WikiCamp 2007 Coverage

Today I attended the first ever Wiki Unconference, the WikiCamp here at Chennai’s Tidel Park. It’s an unconference (definition) of just about everything Wikis. The event started off with a keynote (not exactly a keynote, but somewhat close to it) by Jimmy Wales (Founder of Wikipedia and President of WikiMedia Foundations), which later continued into a typical unconference like question and answer round.

Jimmy was quite friendly with participants and clarified that the recent statement made by Chairwoman Florence Devouard was actually misinterpreted by the media/press and Wikipedia wasn’t running out of cash. He also leaked out that some internet company (undisclosed) had offered to host Wikipedia for free, but they turned them down mainly because Wikipedia wants to stay independent. (He said Wikipedia doesn’t like to be Yahoopedia or Googlepedia, which makes me feel a bit suspicious). He seems to be slightly more focused towards Wikia and Wiki Search.

The fun actually started after lunch, but unfortunately half of the participants where all gone by then. We had a debate over Blog vs Wikis which ended up into a dead lock. Finally we all agreed that both Wiki and Blogs have their own goods and bads (Wikis are meant to be collaborative, whereas Blogs are meant for personal views and discussion through comments). Later on folks from Redbull gave a free complimentary drink which probably energized me to write this post. Sadly, I couldn’t snap lots of photos; I got my memory card corrupted and batteries were all drained up. Anyways, I have uploaded quite a few photos on Flickr. Check out Flickr or YouTube for the tag “wikicamp”, you’ll discover lots of photos and videos from other participants.

I met quite a handful of my readers from Chennai, to be honest folks from Chennai are extremely friends, but I had a hard time trying to figure out Tamil.