Wikimania—can volunteers organize conferences?
Wikimania is the annual international conference for Wikimedia contributors. About a thousand people convene for the three-day main conference, in which five conference tracks are ongoing for eight hours. Conference tracks cover such topics as presenting individuals’ projects, reviewing community organizing plans, promoting access to information sources, developing tutorial infrastructure, legal issues, software demonstrations, regional outreach, metrics reporting, and reviewing research. Before the main conference there is a two-day preconference, termed a hackathon, in which people meet in small groups for meetings, workshops, training, and more personal discussion. I went to the conference in DC in 2012, Hong Kong in 2013, London in 2014, and Mexico City in 2015.
