Re: [Semediawiki-user] Thoughts about Spring 2010 SMW meeting

[Joachim B. <joa...@tw...>]

Hi Yaron,

> there's never been a
> meeting/conference held for MediaWiki users in general, outside of the
> context of Wikimedia projects - just a conference for people and companies
> who use MediaWiki, on the order of "DrupalCon" and the like. It would
> encompass both Semantic MediaWiki and the regular kind, and would highlight
> the fact that MediaWiki has taken on a life of its own outside of Wikipedia.

In fact we recently started a periodical meeting for MediaWiki users in large-scale German companies. I wouldn't call it a conference yet, but it is destined for the exchange of experiences in the use of Mediawiki for enterprise purposes.

You can find our (German) wiki about it here: http://www.wiki4enterprise.org

The first meeting was hosted by Fraport in Frankfurt. Participants were:
* Fraport (airport operating company of Germany's biggest airport)
* Schaeffler (mechanical engineering)
* Statistisches Bundesamt (Federal Statistical Office)
* Bundeswehr (German Army)
* Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (leading German organisation for applied research)
* GTZ (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, worldwide development projects)
and of course
* German Wikimedia Headquaters

VOLKSWAGEN (VW) will hopefully follow (German article about our VW project: http://www.computerwoche.de/1912984/ )

Interestingly the idea had come up when someone stated on the Knowtech Conference that MediaWiki was not made for enterprise purposes - and several poeple in the audience cried out in pain. We just invited them. Here we are.

So if you are interested to extend this - feel free to contact us.

Achim

p.s.: Thanks for SIO 0.2 - I'll keep my fingers crossed for the native integration into SMW! Let me know how to help...


Joachim Bode
Twoonix Software GmbH