Wikimania 2012 has now concluded. Following a week of pure exhilaration that drew to a close on the afternoon of July 15, the 1,400 attendees from 87 countries turned off their laptops and exited the George Washington University Marvin Center one last time.

The theme for Wikimania 2012 was “Explore. Engage. Empower.” It was borne out of the organizers’ hope that those coming to Wikimania, whether from close or far away, used this great opportunity to explore new and exciting possibilities, engaged in active discussions and dialogue, and took what was learned here back with them in order to continue to empower people around the world through free access to global knowledge.

Roberta Shaffer, Associate Librarian of Congress for Library Services, welcomes guests to the Google Opening Reception (Alejandro Linares Garcia, CC BY-SA 3.0)

With support from sponsors and partners, over 700 people attended the Google Opening Reception at the Library of Congress, where the newest Wikipedian in Residence position was announced; more than 1,200 participated in the opening ceremony, which featured keynote speeches from the Ada Initiative co-founder Mary Gardiner and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales; and our community heard over 275 speakers, many of whom are already active contributors to Wikimedia projects, including the Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation, Sue Gardner, and the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees. In addition, we met and talked with the more than 200 participants at Tech@State: Wiki.Gov, and Richard Boly of the State Department’s Office of eDiplomacy shared a letter from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton congratulating attendees on the opening of Wikimania  2012 and Tech@State.

Over the course of 5 days, our 1,400 attendees consumed 3,791 lunches, enjoyed 5,424 cups of coffee, and visited nearly every museum and monument in the Washington metropolitan area (although a citation might be needed).  On these explorations, our local Washington, DC, highlights were photographed and many are newly included in Wikimedia Commons, a database of freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute.

One person in our community who is a great supporter of Wikipedia, to the surprise of some of our guests, is David Ferriero, the Archivist of the United States.  In his remarks at the closing ceremony on Saturday, Ferriero discussed the important role that Wikipedia and Wikimedia Projects have for preserving history and documenting cultural heritage. After reminding the audience that the National Archives has contributed more than 120,000 digital files and pictures to Wikimedia Commons, he told the crowd, “if Wikipedia is good enough for the Archivist of the United States, then it’s good enough for you.”

“David Ferriero’s closing plenary illustrated just how inspiring the Wikipedia community can be for institutions and governments looking to become more open and transparent,” said Lori Byrd Phillips, US Cultural Partnerships Coordinator for the Wikimedia Foundation. “What was the most inspirational for me was the respect and appreciation shown by the Wikipedia community during the standing ovation for Mr. Ferriero. I’ve known that the Archivist of the United States loves Wikipedia, but last week I was reminded that the Wikipedia community returns that love to those who advocate for the movement.”

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Washington, DC, is a global hub for culture and knowledge. This is embodied in its numerous colleges and universities, more than 30 museums and the world’s largest library, containing over 29 million books.

But there is a fourth kind of cultural and educational resource within the city that is sometimes overlooked—Washington‘s 170+ embassies and diplomatic missions. These embassies are hidden gems of knowledge, housing cultural artifacts and works of art, and hosting numerous educational and cultural events, particularly in May, which DC Mayor Vincent Gray has declared as the city’s “International Cultural Awareness Month,” in order to showcase the value these embassies bring to the city.

In an effort to capture the intellectual energy and highlight the cultural and educational resources of these international institutions, Wikimedia District of Columbia (Wikimedia DC) last week kicked off its Embassy Outreach Initiative (EOI) with an inaugural event held in partnership with the Washington European Society and the Estonian Embassy in Washington.

The event, hosted at the Estonian Embassy, featured a discussion on global Internet freedom efforts with Danny Weitzner, Deputy CTO for Internet Policy at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy; Chairman Marko Mihkelson, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Estonian Parliament; Ian Schuler, Senior Manager for Internet Freedom Programs at the US State Department; and Rebecca MacKinnon, Bernard L. Schwartz senior fellow at the New America Foundation and a member of the Wikimedia Foundation Advisory Board. Adam Kushner, Deputy Editor of the National Journal, moderated the discussion.

From L to R, Weitzner, Mihkelson, Schuler, and MacKinnon. CC-BY-SA

At the heart of EOI is an effort to foster an international dialogue around Wikimedia DC’s and the Foundation’s vision. In that sense, the choice of the Estonian Embassy as the debut venue for EOI was not coincidental. Estonia currently ranks as the number one country for Internet freedom by the DC-based NGO Freedom House. Not only do tech, Internet companies, startups (think Skype) and knowledge initiatives thrive in Estonia, but so does the Estonian Wikipedia. Its nearly 95,000 articles, and 8.1 million monthly page views, may seem small compared to the English Wikipedia, but considering the country’s population stands at slightly over 1.3 million, these numbers are very substantial.

The global Wikimedia community will be coming to Washington, DC, this summer for Wikimania 2012, providing the city with an opportunity to witness how the world collaborates in pursuit of free global knowledge. Before these international delegates arrive, and long after they have returned home, Washington, DC has always been and will always remain a great place to promote international dialogue in support of shared knowledge. That is the ultimate goal of Wikimedia DC’s outreach and program efforts–like EOI and LibraryLab: they utilize the potential for collaboration that is present within the city and make a positive and lasting impact on global knowledge.

Nicholas Michael Bashour, President, Wikimedia District of Columbia

Wikimedia District of Columbia (Wikimedia DC), the organizer of Wikimania 2012, has announced that Mary Gardiner will keynote the opening session of Wikimania 2012 in Washington, DC on July 12.  Gardiner is the co-founder of The Ada Initiative(TAI) and an important advocate for women in open source and open culture.

This announcement builds on WikiWomen’s History Month, a partnership between the Wikimedia Foundation, TAI, and OCLC. It shows a commitment by the Wikimedia community to make women’s participation in tech and wikis a central goal moving forward.

“Wikimania’s choice of Mary Gardiner says that the Wikipedia community is moving on from asking ‘Is the underrepresentation of women a problem?’ to asking ‘What can we do to increase the representation of women?’,” said Valerie Aurora, a co-founder of TAI and an open source developer.

Ada Initiative co-founder Mary Gardiner. Photo: Mary Gardiner, CC-BY-SA

Aurora noted that it has taken a while for one of the world’s largest open source communities to view the issue in that light. “Many people have worked hard for several years to get the community to pay serious attention to the gender gap. Now it’s starting to look like they have succeeded, and we can start having a conversation on what to do to close the gender gap.”

Wikimania 2012 presents a great opportunity to do just that. Gardiner is the first female keynote speaker at a Wikimania. Many of the over 400 submissions we received were made by female contributors, with several focusing specifically on the role of women in the Wikimedia movement. In addition, AdaCamp DC, an unconference event, will coincide with the Wikimania 2012 Hackathon/Pre-Conference Developer Days on July 10-11.

Both Gardiner and Aurora are excited for the opportunity to connect with the global community. ”We will have quite a few experts on Wikipedia and related projects at this year’s AdaCamp,” says Aurora, “and I am looking forward to seeing what they think up.”

To top it all off, Washington DC is home to one of the most active communities of women in tech anywhere in the world, with groups such as Women in Technology and DC Web Women present in the area. All of this makes Wikimania 2012 a perfect opportunity to raise awareness of the important role of women in tech, open source and wikis.

Thank you,

Nicholas Michael Bashour, President of Wikimedia District of Columbia and General Manager for Wikimania 2012
Sarah Stierch, Community Fellow, Wikimedia Foundation and member of the Ada Initiative Advisory Board