I (Alain Désilets) am thinking about putting together a workshop on collaborative, wiki-style translation. This would be hosted by WikiSym 2008, which will take place in Porto, Portugal in Sept 8-10, 2008 (http://www.wikisym.org/index.php). Note that there is also a tentative plan to have a TikiFest at WikiSym 08 as well.

If you are interested, please post your name on this page. Also, feel free to write comments about the proposed format.

Note that this is still highly tentative!!!

Workshop organizers

• Alain Désilets, National Research Council Canada
• Seb Paquet, Université du Québec à Montréal

People who would like to attend and or present

• Put your name here.

Relevant topics

Any topic that is relevant to translation of wiki content or to the impact that massive online collaboration wiki-style will have on the world of translation. For a sample, see:

How will massive online collaboration impact the world of translation

Submissions

Attendees are encouraged to submit a short 1-page position paper. If they wish to, they can also submit an extended version for peer-review to the WikiSym2008 program. If accepted, the extend versions will be published in the official WikiSym 2008 proceedings.

Position papers would be published also, but in a venue separate from the peer reviewed papers (ex: on the conference web site, or as part of a proceedings "companion").

Format of the event

At the event, the program would be as follows:

Lightning talks (~ 30-60 mins depending on the number of papers)

• People who submitted a position paper or extend paper (whether accepted or rejected for publication in the proceedings) get to present it as a 5 minute lightning talk.

CardStorming (~60 mins)

• Attendees are then invited to write down themes, challenges, opportunities, etc.... relevant to the theme of collaborative wiki-style translation. They write those on yellow stickies, and post them on a blank poster, trying to place them close to another posted theme that is close to it.
• When we run out of ideas, people collaboratively start moving the yellow stickies around to create clusters of issues.
• When the clustering is somewhat stable, we label each cluster, and assign a particular table or part of the room to it.

Breakout discussion (~60 mins)

• People then go to the corner of the room that corresponds to the cluster they are most interested in.
• Lively discussion ensues, and a secretary writes down a summary on the conference wiki.

Conclusion (~ 20 mins)

• The secretary of each group presents a 2 mins summary of what was said in his group.
• We close the workshop.
• The papers, and minutes of the breakout sessions are published on the workshop site (which could be a section of the WS08 wiki).

TODO: Write workshop description

Below is what needs to be written and submitted to the WikiSym 2008 committee by May 3rd.

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Workshop and Panels submissions will be reviewed and selected for
their interest to the community. Panels provide an interactive forum for involving both panellists and audience in lively discussions of issues in the subject area of the panel. Workshops provide an extended opportunity for discussion and planning for new systems, standards and formats.

Proposals should consist of two pages describing what you intend to do and how you meet this criterion. It should include a concise abstract and one-paragraph
biographies of all people relevant to the submission. Workshops will be
allocated a half-day or a full-day and a room. Panels will be given a 90 minutes time slot.

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