Apologies to those subscribed to the wikimedia blog planet and have seen this announcement before on the Wikimedia UK blog.

Building on the good relationship with the British Museum from my residency there, Wikimedia UK have asked me to convene a UK edition of the GLAM-WIKI conference that we ran last year in Australia. So, I’m pleased to say, on November 26 & 27 at the British Museum will be GLAM-WIKI:UK! Moreover, the very next weekend the French Chapter will be hosting their edition of the same conference in Paris which will build even more momentum for sustainable and mutually-benificial relationships between the cultural sector and the Wikimedia community.

All of the details of the UK conference can be found at:

http://glamwiki.org

I’m very pleased to see that over the course of the last couple of years, since we started to work proactively with GLAM institutions, Wikipedians’ initial reaction to museums is “what projects can we run with them?” and museums’ initial reaction to Wikipedia is “how can we get our collection on there?” Obviously there is still a large gap in terms of actually getting projects running but the most important part is the good will in the first place.

Keynoting this conference will be:

• Author, blogger and “you can share things online and it will be a good thing” activist Cory Doctorow
• Broadcaster, Canadian (that’s OK, we won’t hold it against her) and executive director of the Wikimedia Foundation Sue Gardner
• Historian, librarian and director of the Columbia University copyright advisory office Dr. Kenneth Crews

You can see some of the other confirmed speakers at the conference website. If you have a good project or idea that you want to discuss at GLAM-WIKI:UK please write to me and we could add you to the schedule too 🙂

The first day of the conference will focus on Principles of collaboration (including legal and business models) whilst the second day will focus on Practice (including content and data partnerships). For GLAM representatives there will be opportunities to undertake crash courses in Wikipedia (both the technological and policy aspects) and to sit down with some expert Wikipedians to nut-out some practical ways that your institution can get involved that are cheap, low-risk and not time-consuming. For Wikimedians it will be a chance for you to see how your work is making an impact on real-world organisations and learn how you can help make it even more effective.

The cost for registration for professionals is £40 and for Wikimedians £20. This includes entry into the special evening event on Friday the 26th being run in collaboration with the Museum Computer Group (MCG). This will be a lecture by Kenneth Crews followed by a panel debate on the subject of “The free-conomy and the culture sector”. Panelists include Gilane Tawadros (director of the Design Artists Copyright Society), Paula Le Dieu (head of digital at the British Film Institute) and Bill Thompson (from the BBC’s “Digital Planet”).

See you there!