This is the second time when Wikimedia Poland Association is organizing Wikiexpedition – an expedition around one of the regions of Poland which will be focused on gathering documentation concerning that region (especially photographic). Last year group of a dozen or so wikimedians took few thousands photos around Podlasie – 2500 of them have been already placed in Wikimedia Commons. This year, because of Wikimania in Gdańsk, the expedition is going to focus on areas surronding Gdańsk. If you want to join please take a look on:
Gdańsk Center for Translation Studies at the University of Gdańsk has recently translated a few Wikipedia articles for a project of theirs as part of the initiative, which brings serious amounts of translated content from other Wikipedias to its Polish edition. They are planning to follow through by introducing a Wikipedia course on translating among language versions. The Center is willing to co-organise a translation workshop during the Wikimania, whereby participants are to generate translated content among the Polish, English, German, Finnish, Swedish, French and Russian language versions (these particular languages will be staffed by pertinent University of Gdańsk institutes). Other languages are also a possibility if feasible.
Wikimania 2010 forest
Location: Gdańsk
Time: During Wikimania
As far as carbon neutrality of the conference is concerned, the organising team would focus on two key aspects:
Limiting the CO2 emission and waste: we are considering granting up to 10% refund to those who will choose to arrive at the venue using public transport (excluding planes). We are also planning to e.g. use local produce suppliers for catering and serve food using non-disposable utensils.
Neutralising the emission: we have struck cooperation with Aeris Futuro (which has e.g. covered the COP14 conference in Poznań las year), with their offset programme "TIME FOR FOREST" (Polish: "Czas na las"). We are hoping to neutralise the inevitable emission of carbon dioxide through that initiative. After assessing the amount of energy and resources consumed during the conference (transport to and from Gdańsk, local transport, accommodation-related emission, venue-related emission) and recalculating the result into gas emission, the planting of trees in a number allowing to consume the conference's emission will be funded, The conference will additionally receive a carbon neutrality certificate. Also, see below.
The Gdańsk Wikimania 2010 team together with the Aeris Futuro non-governmental organization plans to plant a number of tree saplings in a chosen region of Poland to neutralise the conference's impact on the environment, we could assign a place where each of the participants could come with their own sapling and plant it, together with their nickname on a plaque. That would be a Wikimania 2010 forest - a gift of the Wikimania 2010 conference attendees for our future generations.
Those attendees who would choose to arrive at the conference using public transport (by train, bus, ship; excluding planes), choosing a train over a car, as well as those who would decide to commute to the venue, taking additional passengers to their cars, could also have their own tree geocoded, making it possible to monitor that exact tree in the future.
2010 will be the year of - the 200th anniversary of the composer's birth. The venue for the conference holds Chopin's name. For these reasons we would like to begin Wikimania - organised for the avant-garde of free content movement (free culture and open source software) with a piano performance of Étude Op. 10, No. 12, called The Revolutionary, probably followed by a concert of Chopin's music. We are initiating talks with the management of the venue regarding the matter.
We would like to combine this event with a series of lectures and workshops devoted to free culture, amateur and professional artistic expression, and the distribution thereof. Because Wikimedia projects, similarly to other Internet-created content, attract more people knowledgeable in technology and nature sciences and fewer humanists, we would thus like to attract artists to the projects. We also would like to expand this endeavour to include issues of using the content of Wikimedia projects and the projects themselves in education.
