Sunday was the final day of Wikimania 2007, the convention for all things wiki. I was quite surprised to find out that Taipei happened to be selected as the host city this year. I only managed to attend for the third day, but being only 20 minutes away, there was no way I was going to miss it completely.

I was pretty psyched when it finally came time to go. Got there early, meeting a French-Malian, Renaud Gaudin, on the way. I learned that his airfare was $2,500 USD, but that he’d been awarded a scholarship for being a speaker. I asked about internet rates in Africa and his is a mere 128kb/s ISDN (dial-up x2), $75 a month, and shared among seven people. On the other hand, when in France he has really cheap 20Mb/s access, which isn’t even available in most of the US.

I bagged some swag at the tables, mostly just stickers. Attendees also got lunch and a free Wikimania tote bag, t-shirt and spherical puzzle. Not bad, though they only had XL and XXL sizes left for the tees. Grrr. Why is that always the case?

The conference itself was incredibly geeky, I guess because it attracts the software developer crowd more than casual contributors. A shocking number of attendees were using laptops constantly, even throughout the talks. As for myself, I geeked out taking pictures and getting to know my new digital camera, a Ricoh Caplio R6 which I’d received for my birthday.

In total, about 400-500 people, half foreigners. Lots of volunteers, though those I talked to weren’t contributors to any Wikimedia projects. Didn’t talk to all that many people, as I did a lot of running around looking for photo opportunities and half the people had their heads buried in their laptops. Reminded me of my roommates instant messaging eachother from two steps away, both in the same dorm room. I imagined them all heading to Wikinews to cover their part of the conference and to read up on what was going on everywhere else (two steps away). Go figure.