、Naoko Komura (小村尚子)、Sebango9 (背番号９)、Shun Fukuzawa (福澤俊)、Racco (海獺)、Ks aka 98

Please refer to Wikimedia Conference Japan#賛同者 for the list of the people who signed up to this project.