This post is going up a little late but I wanted to share the awesome-ness of GLAMcamp Amsterdam. For more information on the event see the page on Meta.
As I stepped through the plastic flaps that formed the front door of the MediaMatic Lab, Liam Wyatt bounded up to me “Welcome to the mushroom factory!” It was certainly an unusual venue; one wall was covered in around 6kg (if I remember correctly) of mouldy tomato paste and a sterile laboratory-like area had been created (I’m told they hold the magic mushroom-making courses in there). The current exhibition there is about fungus: they’re exploring different forms of fungi. A sign by the door warned of death if anyone with an immune deficiency disorder entered the building. Luckily the weekend remained free of casualties and after a brief introduction from conference conveners Jessica Tangelder and Liam Wyatt, the attendees had a chance to say a little about themselves.
Is this even legal?
Wikimedia Nederland had printed some books about their Wiki loves Art series of events they held all over the country in 2009. We were warned to pick one up before the museum-ists arrived that afternoon for the public workshop. But before then, we were given a presentation by the team behind the GLAM-Wiki toolset project, which aims to provide both an effective mass-upload system (Maarten Dammers doesn’t scale. Sorry, Maarten.) and decent metrics for images used.
After the first of what turned out to be one of three very impressive lunch spreads, attendees of the public workshop started arriving. Done in a way very different to the one held as part of GLAMcamp NYC in May, the public workshop focused more on talks and networking than actually introducing them to the rubrics of Wikipedia collaboration, partnerships, projects.
The evening ended with everyone walking to “de Balie” for drinks and dinner. A group eventually ended up having a “beer mat flipping competition” (Liam won with… 26! People were rendered speechless – and beer mat-less, too.)
