I do hope the HK guys are reading ;) Joe
On 19 Jul 2012, at 23:59, Thomas Dalton wrote: > On 19 July 2012 05:57, Florence Devouard <[email protected]> wrote: >> The first is that I see a trend in seeing Wikimania as a "conference" rather >> than a sort of "giant meetup". I regret it. >> I was particularly sensible this year to the fact we had "factions". I could >> see the French speaking guys hanging together here. And the German chapter >> people hanging there. And in another corner the editing community of the >> English Wikipedia. And over there, the Glam people. And though there were >> naturally bridges between those groups, there was not much mixing and >> bonding. > > I certainly found myself talking to people from the UK far too much. I > did make a point of leaving the UK group to go and speak to other > people a few times, but there is a strong tendency to drift back to > the people you know. I think it becomes more of a problem the larger > Wikimania gets. > > Having been to quite a few international Wikimedia events, I know a > lot of non-UK people too, which helps. People at their first > international Wikimedia event must find it even harder. There > difficult part is always initialising conversation with someone new > (we're all Wikimedians, so finding something in common to discuss once > you've started talking is usually pretty easy). I have two ideas for > helping people initiate conversation: > > * A speed-dating style event near the beginning of the conference. > Make sure it is the only thing happening at that time to maximise > participation. You won't be able to get everyone to talk to everyone > else within a reasonable amount of time (1000 people, 30 seconds each, > that's over 8 hours!) but you could speak to a large enough proportion > of attendees for there to be someone you've met in most groups so that > you can easily join the group. > > * "Talk to me about..." lists on badges. Knowing that someone is > interested in a particular thing can give you an excuse to talk to > them. > > _______________________________________________ > Wikimania-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l _______________________________________________ Wikimania-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimania-l
