How about a half-hour group "entertainment" of fleshing out blank, (by some metric) important items? Some blank items do not fall easily into our instance/subclass schema, might be interesting to have a quick brainstorm for a few? --Magnus Manske (talk) 14:34, 30 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for planning this! I think something really useful would be organizing WikiProject gatherings - or at least encouraging each active WikiProject to try to have some sort of meet-up and discussion during the 'con'. ArthurPSmith (talk) 15:47, 30 November 2016 (UTC)Reply
Excellent plan! Like with the hackathon we should ask participants about how experienced they are. If we have enough new people we should have some introduction sessions. Probably good to have a session on how to model complicated concepts (not very concrete concepts). What are good strategies here? Presentations of the different active sub/wikiprojects would be nice. Pre-conference hacking days? ;-) Multichill (talk)
One thing I would really value: external input. On the way we build our ontology, our properties, etc. For the cultural sector I'd like to pick the brains of some people behind the CIDOC CRM, ask them to look very closely at what we have done so far in the visual arts and how we can improve stuff and align our efforts. I can imagine that many other disciplines have these external ontology experts too. Would the WikidataCon be a good occasion for this? If not, I'd love to organize this elsewhere, especially for the field of visual arts. I'd love to hear about any others who want to do this too, and suggestions where/how to organize this. Spinster💬 13:40, 1 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
Ha, I was specifically thinking of mentioning an ontology discussion, then thought that would be too much in the weeds. Yes, I 100% support this idea, if we can recruit some of those outside experts to become wikidatans all the better! ArthurPSmith ([[User talk:ArthurPSmith| 19:51, 1 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
+1. We need to have 1) a presentation from an expert about the principles of ontology building, and 2) some guidelines on how dealing with general ontology and specialized ontologies in a same structure like wikidata. The results of the discussion should be a list of the different choices which have to be done in order to set up the Wikidata ontology and the consequence of these choices especially for queries and data inferences. Snipre (talk) 03:04, 8 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
I thought about it some more. I would like to do two things that could be linked to Wikidata's fifth birthday: 1) Organize something like an international contest/prize for designers, to encourage the use of data from Wikidata in new types of applications, and 2) Organize a call for artistic projects with Wikidata. Both are very different, the first one is very applied and the second one would result in probably very weird and experimental art projects. I can imagine the contests/calls would go out earlier in the year and the prizes would be awarded at the WikidataCon. It would require some funding/sponsorship (prize money) and quite a bit of organization beforehand, I'm very willing to be involved in that. Just checking if others think this is a good idea too. Spinster💬 09:55, 5 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
Some wishes: How to build & run a Wikidata-Bot? (Workshop); The coolest Wikidata based projects outside the Wikimedia universe (Lecture); Using Wikidata with Lua (Lecture or Workshop); How to increase the acceptance of Wikidata in Wikipedia (Discussion) … -- MichaelSchoenitzer (talk) 15:43, 13 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
+1. A good discussion could be the definition of a standard format for data which has to be imported in WD in order to allow different bots to work together. Currently each bot has its own data structure as input. A proposition is to have some kind of speadsheet which allows to import/export data. This will help data donators to propose us some data in a useful format and to reduce work of understanding how data sets are structured when someone asks for bot importation. Snipre (talk) 03:12, 8 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Amazing plan! My B'day is on 27th October and I would like to volunteer( social media & writing blog post during WikidataCon'17) for WikidataCon 2017 and want to organize a hackfest on SPARQL & Language procesing with some cool hacks. Amit Kumar Jaiswal (talk) 11:31 AM, 14 December 2016 (UTC+05:30)
A lot of people in some communities still wonder what Wikidata is and the project is quite new and not popular (like Wikipedia for example). Also, the intelligence of Wikidata is based on the amount of knowledge it has about things, so if we have a way of making this platform popular, it would be a good way of getting more people to edit and add facts into Wikidata. So it would be nice to have sessions or a session in the WikidataCon to develop strategies on how to make this platform very popular to people in as many communities as possible and also encourage them to edit and add more facts into Wikidata. This will add to the intelligence of Wikidata and improve on problem solving using this platform. --Alangi derick (talk) 16:54, 21 February 2017 (UTC)Reply
That's true Alangi. While editing wikidata I found out that there were very few facts about Africans. So such a sensitization may be good to go in line with making Africans (mostly) edit Wikidata. Eugene233 (talk) 21:37, 10 July 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago5 comments4 people in discussion
First: YAY! I was super happy when I read about the WikidataCon 2017 – I've wished this for quite some time already. But I'm a bit sad of it being on the 5th birthday of Wikidata, since I already had plans for a Wikidata-Birthday-Event in Munich… :\ -- MichaelSchoenitzer (talk) 15:17, 13 December 2016 (UTC)Reply
Hey Michael, we chose the date of the birthday because it's quite an important day, and the WikidataCon will be a nice moment to celebrate it :) But you can for sure organize an event in Munich, for example a few days before or after :) If I can help in any way, let me know. Lea Lacroix (WMDE) (talk) 11:48, 4 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
This is a really great idea, having a Wikidata Conference to bring together Wikidata editors all around the world to push forward this technology and share ideas. I have a small contributribution and will keep bringing my ideas as time goes by. I wish to contribute this little idea of a hashtag for the conference so we can use it on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram etc... before, during and after the conference. The hashtag I have in mind is: #WikidataCon17. The number 17 is for the year it was held. What do we all think about this? --Alangi derick (talk) 16:36, 21 February 2017 (UTC)Reply
I think it would be great to start WikidataCon 2017 with a great initiative of issuing a certification of participation after the conference. These kind of documents are needed in some countries for proofs (when applying for a job or when mentioned in a CV). I have not seen conferences practicing this for a while. So I think it will be a great idea to produce soft copy (if possible hard copy) certificates for participants of this conference. The text on the certificate can be general to everyone or specific to a particular persons role (he/she took part in the conference). --Alangi derick (talk) 11:26, 28 February 2017 (UTC)Reply
It is a good idea you have point out Alangi derick, an attendance certificate is very necessary after a conference. It Can be very useful to the participants. I really wish it be included in the plans for the wikidata conference. Rosalieper (talk) 10:58, 14 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hello there,
I'm glad to announce that we found a venue for the WikidataCon. We built a partnership with Tagesspiegel (Q10189) in Berlin, they have a very nice conference venue, with one big room that can be split in three part, several other working rooms, a nice place to eat and chill. This venue will allow us to welcome 150 guests. It is located in a central place in Berlin, near Potsdamer Platz (Q152252).
What are the next steps now? Well, from WMDE's side, we're still looking for extra funding. We will apply for a WMF conference grant to be sure that we can provide scholarships for about 20 of our attendees. We are also looking for accommodations. Even if we can't fund hotel and travel for our guests, we will make sure that there is room for everyone with the best prices.
We will also need help from all of you on several topics. We will soon talk more about the content, the program, different formats that you would like to have during the even. We will probably create a program committee. I'm also open to any kind of help, we can build working groups on other topics. For example, I'd love to have some advice about accessibility, in the broad sense, to be sure that anyone will feel included.
