I attended Wikimania 2012 in Washington DC. It was a very productive experience and I made a lot of friends there.
On Thursday 12 July I gave my presentation, “Research institution collaboration”, as part of a panel. I was in the conference track sponsored by the Office of e-Diplomacy in the Department of State. Both of my co-panelists talked about internal wikis for organizations. I listened to many lectures in this track and many organizations talked about internal wikis, and few of the representatives from government agencies had anything to say about Wikipedia. I was grateful that a government agency sponsored part of this conference but would have liked to have had better communication channels about agendas.
On that night Consumer Reports sponsored an event at the Newseum, the news museum. It was called “GLAM Night Out“. At this event there was a social for a couple of hours then a panel on conflicts of interest in health. The panelists were Charles Ornstein from ProPublica, Roy Poses from the Foundation for Integrity and Responsibility in Medicine, John Santa from Consumer Reports, and Daniel Mietchen the Wikimedian in Residence at the Open Knowledge Foundation.
I met a lot of people I wanted to meet and had interesting conversations with all of them.
People from WikiProject Medicine met and proposed the creation of a Wikimedia Medicine chapter. Greg, Fae, Tom, and I talked about establishing a Wikimedia LGBT and there was a meeting for all LGBT Wikipedians present. I talked with various people about founding a Wikimedia Cascadia chapter to organize Wikipedians in the Pacific Northwest.
I was upset that Tanvir could not attend. He was unable to get his visa, which I expect must be difficult for Bangladeshi people.