Talk:Wikipedia Science Conference
Unconference
I notice that the description of the unconference currently says
A block of the conference will be left unplanned so that attendees can divide into groups and run short sessions on what they are interested in. Could we have a noticeboard where people post "I want to tell people about..." and "I want to learn about..."?
Yes. This is basically how I ran the unconference that I led. We a board an post-it notes. Part of the board had specific rooms listed on it, so we could schedule what happened when. Part of the board was for "sessions without a leader". If you want a session on something, but don't feel comfortable leading it, you can stick post-its in there and if someone sees it and can wants to lead it they can grab it and move it into the scheduling area. As facilitator, I also tried to find appropriate people to lead sessions that had been requested.
Yaris678 (talk) 11:56, 14 September 2014 (BST)
- I have experience of running unconferences, with pitching for sessions at the start; happy to expand on this, or assist at the event. Andy Mabbett (User:Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 14:49, 15 September 2014 (BST)
Topics and other comments
I think this idea is really interesting, but I'm somewhat concerned about the topics/focus of the conference. If we're going to call the conference a 'Wikipedia Science Conference', then I'd really like to see it focus on increasing scientific knowledge via the Wikimedia projects, if that is possible, rather than just covering science outreach / metadata / helping scientists find funding. Those other topics are very important, though, so perhaps there could be different threads/parallel sessions covering the different topics here? Or if that isn't the purpose of this conference, it might be better to rename it?
If you want to escape London, then I would be willing to look into finding a venue in Manchester.
I'm never keen on 'invited speakers', particularly within the Wikimedia ecosphere - it would be much better and fitting to have a single approach for proposed sessions that's open to all, and then choosing proposals that best fit the purpose of the conference, rather than having a bypass route that's only available for a few people (particularly if inviting speakers means that "there will not be much time available" for proposed talks, as that can be both off-putting and kinda insulting to people that haven't been invited).
Date-wise, sometime in the summer break (July/August) would probably work best for researchers that also teach. September can be busy with new students (e.g., it's fresher week this week in Manchester), and Easter can be filled with preparation for exams / other conferences.