Wikimedia press releases/Wikimania 2006 begins

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Wikimania 2006 begins

Boston, MA - August 3, 2006

Second Annual Wikimedia Foundation conference begins
Annual Global Gathering of Wikipedians, Scholars, and Technologists to open Friday

The Wikimedia Foundation's second annual international conference, Wikimania 2006, will open tomorrow. The three-day conference, focusing on Wikipedia, its sister projects, and the use of wikis to organize knowledge, will be held August 4–6 at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. This year's event will bring together over 400 Wikimedia contributors, enthusiasts, and scholars from a wide range of fields. Community members from Wikipedia and the other Wikimedia projects are attending the conference from dozens of countries, thanks in part to travel scholarships from Nokia, Wikia, and the Open Society Institute.

The conference will feature presentations by Lawrence Lessig, free culture advocate and chair of Creative Commons; Brewster Kahle, founder of the Open Content Alliance; Mitch Kapor, chair of the Mozilla Corporation; Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; and more than 50 other presenters from the project and research communities.

About Wikimania

Wikimania highlights the latest Wikimedia project developments, wiki research, and practices in peer production, as well as the people behind this work. Community and outside experts will discuss the growth and goals of the Wikimedia projects with analysis and criticism, in workshops, panel discussions and presentations. It is also host to the Wikimania Awards, an annual ceremony recognizing the best free content created that year around the world.

The Harvard Law School campus is providing generous space for Wikimania activities, with support from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The law school also provides housing for the attendees. A smaller Hacking Days event for wiki developers has been running August 1-3 prior to the main conference, with support from One Laptop per Child and the MIT Media Lab.

About the Wikimedia Foundation

The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is an international non-profit 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. Wikimedia operates some of the largest collaboratively-edited reference projects anywhere, including Wikipedia, one of the 20 most visited websites in the world.

The Wikimedia Foundation was created in 2003 to manage the operation of existing projects, and is based in St. Petersburg, Florida, USA. Wikimedia has local chapters in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Italy, Serbia and Montenegro, and Poland. Most of the Foundation's operations are funded by reader and contributor donations.

Contact

For questions and further information, please contact the Wikimania team:

Email: wikimania-press@wikimedia.org
Phone: (North America) +1-727-231-0101
Fax: 	(North America) +1-727-823-8961