Wikamania 2008 - Day1 : احنا بقغ يا ثعاد

in some olad commercial 2 cows are sitting relaxed, one asked who are we, the other answered: we are cows احنا بقغ يا ثعاد

i remembered this confident sentence by the cartoon cow: we are cows ... attending the wikimania 2008 conference
wikipedia for me was just a cool site where i can find some info when i needed fast, DONE
site with great data
but after i found out about the conference i digg a little in it
and honestly i was astonished by what i found
for more on wikimedia foundation: The Wikimedia Foundation Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge. It operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects in the world, including Wikipedia, one of the world's 10 most-visited websites. The Foundation was created in 2003 by Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia

first: it's non profit organization
second: the aim is in brief to make knowledge available for everyone free of charge
third: the foundation created a project for any thing needs to be shared; wikipedia, wikimapia, wikibooks, wikiversity, .... etc

eih ya ged3an el7alawa di

the fundemental issue here is: the free knowledge availabilty
meaning: not because you are poor can't have books to read !!!!!!!
this great issue is built by jimmy wales and now maintained by the community
another key word: the community ... wow
what community?
the wiki contributers, in other word any one writes even a single line in wiki is a contributer, translated in numbers means thousands of people all around the world
that's the idea behind it
so attending a conference about that is yuppieeeeeeeeeeee

the conference is held in the Bibliotheca Alexandrina
another place believes in the open source need

thursday @ 8.45 am, people from arround the world are registering and get their name tags and a bag with (fishermen hat with wikimania logo, note, pencil, brochures, sticker and tie clips with the wikipedia logo, lunch tickets)
minister Ahmed Darwish was the speaker of the welcoming session, he talked about future and questions need to be asked and found answer for
then Florence Nibart-Devouard, very lovely lady and the former chair of the board of trustees, she talked about wikimedia foundation, how small they started and how big they become.
a young egyptian named Mohamed Ibrahim of the organizing committe said a brief speech, welcomed the audience and asked people and egyptian to envolve more.
Hoda Baraka, an egyptian college professor and the first deputy of the mcit spoked about education and wiki, well .... she had powerpoint slides about children in schools with computer labs and children with IT certificate
she compared education status in 100 years and how it evolves from the Kottab to the computer labs school and next the web 2 education where children will handle their curruiculum online
i think she was talking about the other Rrepublic of Egypt (the one in the governmental commercials where sky is blue and the land is green)
anyway
she was followed by the super speaker Dr. Ismail SeragelDin
this man is something else
every speaker prepared his speech on a power point presentation where the slide have pictures and text
he had a presentation with no text at all, he was talking about a point and showing a picture to reflect this point and then move on to another picture represents another point,
how he memorised all the points he want to talk about with the perfect order
and in fact his word was deeeeep
he compared about the BA role and the wiki, both are offering free source of knowledge as he said (to all people in all times)
and mentioned how some countries spend on wars and weapons and ignore the education or the fundemental needs of it's population

a break and i had to choose one session to attend from four are held in the same time
so i did to choose "cross culture dialogue through wikipedia - Dror Kamir"
and after the session began i found out that this man is Israeli
ya nehar eswed !!!!!!! that's how i thought
and then i realized something that this man is the most suitable for this title
he is a main contributor in wikipedia articles in arabic
he talked about how what you believe is A, others belive it's B, and how people on wikipedia try to reach consensus , new word to my ears
he made examples like (palestine / Israel - Taiwan / republic of China - Republic of Macedonia / the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia)
people asked him, how he describes his visit to Egypt as Israeli knowing that he may not be welcomed in some places, he said that it was easier then he expected after all it is another city with friendly people.
he said something very important answering a question about: do u reach the consensus after convincing the other or just for the things to get going?
he was very honest by saying i don't force people to be convinced and i don't care if they didn't because it's a long term process, people change their views many times along their lives and it's not just happen on talking about an article.
after the lunch break
i went to a session about the open scholarship or as i understand later, it's about medical and educational open source projects
beythay2li keda ... LOL
another session where the speaker was an egyptian linguistic, he was taking about his research on wikipedia writing, he got this result "people who write on wikipedia are linguistically skillful as PHD writers
he showed up some charts comparing the words used by the writers and so on -- very booring session
and then the lecture of the great Jimmy Wales founder of the wikipedia
he talked about freedom of speech, human rights and free culture, he was of course from time to time used china as an example - china banned the whole wikimedia sites -
he said some great statments
i want to stop here for a moment: here is a guy with a cosematic way of thinking, he created a project and let all the globe share him in it, and all this effort is non profitable
i think he deserves a noble prize for his way of thinking, he simply change the internet and the world by offering the new concepts of open source, wiki, web 2, ....etc
everything we do or use today online is a child of his product like facebook, you tube, blogs, and of course the wiki
i wonder how to be this man, have a great idea that benefit every one on the globe, seek to make it real, see it flourishing and growing and be part of the organization
wow
this man sure sleeps at night have no worry about the legacy he'll leave his children.
after this great session, there was another astonishing one by Rhonda Shearer
she was talking about the media vis wiki
she mentioned some hoax media created in the past and that in the wiki world people are modified content to make sure it's right and valid
she had some hilarious examples such a BBC news "iranina women give birth to a frog" and how this was proven a hoax and others stories
this woman was briefly saying: don't trust eveerything you read, media can manipulate the truth
in the wiki world it's impossible to happen, because people will step in and correct the fault.
coffee break and 2 sessions about wiki writing, not so interesting
except the Zotero software which makes wiki article available on your PC to modified and published by a click.
another session about inkscape SVG, very specialized session don't expect people to understand
the day end with the board panel session
wowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww
how people talk and think
it was a situation where the board is answering the "COMMUNITY" questions
the thing is it's a non profitable project, board have no obligation by law to offer a revenue chart or something similar
BUT
they had to answer the questions of the community and there were some questions i don't believe it would asked in a corporate company where people are by law forced to declare inforamtion
it's the difference between cultures
where we think this is mine, no one has to know anything about it
while they think that this product is belong to all, and all has the right to overwatch it
when Ahmed Zewal won the noble prize he said that the difference between the culture here and there was in the use of "i" and "we"
he was talking using the "we" referring to a team working together, not the "i"
i did, i make, i create
it's entirely a different approach,
that's the web 2 approach too
here in egypt in the IT business we did some baby steps in this direction with network community sites
it's not enough because it's not about the sharing of knowledge rather then sharing a good time online