This final day of WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 opened with a keynote by Phil Bourne, professor at UCSD and co-founding editor of the PLoS journal on computational biology. Key takeaways are that openness has the power to deinstitutionalize science, disrupt trad. academic evaluation, that open access is thriving but needs a business model, and that we need a new research life-cycle.

Continue reading WikiSym + OpenSym 2013 Day 3, Phil Bourne on the Era of Open →

It’s hard to believe we’re just weeks away from Wikisym 2012. In the next few days, I wanted to highlight some content at the conference we’re very excited about. Today, I’m highlighting our closing keynote speaker, Brent Hecht.

Brent is a PhD candidate at Northwestern, and will be starting at the University of Minnesota this coming year. He’s giving a very thoughtful talk on the ways to mine and encourage diversity in user generated content communities. From his abstract:

“It is well known – especially to WikiSym attendees – that Wikipedia articles and other forms of user-generated content (UGC) play a significant role in the everyday lives of average Web users. Outside the public eye, however, UGC has become equally indispensable as a source of world knowledge for vital systems and algorithms in numerous areas of computer science. In this talk, I will demonstrate that UGC reflects the cultural diversity of its contributors to a previously unidentified extent and that this diversity has important implications for millions of Web users and many existing UGC-based technologies. Focusing on Wikipedia, I will show how UGC diversity can be extracted and measured using diversity mining algorithms and techniques from geographic information science. Finally, through two novel applications – Omnipedia and Atlasify – I will highlight the exciting potential for a new class of technologies enabled by the ability to harvest diverse perspectives from UGC.”

Brent’s an engaging speaker, who has wowed crowds at CHI. We’re looking forward to his participation in the coming conference.

Hello. This is a formal version of the first call for contributions to WikiSym 2012. It will be also available on the 2012 website, as soon as our new wiki is ready (in short time).

WikiSym 2012 Call for Participation

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8th International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration

August 27-29, 2012 | Linz, Austria

The International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym) is the premier conference on open collaboration and related technologies. In 2012, WikiSym celebrates its 8th year of scholarly, technical and community innovation in Linz, Austria.  We are excited this year to be collocated with Ars Electronica, the premier digital art and science meeting that attracts over 35,000 attendees per year.

Submissions are invited for the following categories:

[1] As determined at the International Date Line. In other words, as long as it’s still April 13th or April 27 somewhere on Earth, the system will accept your submissions.

See the call for participation for more details on submission requirements, templates, and mechanisms.

Hi all.

After receiving several requests to extend the deadline for submitting to WikiViz, the visualization contest co-organized by WikiSym and WMF, the committee has decided to grant this extension.

Therefore, the new deadline to submit your visualizations is August 28. Please note that, for the time being, all other important dates for this contest remain unaltered.

Good luck to all participants. We look forward to meeting you at Mountain View!

PS: As usual, this deadline means that as long as it is August 28 anywhere on Earth your submission will be able to enter the contest.

You asked, we listened.

The conference committee has had several requests for a bit of extra time – so please note that the deadline for research papers, experience reports, workshops and panels has been moved back to Monday April 4th. As long as it’s Monday , April 4 somewhere on Earth, the system will accept your submissions. See the WikiSym 2011 site for submission instructions.

Happy writing!

The submission site for WikiSym 2011 is now open to receive your contributions.

Please, make sure that you check the submission instructions carefully before sending your works. There are specific guidelines and document formats that authors must consider for each category.

We look forward to seeing you in Silicon Valley!

Hi all!

Christmas is ahead of us and we just received a wonderful gift. A few hours ago, we have just launched our brand new WikiSym 2011 website. You may have also noticed our new banner on top of this parent site and… the awesome logo for next year!. We will provide some promotional artwork (short and long banners) very soon, so that you can help us spread the word.

We also started the main campaign to find out sponsors. If you want to consider becoming a WikiSym 2011 sponsor, you should visit the sponsors page and also read our invitation to sponsors.