Wikamania 2008 - Day2 : احنا بقغ يا ثعاد

Day 2 was overall less interesting then day 1, sessions wasn't that awesome as day one except 3 sessions were WOWWWWWW
i skiped the first session (couldn't get up in the morning at all)
i get in the second session and it was about OpenStreetMap
which is another wiki based on the wiki concept
it's about people move in the street with their GPS devices collecting data on the street, drawing map and then upload it to the site where other people can use
it's become a culture
everyone is building an application using a wiki now
and after it was a session by Dr. Usama Fayyad Yahoo!'s executive vice president of Research & Strategic Data Solutions
imagine !!!
he talked about new technologies in yahoo search engine
this was awesome
and he mentioned some interesting stats about user behaviors, and keyword usage
later i asked him about the cat and mouse war between search engine and SEO, his answer was that after the system is mature everything will be in place
the man asked some signifcant question about wikipedia too, how they will deal with the service cost in the long term
and of course he was talking about another perspectives
then lunch
and after eating i went to a session i thought it would be interesting "Free knowledge & wikimedia projects: is the law an ally?'
the speaker was a french lawyer speaking english about: how wikimedia face the legal problems of copyright and so
i didn't enjoy it much because the tone of the speaker and the old news he brougt
"wikimedia has no obligation because it's not a publisher"
another boring session about eifl open access, it's about electronic libraries and how to share knowledge among people and libraries
and the speaker said that the organization has a program here in Egypt
a final break and then another astonishing session
it was about wikimedia and libraries: the speakers were 5, 3 of the wikimedia community and 1 american college professor and librarian and another lady librarian from the BA
the question was: well wikimedia replace the library
and of course the 2 librarians thought it's not going to happen because knowledge on wikimania is from books basically and it has not every thing in books
so it means people will not find all the answers on wikipedia and they'll have to get back to books
other great point is the librarian is not about keeping books safe, but also about guide readers to the channel of information
it was clear that the people of wikipedia have not much to argue with that
well, this is what i get from this session and i was impressed by the democracy of the people
who brought - let us say people from the opposite camp - to debate
coooooool
very deep thoughts were said in this session and in the last one
the last one was by ting chen from the foundation board, it was an interactive session
people from the audience talked more then he did
he asked a question about why not every contribute with whatever he want to, so one of the audience said too much inforamtion needs filter so the good stays and the nonsense get deleted
so other people from the audience answered by how this will be done,
another filtering fan said by the experts, so michael snow new head of the board and Rhonda from the stinkyjournalism said 2 great points; first who will defines the expert, second what you may think is nonsense now may be valued after years or may be important for another one.
so the debate was wone by the good guys
and the day ends with a BA tour
we went to a new section called VISTA, it's about 3d presentation for any topic: scientific, historical, medical, .... whatever
you wear a 3d glass and you'll be IN the scene
done with the second day