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Press release for the international Wikimania 2006 conference[edit]

The Wikimedia Foundation is pleased to announce the second annual Wikimania convergence, Wikimania 2006. The event will bring together members of the Wikimedia project communities, internet professionals and visionaries, and academics from a wide range of fields sharing the nexus of ideas and technology surrounding Wikipedia and its sister projects. The conference will be held August 4–6, 2006 at Harvard Law School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. Attendees can now register online; discounted rates are available for community members, and help is being made available for overseas travelers in need of US visas.

About Wikimania[edit]

Peer production is changing the way the world develops and organizes information. Wikimedia is at the forefront of this change, with wiki platforms becoming an increasingly prominent part of it. Wikimania is a forum for participants in this transformation to spend three days socializing and sharing perspectives and ideas for the future.

The Harvard Law School campus offers generous spaces for Wikimania activities in the heart of Cambridge, with support from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society. The law school will also provide housing for attendees from around the world.

Wikimania 2006 will highlight the latest Wikimedia projects, research about them, new practices in peer production, and the people behind this work. Over the course of the event, community and outside experts will discuss the hows and whys of the Wikimedia projects, with analysis and criticism, through a combination of workshops, panel discussions, and presentations. Speakers will include Lawrence Lessig, free culture advocate and chair of Creative Commons; Brewster Kahle, founder of the Open Content Alliance and co-founder of Alexa Internet, author and lecturer Clay Shirky, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia; and over 50 other presenters from the project and research communities.

About Wikimedia[edit]

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. The Wikimedia Foundation 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.

Additional information[edit]

For other press coverage, see the Foundation press page.

For further questions and interviews, please email wikimania-press@wikimedia.org.