Diving into Wiki-Wonder-World

Today was the second day of this weekend’s unConference in Cape Town, and I must say that the numbers dwindled quite a bit compared to yesterday.

Ian Gilfillan was the first speaker at StarCamp today. Ian blogs at Greenman.co.za and is quite passionate (clearly!) about Wiki Media Projects. In his presentation he presented a few of the projects, some of which I never knew about before.

For those of you who don’t know, Wiki means “quick” in Hawaiian, and Wikis are fast becoming widely used as collaborative tools. Wikipedia is undoubtedly the most famous example to date. In my recent Web 2.0 training seminars I’ve been focussing quite a lot on Wiki implementation within companies and organisations. I’m currently reading Wikinomics by Don Tapscott and Anthony D Williams – an international bestseller transmitting the news about “how mass collaboration changes everything” – I highly recommend this book for anyone even remotely interested in the subject. Publishers Weekly reviews this must-have book:

“…here author and think tank CEO Tapscott (The Naked Corporation), along with research director Williams, paint in vibrant colors the quickly changing world of Internet togetherness, also known as mass or global collaboration, and what those changes mean for business and technology. Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia written, compiled, edited and re-edited by “ordinary people” is the most ubiquitous example, and its history makes remarkable reading.”

Wikipedia
Of course this is the most well known project, the online encyclopedia that is available in over 250 world languages. The English language currently boasts more than 2.1 million articles. Stats for other South African languages: Afrikaans at 8,731 – Ian said that he met some of the Afrikaans Wikipedia community at the Wikipedia Week in Jhb recently (Jimmy Wales was also in attendance), and he was quite impressed by them; Ian also met the “father of Swahili Wikipedia” – now at 6,387 articles (soon to surpass Afrikaans Ian thinks); Zulu trails at 121 articles; and Venda with 101.
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StarCamp Talks

When I arrived this morning I caught Glen Verran who has just taken over the podcast.co.za domain as well as the website. Glen says that the original owner was actually approached my Mweb for the domain, but (luckily) he declined. Glen wants the entire website redesigned, and wants to keep podcast.co.za as the leading SA podcast directory. I think Glen is in a good position to run this project, especially because of his involvement in thezashow.com/.

Then Shaun from Career Junction spoke on Paper Prototyping. Essentially this is planning with paper – like a design wireframe. When one has paper ideas to put together, planning becomes easy so that you can decide what to keep, and what has to go. An interesting lesson on planning, as opposed to diving into a project without a full picture of that is involved.

Neil Blakey-Milner then presented a talk around scalability using OSS (Open Source Software). He defined scalability as “how easily an activity can support increased usage” and he spoke about LAMP and different aspects of Open Source. Neil was the head developer at IOL, and a serious player in area of serious development.

David gave a very interesting talk on Net Neutrality. I must admit, this was a bit over my head. Maybe Nur will make available the video he took!

I feel like I’m in school again…

StarCamp is on the way at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg. I was quite surprised to be greeted at reception with a nice (Free!) StarCamp t-shirt. Did I miss the notice about this on the Wiki? As I was ushered into the room where the show had already begun, I got a quick flashback of my school days. Everyone here is seated in rows, laptops out of course, and facing a few blackboards in the front. Everyone is clicking away, and David Mackie is sitting next to me updating the Agenda on the Wiki, talk about a live unConference! The next coffee break is up…

StarCamp

Technology, New Media, and Social Networking. If any of these (or all of them) interest you, or if they’re integral in your business, then I hope you’re away of StarCamp happening this weekend. What is it? Well this blurb says it best…

“StarCamp builds on the 2006 BarCamp Cape Town, the GeekDinner movement started post-BarCamp Cape Town, and the 27dinner phenomenon of finding new ways to get people together to learn from each other and to learn of each other, to help build Cape Town as a leader in business and technology.”

It’s happening this Saturday and Sunday (8, 9 Dec 2007) at the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Muizenberg. Directions to the venue can be found on the AIMS website.

More details about the events and talks, and on how to register can be found at the Wiki: http://wiki.geekdinner.org.za/wiki/Star_Camp/Cape_Town_2007.

I’ll see you guys there…