[Wikimedia-US-MW] Announcing SMWCon Spring 2015

[Koerner, Chris L]

Dear Midwest MediaWiki users and developers,

SWMCon Spring 2015 [1] will be held in St. Louis, MO USA from Wednesday, May 6th to Friday, May 8th. We’re hosting SMWCon in the historical garment district of downtown St. Louis City which is now a flourishing dining, residential, and shopping district. It’s also home to our venue for the conference, T-Rex [2]. T-Rex is home to numerous startups and incubators, and a really great shared space in the heart of St. Louis.

We are inviting you to submit your contributions to help collect and put together the conference program. Additionally, please add yourself to the informal list of attendees if you’d like to attend.

=== About SMWCon ===

This twice-yearly conference brings together researchers, users, developers and enthusiasts of Semantic MediaWiki and related projects, such as Wikidata. Semantic MediaWiki is a family of extensions to the open-source wiki software MediaWiki (best known for powering Wikipedia) that allow a wiki to store structured data in addition to textual content, thereby, turning a wiki into a flexible, collaborative knowledge repository.


=== Call for Contributions ===

Attendees, talks and tutorials are needed.

SMWCon is a community-driven event. Visit the SMWCon wiki page to learn more, add your name to the list of attendees, and register your talk.

http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2015

Your talk does not have to be complete. A short description and length is recommended and will make planning easier. 

Please note that all tutorials and presentations will be video and audio recorded and made available for others after the conference.


=== List of Topic Ideas===

Here are some suggested starting points:

Specific applications
- Applications in science
- Applications in business
- Other applications such as culture and personal wikis
- Open data and government-supported repositories

Concepts and development
- Evolving semantic wikis into Linked Data platforms
- Text Mining and Natural Language Processing for Semantic Wikis 
- Extending via PHP, Javascript and API-based extensions 
- Widgets
- Interoperability and mashups
- Community building, feature wishlists and Semantic MediaWiki's roadmap
- Improving user experience
- Helping new and experienced users contribute
- Modeling complex domains
- Access control and security aspects
- Multi-lingual and cross-lingual sites

=== Important Facts ===

Submission Deadline: Wednesday, April 22nd (please contact the program chair if you need to submit later)

Event Dates: May 6th to 8th 2015 (Wednesday to Friday)

Location: T-Rex 911 Washington Ave., St. Louis, MO, USA

Conference wiki page: http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2015

Participants: Everybody interested in semantic wikis, especially in Semantic MediaWiki, e.g. users, developers, consultants, business representatives and researchers.


=== Sponsors ===

- Mercy [3]

- SNPedia [4]

=== Registration === 

Registration will be open soon. Be sure to add the SMWCon page to your watchlist! We encourage you to share this with your fellow colleagues and wiki enthusiasts.


See you in St. Louis!

Yours,
Chris Koerner, Local Chair


[1] http://semantic-mediawiki.org/wiki/SMWCon_Spring_2015
[2] http://downtowntrex.com
[3] http://mercy.net
[4] http://snpedia.com/index.php/SNPediaThis electronic mail and any attached documents are intended solely for the named addressee(s) and contain confidential information. If you are not an addressee, or responsible for delivering this email to an addressee, you have received this email in error and are notified that reading, copying, or disclosing this email is prohibited. If you received this email in error, immediately reply to the sender and delete the message completely from your computer system.