CommunityAcademic

Perhaps there are two different constituencies for WikiSym, the academic community (wikis as livlihood) and the others (paid or un-paid to be here) using wikis or writing wiki software, etc. There is a tension between these two groups becasuse there academics need to have their work published and need to present their work as a way to fully understand it themselves. Free software developers or community people using wikis, on the other hand, are not necessarily served by a $450 conference that's highly structured and programmed.

I've noticed some differences and similarities between the omidyar.net members conference in Chicago and Wikisym. Here's the start of a list:

attribute	o/net	wikisym
price	$45-450, sliding scale (self-determined)	$80 for students, $375/$450 non-students
food	snacks available all day, meals on your own	water available any time, breakfast snacks from OOPSLA, WikiSym Reception dinner
format	OpenSpace	panels, workshops, paper presentations, etc
lodging	on your own	on your own
take-home	nothing (proceedings produced throughout and on-line	book of papers and proceedings, OOPSLA '05 shoulder bag
length	Friday morning through Sunday noon	Sunday 1:30 through Tuesday 5pm
academics present?	no	yes
honoraria	no	yes

Dirk asked about how the o/net conference would've been different had it had an academic track (not using the comments feature b/c I don't understand it). This speaks to a difference in purpose, I'd say. We can add this to the table. Maybe someone else can see an academic connection and can add this.

Seems to me we could do a "pure" open space and still have paper submissions and however that process works, including scheudling paper talks if that's important for the academics. Those would just be scheduled in advance in particular rooms and the rest of the open space agenda would be created in addition to that.