Grants:TPS/MarkAHershberger/SMWConFall2013

User name

MarkAHershberger

User location (country)

U.S.

Event name

SMWCon Fall 2013

Event Web site

https://www.semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Fall_2013

Event date(s)

Oct 28-30

Event location (city)

Berlin, Germany

Amount requested (remember to specify currency!)

US$1700

Endorsements

• The work that Mark is doing is extremely relevant to a lot of the attendees of SMWCon. It will be useful for the attendees to hear about what Mark and Markus plans are. Of equal utility will be the feedback and support Mark can get from these attendees. --Jeroen De Dauw (talk) 02:11, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
• It'd be very useful to have Mark at the conference to discuss how SMW as one of the largest and more complicated extension sets fits into the MediaWiki release process. --LydiaPintscher (talk) 12:55, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
• Mark's input would be extremely valuable for the developer and user community around SMW. While SMWCon happens in North America every six month, development has a distinctly European bias and many developers participate in European SMWCons only. Developers of SMW and its extensions include freelancers as well as small companies, who are not closely integrated with MediaWiki development; reaching out to those contributors would be very worthwhile. --Markus Krötzsch (talk) 14:03, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
• As per the other endorsements. I would like to add that Semantic MediaWiki is among the 100 most popular extensions and predominatly utilised by third parties. These third parties are attending SMWCon and this allows for direct as well as intense communication. --Karsten Hoffmeyer (talk) 08:26, 16 August 2013 (UTC)
• I think Mark's attendance to SMWCon may lead to a very interesting exchange due to his role in being the official release manager for MediaWiki. I strongly recommend to support his attendance. --denny (talk) 09:53, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Budget breakdown

• Travel: US$1185
• Accommodation: US$206
• Meals: US$307

Proposed Participation

I, along with Markus Glaser, hold the WMF contract for MediaWiki maintenance. During my participation at Wikimania this year, I developed existing and new relationships with developers and people who run third-party wikis. I'd like to start working with the Semantic MediaWiki (SMW) community to address their needs for MediaWiki release managment. To that end, I've proposed a presentation on "Improving dependency managment and easing upgrades".

Additionally, Markus Krötzsch has asked me to lead the Introduction to MW/SMW talk.

Goal and Expected Impact

My aim here is to foster more communication and improved collaboration with SMW developers and the SMW community. While SMW depends on MediaWiki, many of their core developers did not attend Wikimania or the MediaWiki hackathons. By participating in SMWCon, I am reaching out to them and expect to produce better relationships.