The International Symposium on Wikis

In answer to a Research Fellow in a Department of Sociology at a UK university:

[I received a letter from Wikisym] re: submitting a paper:

In a number of cases, the most interesting aspects of your paper might be submitted as a poster or demonstration proposal. I would very much like you to consider this as well.

The conference website gives a deadline for poster submissions on June 30.

How should we proceed? Should we still aim for a poster or prepare a more informal presentation to be given during one of the open sessions of WikiSym?

We would love to have as much feedback as possible from the wiki developer/researcher community on this service proposal.

What is in your opinion the best way to present this?

We responded:

The June 30th deadline for posters was for those that wanted to be considered for inclusion in the ACM abstracts.

We are happy to continue to receive and consider posters on an informal basis.

Regards and thanks,
Martin.

I hope this clears up any confusion.

CALL FOR PAPERS

First Workshop on “Interdisciplinary Research on Wiki Communities”, on September 8, 2008, at WikiSym 2008, Porto, Portugal, September 8-10, 2008

Introduction

The array of approaches to studying wikis is a source of wealth but also a possible source of confusion: What are appropriate methodologies for the analysis of wiki communities? Which are the most critical parameters (both quantitative and qualitative) for study in wiki evolution and outcomes? Is it possible to find effective interdisciplinary approaches to augment our overall understanding of these dynamic creative environments?
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Early Registration for WikiSym 2008 is possible until 20th July. By registering early you save your money and you also help us organize a better WikiSym 2008 Conference Program.

Advance registration will be possible until 25th August. After that, only onsite registrations are accepted.

Thanks!

Hi all,

Thank you for bearing with us!

So, after many hours of deliberation, the posters and demo team have completed their evaluations. I have just finished sending out the notifications. If you have submitted something and have not received an answer it is important that you contact me (demosandposters@wikisym.org) before Monday 21 July.

Similar to papers, posters were subjected to peer review. Each poster proposal was reviewed by at least three committee members and some, especially those we couldn’t take, were read by five or six separate reviewers.

Unlike papers, however, posters didn’t need to show depth of research rigour. Instead, posters were selected on the basis of clarity and relevance to the wiki community, coupled with originality, utility and degree of innovation. Nevertheless, some posters did show such rigour and those now have the option to be included into the ACM Proceedings as an ACM-DL abstract. ACM inclusion may not be appropriate or matter in every case but should the author choose inclusion in the ACM proceedings, the final copy needs to be submitted for July 26, 2008. Of the 26 demo/poster proposals submitted, we accepted 11 candidates for the ACM.

Some posters or demo submitters received letters asking them to clarify what they intend to show. An example of this is where the topic looks really interesting but there was no obvious pathway as to how they met their goal. Those people are welcome to reformulate their poster, and, we will help you evolve your submission. Due to the Jul 26 ACM deadline, posters reworked this way are unlikely to be ready for the ACM proceedings. We will continue to be keen to bring all late-breaking news as last-minute posters, so you still get to share and discuss your findings with your peers in the industry.

Finally, we have OpenSpace/UnConference track for the conference. This means that even ideas that haven’t been written may well be fantastic ingredients to these dynamic conversations. Everyone has the opportunity to present and you may find that you are able convey verbally your ideas to engage your fellow participants at WikiSym2008.

Regards,

Martin

Martin Cleaver M.Sc. MBA
WikiSym 2008 Demos and Posters Chair
http://www.BlendedPerspectives.com/

Things have gotten a little hectic here at WikiSym.

Even with our responses for your paper submissions now back to you, our team has not yet completed our promised review of the posters and demo submissions. We haven’t forgotten!

To meet demand, I’ve just recruited a couple of extra volunteers for this task (I can’t tell you who, just yet, of course ;)); I hope we’ll be done by Thursday.

We’ve had some further excellent submissions. So, thank you: both for your efforts and your patience.

Martin.

Stewart Nickolas, creator of IBM’s QEDWiki, working in the Emerging Technologies group in IBM for the past five years, will be a keynote speaker at WikiSym 2008.

We interviewed him by e-mail to know more about his involvement with wikis and web-related issues, concretely OpenAjax and application wikis.

Q: How is the OpenAjax Alliance related to wikis?

The OpenAjax organization was created a few years ago and is dedicated to the successful adoption of open and interoperable Ajax-based web technologies. Within the Alliance there are several working groups actively addressing key challenges in achieving interoperability across the many Ajax toolkits. Some of the challenges include: How can toolkits coexist on a single page without corrupting the page? How do toolkits communicate with one another on the same page? How are widgets described in a common way so that aggregation canvases such as Wikis, Mashup Makers and traditional IDEs can use the widgets? Through our work with QEDWiki we recognized the importance of hosting content from multiple providers. Each content provider may use different Ajax toolkits to deliver a rich experience within a single page. To address this problem we originally developed a proprietary proof-of-concept technology for QED; however, we felt it was necessary to have open standards to enable and extend the content delivery ecosystem around Wikis, Mashups & content providers.

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Tim Berners-Lee’s intended the web to be writeable by all. Yet, for decades it’s been stuck in a “read mostly” mode. Everyone web surfs, some add content but very few really get to fundamentally re-express and re-structure web content. We know this. We wiki. Problem is, many don’t.

It is hoped that the icon will draw contributions to wiki-based sites, by serving as a reminder to how changeable they are.

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Martin Cleaver, Blended Perspectives. Toronto, Canada.

Wiki farm: a website that offers to the public a sectioned-off set of wiki pages

It’s evident that Wiki Farms, such as PBWiki, Wetpaint, Wikia and WikiSpaces are growing rapidly. Many content producers don’t have the resources or desire to install their own wiki platform behind the firewall or they want to dabble first, so these sites act as great places to experiment while allowing someone else to manage the content.

Typical users are professors at universities and colleges, who assign their students homework on them, towns, many not for profits and groups of knowledge specialists (such as legal, medical and accounting) who have the need to share effort or align on approach. The result is these sites act as wellpools into which effort is gravitated and content collects around seeds of common interest.

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Martin Cleaver Toronto, Canada

Well, the deadline for posters has just passed, and for sure we have some interesting titles!

I won’t tell you who submitted what because until we’ve read them and made commitments I can’t promise they will materialize. But, I will go so far as to whet your appetite!

• Javascript-standalone, extensions for Firefox, new visuals to represent changes, Printability, Collaborative Translation, Citation extensions
• Wiki intranets, Open Assessment, Maturity Models, Innovation Processes, Social Semantics, Analyzing large wikis
• Specifics for the Heath Sector

Notable, was that in addition to research contributed by our university crowd, are the companies submitting works to WikiSym Demos and Posters. These include: BT Group, Bosch, Microsoft, Vodaphone, and Sun - their offerings are certainly testament that cutting-edge firms are breaking ground with wikis.

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